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The Indian Navy's sail training ship INS Sudarshini arrived at Lisbon, Portugal on 22 August 2026 as part of her Lokayan 26 transoceanic expedition, entering through the Tagus River.
Lisbon is the ship's 15th port visit in seven months of voyage; the crew and trainees will take part in professional exchanges, cross-deck visits and engagements with Portuguese naval leadership and the Indian diaspora.
Lokayan 26 was flagged off from Naval Base Kochi on 20 January 2026 as a ten-month voyage of over 22,000 nautical miles to 18 foreign ports across 13 countries, training more than 200 Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard trainees.
Sail training ship of the Indian Navy, a three-masted barque built by Goa Shipyard Limited and commissioned on 27 January 2012. She is a follow-on of the INS Tarangini class and carries trainees on long voyages to teach traditional seamanship and long-range ocean navigation.
The Indian Navy's first sail training ship, commissioned in 1997 and also a three-masted barque; INS Sudarshini is the follow-on vessel of that class. Both serve the sail training role and represent India at international tall-ship events.
The Indian Navy's training squadron based at Kochi under the Southern Naval Command, to which the sail training ships are attached; it conducts the sea phase of training for officers under training.
The Navy's premier officer-training establishment and the largest naval academy in Asia, spread over about 2,452 acres on the North Malabar coast in Kannur district, Kerala. Inaugurated on 8 January 2009, it replaced the earlier academy at INS Mandovi, Goa; from June 2009 all officers inducted into the Indian Navy began basic training here.
Defence public sector shipyard that built both INS Tarangini and INS Sudarshini, along with patrol vessels for the Navy and the Coast Guard.
A barque is a sailing vessel with at least three masts, square-rigged on all but the aftermost mast, which carries fore-and-aft sails. Navies keep such ships long after the age of sail because handling one cannot be automated: trainees must read wind and weather, work aloft as a team and navigate by traditional means, which builds seamanship and judgement that a modern bridge console does not. The second purpose is diplomatic. A tall ship entering a foreign harbour under sail draws crowds, and the port call becomes a platform for professional exchanges with the host navy, cross-deck visits and engagement with the Indian diaspora - reach that a warship visit does not deliver in the same register. Lokayan 26 combines both: over 200 Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard trainees at sea, and 18 foreign ports in 13 countries.
Simple Analogy: It is the difference between learning to drive on a manual car and on an automatic - the harder machine teaches the skill, and it also turns heads when you park it.
Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, stands on the estuary of the Tagus, the river through which INS Sudarshini made her entry. The expedition began at Naval Base Kochi in Kerala, home of the Southern Naval Command and of the First Training Squadron, and its published itinerary includes Escale a Sete on France's Mediterranean coast and SAIL 250 at New York in the United States.
Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions is the framing under which the voyage's maritime partnership activities are placed - the successor formulation to India's earlier SAGAR maritime outlook, and a standard reference in questions on India's Indian Ocean policy.
A naval port call at Lisbon fits the wider pattern of maritime engagement with European partners, and Portugal's own seafaring history makes tall-ship diplomacy particularly resonant there.
Headquartered at Kochi, it is the Indian Navy's training command - which is why the sail training ships, the First Training Squadron and the flag-off point of Lokayan 26 are all located there.
Both Indian sail training ships were built by Goa Shipyard Limited, one of the defence public sector shipyards, linking this item to the indigenous shipbuilding and Aatmanirbhar Bharat theme.
GS Paper 2 > International Relations > Bilateral Relations; GS Paper 3 > Security
General Awareness > Indian Navy Ships and Expeditions
General Awareness > Defence Current Affairs
General Awareness > Current Affairs
Indian Navy ship deployments and expedition names are recurring items in CDS, NDA, CAPF and SSC General Awareness.
A sailing ship of at least three masts, square-rigged on all masts except the aftermost, which is fore-and-aft rigged. Both INS Sudarshini and INS Tarangini are three-masted barques.
A port-call activity in which crews of two navies visit each other's ships to exchange professional practice - a routine instrument of naval diplomacy.
Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions - the vision under which India frames maritime partnership activity with host nations.
A voyage crossing one or more oceans; here over 22,000 nautical miles across 13 countries over ten months.