SailGP adds Jess Glynne and Craig David to Portsmouth event
Jess Glynne and Craig David will top SailGP’s Portsmouth Après-Sail, as the league leans into a full waterfront day out for 20,000 fans.
SailGP is turning Portsmouth into more than a race stop this July, with Jess Glynne set to headline Après-Sail on Saturday 25 July and Craig David closing the weekend with his TS5 show on Sunday 26 July at Southsea Common. The music sits after each day’s racing, but the move is clearly about the whole shore-side experience, with SailGP expecting 20,000 fans across the two-day event.
That matters because the racing is still the core product. Portsmouth will launch the European leg of the 2026 Rolex SailGP Championship, with 13 national teams in identical 50-foot foiling catamarans that SailGP says can top 100 km/h in ideal conditions. The league’s beginner’s guide puts the F50 at 15 meters and makes the same point even more bluntly: these boats are the attraction, but the spectacle only works if the setting around them feels worth a full day on the waterfront.
SailGP is leaning into that logic. Its Portsmouth overview says fans can expect entertainment in The Solent alongside the racing, while the ticketing page says the event is back after a sold-out debut in 2025. There will be no Bring Your Own Boat tickets for 2026, which points to a tighter, more controlled spectator setup around Southsea Common rather than the looser feel of a pure on-water viewing day. For anyone who has watched SailGP from the shore before, that changes the calculation: it is no longer just about seeing the F50s fly past, but about whether the race weekend feels like a destination in its own right.
The Portsmouth stop already has a result on the board. SailGP’s official race page shows the New Zealand SailGP Team won race day 2 in Portsmouth on Sunday 20 July 2025, giving the venue a recent competitive benchmark as well as commercial momentum. With the 2026 return now packaged with two mainstream UK names, SailGP is signalling that Portsmouth is not simply another race on the calendar. It is being staged as a summer waterfront event where the catamarans bring the speed and the after-racing set brings the crowd back for more.
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