Tenby Blues Festival has spent twenty years becoming the one November weekend that fills the walled town the way July does, and it does it without a single field, campsite or wristband. The 2026 edition runs Friday 13 to Sunday 15 November, the festival’s 20th, with around fifty acts across more than twenty venues — pubs, cafes and hotel bars as much as a main stage. The organisers call it an award-winning community weekend, and the shape of it is simple: pay for the evening concerts if you want them, and spend the afternoons following mostly free music from doorway to doorway on foot.
The weekend splits into four parts. Friday night opens the festival on the main stage at the De Valence Pavilion, and the evenings are where the ticketed music lives, with doors at 7pm and music from 7:30pm each night. On Saturday and Sunday the Blues Trail runs from noon to 7pm through the town’s pubs, cafes and hotel bars, and that is the mostly free part of the weekend. A Fringe Stage adds more daytime music, and late-night sessions at the Giltar Hotel keep the night going after the main stage has emptied. The Blues Trail does not start until Saturday, so Friday is the main-stage night, and it carries straight into the late-night session at the Giltar Hotel; if you can only spare one evening, the opening night packs the most in.
The De Valence Pavilion on Upper Frog Street anchors the weekend. Friday’s bill is The Cinelli Brothers, Kaspar ‘Berry’ Rapkin & Lucy Piper, Erin Harpe & Jim Countryman and a Mystery Band — the organisers’ only clue so far is that it features a harp and a piper. Saturday brings The Errol Linton Band, Liz Jones & Broken Windows and The Jesse Garwood Band, and Sunday closes with Laura B & Her Band, Son Jack Jr and The James Oliver Revue. Doors are at 7pm and the music starts at 7:30pm, so the evening has a clear rhythm: eat before you go in, and treat the afternoon trail as the warm-up.
On Saturday and Sunday from noon to 7pm, the Blues Trail puts acts into the town’s pubs, cafes and hotel bars, and most of it costs nothing to walk into. The programme is subject to change, and the organisers publish the final version close to the weekend, but the named stops include Saltwater at Fuchsia Cafe on Saturday at 4pm and 5pm, the Low Down Dirty Dog Duo at Fecci’s, Hideaway at the Giltar Hotel, and Tom Davies & The Bluebirds on the De Valence balcony on Saturday at 1pm. Church House runs acoustic sessions with Erin Harpe & Jim Countryman at 1pm and Mark Harrison at 4pm. The balcony and the Church House sessions are ticketed, which is the one wrinkle in the free part of the day — the rest of the trail you can dip in and out of.
The free stops need no ticket and no booking. You walk in, stay for a set or two, and move on, and the venues are pubs, cafes and hotel bars that are open for the afternoon anyway. What is playing where can shift as the weekend approaches, so check the festival’s own page for the final running order rather than trusting an earlier list.
After the main stage closes, the festival moves to the Giltar Hotel on the Esplanade, above South Beach. Bella Collins & The Flaming Alligators play late on both Friday and Saturday, with doors at 11:45pm and music from midnight. It is a smaller, later room than the De Valence, and it is where the day ends for the people who came to stay the whole weekend rather than do one evening and drive home.
Online ticket sales close at 7pm on Thursday 12 November 2026. After that, the box office at the De Valence Pavilion opens at 2pm on Friday 13 November, the first day of the festival. Ticket prices for 2026 had not been confirmed at the time of writing, so check tenbyblues.co.uk/tickets for this year’s prices rather than trusting a figure from a listings site. The programme is subject to change, and any shift appears on the festival’s own pages first.
Buying in advance matters most if you are travelling far, because the online window closes the evening before the festival opens. If your plans are loose, the box office at the De Valence Pavilion opens at 2pm on the Friday for last-minute tickets, which is worth knowing before you set out for a morning arrival.
None of this weekend needs a car once you are in town. The De Valence Pavilion is on Upper Frog Street, close to the town walls. The Giltar Hotel sits on the Esplanade above South Beach. Fecci’s is on the main street, Fuchsia Cafe and Church House sit among the other trail stops, and Church House is close to St Mary’s Church. The walled town is compact, and most stops are a few minutes apart, so the afternoon becomes a series of short hops between warm rooms rather than one long walk — which is exactly what the organisers mean when they pitch the weekend as wandering the town on foot.
The dividing line is worth getting right before you arrive. The Blues Trail is free in most venues, the evening main stage is ticketed, and two afternoon sessions — the De Valence balcony and Church House — sell their own tickets. The late-night Giltar sessions are separate again, and the festival’s own page is the place to check how entry works there. If you only have one afternoon, the free trail stops cost nothing, but the ticketed sessions are the ones worth planning around.
Most visitors mix the two rather than choosing one or the other. You spend an hour or two wandering the free trail, buy a ticket for one afternoon session that catches your eye, and keep the evening clear for the main stage or the Giltar. Nothing about the weekend forces an all-or-nothing choice, which is part of why it works as a town-wide event rather than a single-venue show, and it means a first visit can be as light or as full as the weather and your appetite for an early start allow.
Everything happens indoors, but you still move between venues on foot, so dress for a damp November evening: a coat you can carry into a crowded bar, and shoes that do not mind wet cobbles. The trail runs until 7pm and the main stage’s music starts at 7:30pm, so the handover between afternoon and evening is tight — eat in the late afternoon rather than in that half-hour, using the places to eat guide to pick where. The afternoon has its own rhythm: you follow a song you like out of one doorway and into the next, and the town’s small size means several trail stops fit into one afternoon without much rushing.
Between sets the pace is gentle rather than hurried. People drift out of one doorway when a song ends, follow the sound along the street, and stand in the next room’s doorway until a seat or a spot at the bar opens up. Because the town is small, you are never far from the next stop, and a set missed is only a short walk to make up.
The festival sits inside a busier Tenby season than November used to be. Tenby Rotary’s Bonfire Night lands on Wednesday 4 November at the Tenby United RFC ground, gates at 5:30pm, at £7 for adults and £4 for children — check the Rotary Club’s own page or the town council’s events listing before you set out, as of late October 2026. The Christmas lights switch-on, Santa Run and Christmas market follow on Saturday 28 November, and the Christmas guide sets out that day in full. Further on, the Boxing Day swim on North Beach is Saturday 26 December, covered in the winter guide, and New Year’s Eve brings fireworks in Tudor Square hosted by the Tenby House Hotel, with Tenby Trib Fest following on Saturday 30 January 2027. Each of those dates comes from the town council’s events page, which is worth a look nearer the time — the page changes and so do the details. If the festival is part of a longer stay, when to visit weighs the season as a whole.