St Ives September Festival: What to Know Before You Go

The St Ives September Festival has run since 1977, with its first full programme staged the following year, and it is the town's biggest annual event outside the height of summer. In 2026 it runs from 12 to 26 September, a fortnight of live music, open studios, workshops, talks, films, guided walks, poetry, comedy and street entertainment spread across venues all over town rather than penned into one site.

The opening Saturday

The festival opens on Saturday 12 September with free street entertainment, including the Falmouth Marine Band playing through the day, and The Oggymen performing Cornish songs in the evening. Both Saturdays of the festival (12 and 26 September) carry free street entertainment as a fixed part of the programme, alongside free daily poetry and music sessions in Norway Square and free live music that pops up in venues around town through the fortnight. This is the easiest, lowest-commitment way to get a feel for the festival without booking anything in advance.

The music programme

The ticketed side of the festival is built around a run of live performances across its two weeks. The 2026 lineup includes Pam Ayres, Steve Knightley, Harleymoon Kemp, Molly Hocking, Not The Beatles, Baily Tomkinson & The Locals, Bryers Boys, True Foxes, Adam Sweet Trio, Johnny Cowling, Hollie Rogers and Dan Sealey, spread across the fortnight at venues around town. Exact dates, times, venues and ticket prices for each act are confirmed and updated on the festival's own site rather than fixed months in advance, so check stivesseptemberfestival.co.uk directly before booking anything, and expect the full programme to firm up close to the opening weekend.

Open Studios

Running alongside the music programme for the full fortnight, Open Studios lets festival-goers into more than twenty artists' and craftspeople's working spaces around town, including shared studio buildings like The Studio at Norway Square, White's Old Workshops, The Manor House, Gaolyard Studios and Penwith Studios, to view work, talk to the makers and buy directly. It is the most St Ives-specific part of the festival, a town that has run on its art colony since the 1920s, and it is worth building a couple of hours into any festival visit even if music is the main draw.

Beyond music and studios

The wider programme runs to workshops, talks, film screenings, guided walks and comedy nights across the fortnight, on top of the exhibitions the town's galleries already carry, including Tate St Ives, the Barbara Hepworth Museum, the Leach Pottery shop and the smaller galleries on Fore Street and Back Road West. None of this needs the festival specifically to visit, but the festival fortnight is when the town's gallery scene is at its most active and most joined-up.

Getting there and staying

St Ives' town-edge car parks fill quickly during the festival on top of their usual summer pressure, so the St Ives Bay branch line from St Erth, with stops at Carbis Bay and Lelant Saltings, is the more reliable way in. Accommodation books up for festival weekends well ahead of the date, so treat the booking lead time the same way as any other peak-season St Ives visit and secure a place to stay before finalising which events to book.

The honest pitch for going

The festival sits deliberately after the school-holiday crowds have thinned out and before the town goes properly quiet for autumn, which is exactly St Ives' strongest shoulder-season case: the beaches and coast path are calmer, the town itself is livelier than a normal September, and the free Saturday street entertainment means there is no cost to simply turning up and seeing what the day brings. Anyone weighing a September visit against a peak-August one should treat the festival as the deciding factor in September's favour.