On September 12, during the airing of the 2025 Caribbean Music Awards on BET, the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority (SLTA) unveiled a 15-second advertisement for the 2026 Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival. The advert featured highlights of the 2025 event and a reminder of the dates for 2026: April 30 – May 10.
The festival was nominated in the Music Event of the Year category at the Caribbean Music Awards, which was held in New York in August.
Last week, Louis Lewis, CEO of the SLTA, confirmed that Saint Lucia had partnered with the Caribbean Music Awards and by extension BET to showcase and highlight the festival and local creatives.
“We did that particularly because it’s the region’s recognition of excellence when it comes to events and music performances. It is in the third year running and we were nominated for one of the awards, which was the Caribbean leading event, but more importantly, while we did not win, I think the acclamation or the recognition of our excellence in that category, really emphasises or highlights the significance of the Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival as an event in and of itself,” Lewis said.
“We utilised our historic relationship with BET, where we were able to amplify the awareness of Saint Lucia…with the proud sponsorship of Secrets Hotel, as well as Blue Taxi, where they gave away a vacation to Saint Lucia and it actually reached 86, 000 people, who would otherwise not have connected. So that gave us a bit of some viral content, which we are very happy to receive.”
Lewis also applauded the support of Bank of Saint Lucia, the title sponsor of the Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival and saluted Shirleyann Cyril-Mayers on her recognition by the Caribbean Music Awards as the 2025 Gospel Honoree.
“I’m taking a step out of water, but I can tell you that you might see her on the lineup for the next Festival. You know, we cannot have the lead performer in Gospel from the region, not be on our lineup for next year’s festival,” Louis said with a broad smile.
On September 15 Tourism Minister, Ernest Hilaire told reporters that the lineup for the 2026 Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival is “probably going to be the most exciting we have had in a long time.”
“We are going to make a very determined effort to ensure that we keep up the very high standard of the Jazz & Arts festival.”
The Minister went on to express his desire to see the expansion of the arts component through the community jazz events next year.
Hilaire explained there would be no major announcements regarding the festival for another six weeks.
