Steelpan anniversary to be celebrated in London next July

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of steelpan’s first landfall in Britain, the 12th Steelpan/Carnival Arts Conference will be held in London in July 2026, the organisers confirmed this week.

The announcement follows this year’s highly successful conference at Trinidad’s National Academy for the Performing Arts.

On 6 July 1951, the Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO), made up of a selection of Trinidad’s finest panmen, boarded French Line’s ship San Mateo for the long voyage via Martinique and Guadeloupe to France. They were bound for the Festival of Britain exhibition on London’s South Bank and were given a rousing send-off by well-wishers on the quayside at Port of Spain.

The ship docked in the French port of Bordeaux on 24 July, from where they made their way by train and ferry via Paris and the English Channel to London. Contemporary newspaper reports suggest that their first public performance started at around 3pm on Friday 27 July – and wowed the crowd. This new instrument had the media, music reviewers, diplomats and ordinary Festival visitors enthralled.

The 2026 conference will take place from Wednesday 22 July to Friday 24 July at the University of West London’s London College of Music, in Ealing, in partnership with Middlesex University and the UK Centre for the Carnival Arts. The weekend of Saturday 25-Sunday 26 July will be dedicated to steelpan concerts and parades. This programme is still in development, but more will be revealed next month!

In a statement, the organisers said: “This gathering of artists, scholars, visionaries and communities will be more than a commemoration – it will be a bold reassertion of Steelpan as a global force of resistance, creativity and cultural renaissance.”