Sail250 Cruises Into Baltimore
Tall ships sailing into the Inner Harbor. Blue Angels roaring overhead. Baltimore is hosting Sail250® Maryland, and the Aquarium has a front row seat.
- News
In the 1970s, National Geographic dubbed Maryland "America in Miniature." From sandy shores to rocky mountains to plentiful marshes, our state boasts much of the diverse terrain that spans from sea to shining sea. It's fitting then that tall ships will sail into Baltimore this summer to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Sail250® Maryland, taking place in Baltimore from June 24 to 30, 2026, is a gathering of international tall ships, military vessels and aircraft. Baltimore is one of five cities hosting Sail250 celebrations, along with New Orleans, Norfolk, New York and Boston.
These port cities in Louisiana, Virginia, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts hold a wealth of our nation's maritime history. As ships taking part in Sail250 arrive in New Orleans in May and slowly make their way north to reach Boston in July, the celebrations held along the way will honor our shared history.
Maritime Maryland
Here in Maryland, streams and rivers high in the western mountains of Garrett County flow eastward toward lower ground and the Chesapeake Bay before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. A whopping one-fifth of our state is covered by water, and water has always been one of Maryland's most valuable natural resources.
The original inhabitants of the Chesapeake region include the Piscataway, Nanticoke and Susquehannock people, among many others. They harvested the plentiful fish and shellfish from local waters, grew crops in the fertile soil, and hunted game in the surrounding forests and fields. In 1730, European settlers established Baltimore Town on the north side of the Inner Basin of the Patapsco River, now the Inner Harbor. Baltimore Town was located between the shallow harbor to the south, a river—the Jones Falls—and marsh to the east, a bluff and woods to the north, and large gullies to the west. Thanks in large part to the natural resources provided by its harbor, rivers and streams, Baltimore grew quickly. Settlers built grist mills along the area's rivers and streams, harnessing water power to run their machinery. They built long wharves lined with warehouses in the harbor. As Baltimore grew, materials made here were loaded onto ships docked in the harbor, bound for ports all around the world.
Follow the Water
You can experience the whole state of Maryland on a smaller scale and get a taste of what Baltimore's landscape was like before it was developed into a bustling port at the National Aquarium.
Inside the Aquarium, moving through the Maryland: Mountains to the Sea exhibit, guests travel west to east across the state to experience a freshwater Allegheny stream, the brackish waters of a Chesapeake marsh, a barrier island, and an Atlantic shelf habitat. You can explore the Atlantic shore and some of its inhabitants more closely in Living Seashore. The two touchpools there let you get up close with moon jellies, Atlantic stingrays, whelks, horseshoe crabs and more.
Outdoors on the Aquarium campus, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Waterfront Park also covers Maryland's diverse ecosystems—from the ocean, coastal plains and Chesapeake Bay, through the Piedmont region, and west to the Allegheny Mountains. And our newest exhibit, Harbor Wetland® presented by CFG Bank, is a re-creation of a tidal salt marsh that lets visitors experience the kind of habitat that once existed where Baltimore's Inner Harbor is today.
During Sail250 Maryland, the Aquarium invites festivalgoers to visit Harbor Wetland and meet Aquarium educators and experts. Weather permitting, the exhibit will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the festival, June 26 to 28, 2026.