Savannah Jazz Festival 2026: A Guide for Tybee Island Visitors

The Savannah Jazz Festival turns 45 this year, and the format that made it an institution hasn't changed: a full weekend of professional jazz on an open lawn in Forsyth Park, and the lawn costs nothing. September 18–20, 2026. Bring a chair, bring a cooler, listen until the last set ends.

If you're staying on Tybee that weekend, you're about half an hour from the stage, which turns out to be a genuinely good place to be. Beach all day, jazz at night, and a quiet island to come back to while downtown absorbs the crowd. This guide covers the schedule, the ground rules at Forsyth, parking, and the one logistics fact most coverage misses: Sunday isn't at Forsyth Park at all.

The basics

This is the festival's 45th year, and the 2026 edition is dedicated to Bob Faircloth in honor of his 90th birthday. Organizers count 15 free performances across the weekend. The official lineup page lists nine named acts plus Sunday's School Band Day, so call it more than a dozen sets, all free at Forsyth.

The lineup and set times

Friday is the short, sharp night: three sets, starting at 6:30 PM and building to a big band. Saturday is the long day, six sets stretching from mid-afternoon into the night, and it's where the festival puts its headliners.

Two planning notes. If you're only coming in for one evening, Saturday's closing run holds the prime slots: Jane Monheit with the Savannah Jazz Orchestra at 8:10 PM, then Huntertones at 9:30 to send the night off. And these times come from the festival's own lineup page as of early September. Acts move, so re-check the lineup the week of.

Sunday is at District Live, not Forsyth Park

This deserves its own section because almost every writeup of the festival glosses over it, and it will genuinely wreck a Sunday if you get it wrong.

Friday and Saturday happen at Forsyth Park. Sunday's School Band Day, the festival's closing day starting at 2:00 PM, happens at District Live, the music venue inside the Plant Riverside District on West River Street. That's on the riverfront, well north of Forsyth, and a different parking situation entirely. Both the festival's lineup page and WTOC's coverage confirm the venue.

So if your plan is "we'll wander back to the park Sunday afternoon," revise it. Aim for West River Street instead. And if you were on the fence about Sunday anyway, the move indoors plus the school-band format makes it the easiest day to trade for a full beach day on Tybee before the drive home.

What to bring to Forsyth Park

The festival publishes its own park guidelines, and they're friendlier than most events of this size:

• Lawn chairs, coolers, and blankets are all permitted. This is a bring-your-own-setup festival, so pack the car like you would for an evening picnic.
• Tents and umbrellas go to the perimeter. You can bring them, but set them up along the edge of the park so they don't block sightlines.
• No drones, no grills, no open flames.
• There is no ATM in the park. Bring cash. Food and merchandise vendors are there all weekend, and this is the detail that catches people with a card and an empty money clip.
• Rain doesn't cancel it. The festival continues at Forsyth in rain. Lightning or thunder relocates it to Trustees Theater, so if the sky turns electric, check the festival's channels before assuming the night is dead.

September evenings in Savannah are warm, and the Friday and Saturday sets run well after dark. A light layer is plenty.

Getting there from Tybee, and where to park

The drive. US-80 west off the island, about 18 miles and roughly half an hour to Forsyth Park. Give it more on a Friday evening, since the causeway is the one stretch that backs up. There's no bus or scheduled shuttle between Tybee and Savannah, and rideshare coverage on the island is thin enough that you shouldn't build an evening around getting a car back at 11 PM. Drive yourself.

Street parking. Forsyth Park sits south of Liberty Street, where the city's posted meter enforcement runs Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM. Friday's music starts at 6:30 PM and the weekend days aren't covered by those posted hours at all, which works in your favor. Treat that as the city's baseline rather than a promise: read the signage on the block where you actually park, because a festival weekend can bring temporary restrictions the standing rules don't show. The city's parking meter page has the zone map, and the Park Savannah app handles payment where meters do apply.

Garages. Savannah's city garages run roughly $1–2 an hour on weekdays and flat $5–10 rates on weekends, with a $25-per-day rate during special events. Assume a festival weekend can trigger that special-event rate and be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't. The city also runs free downtown shuttles about every 10 minutes, useful if you park north of the park and don't feel like the walk.

Sunday is different. District Live is on West River Street, so Saturday's Forsyth parking plan doesn't transfer. The garages nearest the riverfront are the practical option there.

Beach by day, jazz by night

Here's the case for doing this festival from Tybee rather than from a downtown hotel.

The schedule practically designs the trip for you. Friday's music doesn't start until 6:30 PM, so you get a full beach day and still make the first note with time to park. Saturday's first set is 3:00 PM, which leaves the morning for the water and an unhurried lunch before you head over, or you can skip the afternoon sets and arrive for the evening run. Mid-September is still swimming season here: NOAA's gauge just behind the island has September water averaging around 80°F. Sunset on the festival Friday is 7:25 PM, so early arrivers at Forsyth get EG Kight in the last of the daylight.

Then the weekend inverts. Organizers expect more than 50,000 people across those three days, and downtown is where all of that lands. You're driving the opposite direction at night's end, back over the causeway to an island that's already exhaled its summer crowds. That contrast, big festival lawn at night and a quiet beach town at breakfast, is the whole argument.

If being able to walk from your hotel lobby to the park matters more to you than the beach, stay downtown. That's the honest tradeoff. What the island gives up in walkability it returns in calm, and in cost of parking your car: at the inn, parking is free, one car per room, while island street parking runs $4 an hour via the Park TYB app, 8 AM–8 PM year-round. We're one block from the beach and one block from the pier, 41 rooms, with a heated saltwater pool for a swim after the drive back. Our rooms page has the two room types, and September dates around the festival are the one stretch this month worth booking early, since Tybee catches Savannah's overflow.

What else is on that weekend

The festival lands on a busy stretch of the island's own calendar, so a jazz weekend can pick up some Tybee texture around the edges:

• Thursday, September 17: Fort Pulaski waives its entrance fee for Constitution Day, and it sits right on US-80, so it's an easy stop on a Savannah run. Details on the park's fee page.
• Friday, September 18: Free yoga at The Deck on Mid Beach, 9–10 AM, per the official Tybee events calendar. A stage production of James and the Giant Peach also runs September 18–19 at the Tybee Post Theater.
• Saturday, September 19: Two community mornings on the island, the Tybee Stops Traffick walk at 9 AM and the city's BioBlitz at the Community Orchard from 10 AM.

The full September calendar, including the free September 12 oyster roast that precedes festival weekend, is in our September roundup.

Planning your festival weekend

The short version: book the nights of September 18–20, pack a lawn chair and cash, spend your days on the sand, and leave the island around 5 PM on Friday and whenever suits on Saturday. Sunday, decide between School Band Day at District Live and one last unhurried morning on the beach. There's no wrong answer, now that you know which venue to skip showing up to.

Planning to be here for it? Check our special offers for multi-night rates, and if dinner plans figure into your Savannah evenings, our dining guide covers the island end of the equation.