Some weekends stay with you. This was one of them.
This Monday, at the British Sauna Society Sauna Summit in Brighton, Sea Scrub Sauna Folkestone was awarded Best New Sauna 2026. We’re still taking it in.
But before we get to the award, let us tell you about the weekend itself. Because if you’ve never heard of the Brighton Sauna Festival, it deserves its own moment.
Brighton Sauna Festival: Heat, Sea, Community
Hosted by the brilliant Beach Box Brighton, the festival is exactly what it sounds like, and so much more than you’d imagine.
For one weekend, Brighton’s iconic pebble beach becomes a pop-up sauna village. Over 20 saunas from owners and operators across the UK, set up side by side on the shoreline. Wood-fired stoves crackling. Sea air carrying the smell of birch and steam. The sound of people laughing, sweating, plunging, and doing it all over again.
There are guided rituals and Aufguss ceremonies led by some of the country’s most respected sauna masters. Traditional whisking with venik. Deep, meditative heat sessions. Music-fuelled social ceremonies that spill out onto the shingle as the sun goes down, with live DJ sets as the evening takes hold.
And then there’s the sea. Always the sea. Step out from the heat, walk down the stones, and let the cold Channel water do what cold water does. That moment of contrast, heat giving way to cold giving way to something that feels a lot like clarity, is what the whole weekend is built around.
It’s three days of friluftsliv in its purest form. Open air living, shared with strangers who very quickly stop feeling like strangers.
The Award
The British Sauna Society Sauna Summit sits at the heart of the festival weekend. It’s where the UK sauna community gathers properly, practitioners, builders, enthusiasts, all in one room, to celebrate what this growing scene has become.
Being in that room felt significant. Being called up to collect the Best New Sauna award felt surreal.
This recognition belongs to everyone who has made Folkestone what it is in its first few months. Our team, who show up every single day with real care and real commitment. The team at Folkestone Harbour, who believed in this project from the very start. And every single person who has come down to the Harbour Arm, braved the cold, stayed for a chat, and become part of something.
Congratulations too to Hikitalo Sauna Village in Cardiff, the worthy runners up. The UK sauna scene is in good hands.
Come and See What the Fuss Is About
If the Brighton Sauna Festival is on your radar for next year, go. It’s a weekend unlike anything else happening in the UK right now, and the community around it is warm in every sense of the word.
And if Folkestone is on your doorstep, or even just within reach, come and pay us a visit. The saunas are fired up, the cold water is waiting, and the Harbour Arm is one of the finest places in the country to do absolutely nothing for an hour.
We’ll see you on the shingle. 🌊
