Despite having no shores of its own, Cracow becomes the European sailor’s capital each year at The Shanties Festival. Going for almost three decades, the event features a rowdy mix of ballads, poetry and classical shantie songs.

The International Sea Songs Festival “Shanties” started off as a local event, taking place some 27 years ago in a basement of a community center in Krakow. Surprisingly it caught on, and started becoming bigger and bigger. The breakthrough for the Shanties Festival was certainly the 1987 edition, when first musicians from abroad participated in the festival. From then on it has become Poland's biggest – and one of Europe's most important – sea songs festivals.

Each year about 40 bands and musicians participate in the 6 main concerts of the four day festival. The concerts are attended by more than ten thousand people, which makes the Shanties Festival one of the biggest events in Cracow in February.

Apart from all the singing and playing (and, obviously, heavy drinking for those interested), the Shanties Festival consists of meetings with sailors (sea dogs, if you will), photo exhibitions and movie screenings. An important part of the Shanties Festival is also the annual Trade Fair for Sailing “Krakżagiel”, enabling to buy and sell sea equipment and other objects.