Rotterdam port festival is over, and the navy is already planning a bigger one
The 49th Wereldhavendagen drew hundreds of thousands to Rotterdam. On Wednesday the navy said it is moving its own open days in Den Helder to 2028 so it can go bigger at the 50th edition next year.
Rotterdam’s port festival closed its 49th edition on Sunday evening, and the navy, which spent 3 days showing itself off on the river, says it would rather still be there. On Wednesday it explained why that matters: it is moving its own public open days in Den Helder from 2027 to 2028 so that it can go bigger at Rotterdam’s 50th edition next year.
The Wereldhavendagen, the largest maritime festival in the Netherlands, ran from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 September and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city every year. It opened on Friday with a show on the water watched by mayor Carola Schouten, and a jobs and education programme, MATCH, that brought in hundreds of pupils, students and jobseekers. Saturday, the festival’s longest day, ended with the evening show on the Maas. The doors closed at 18:00 on Sunday.
What the navy brought
The Koninklijke Marine’s own footage from the weekend shows the programme it ran for the public: fast boat rides on the river, a minehunter open to visitors, first aid lessons and a rope course for children, and parachutists dropping in over the city. Most of the excursions were sold out.
No Marinedagen in 2027
On Wednesday the Ministry of Defence announced that the Marinedagen, the navy’s open days at its home port in Den Helder, will skip 2027 and return in 2028. The reason is the amount of work on and around the naval harbour: urgent maintenance to the jetties, extra security gates being installed, the park-and-ride site out of use, and roadworks planned in Den Helder that would add to the traffic disruption.
Postponing the event, the ministry said, “makes it possible to go bigger in 2027 at the jubilee edition of the Wereldhavendagen in Rotterdam”. The Marinedagen, formerly the Vlootdagen, have been held since 1956 to introduce the wider public to the naval branch of the armed forces.
The 50th Wereldhavendagen is scheduled for 3 to 5 September 2027.
