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The Indian Navy's sail training ship INS Sudarshini concluded a three-day port call at Lisbon, Portugal on 25 August 2026, as part of her ongoing Lokayan 26 transoceanic expedition.
Her Commanding Officer called on Rear Admiral Miguel Bessa Pacheco, Commandant of the Portuguese Naval Academy, and Rear Admiral Joao Paulo Silva Pereira, Deputy Fleet Commander of the Portuguese Navy; Indian sea trainees visited the Escola Naval and exchanged perspectives on seamanship and tall-ship sail training with their Portuguese counterparts.
The visit, which also covered the Portuguese port of Ponta Delgada in the Azores, included a deck reception for senior Portuguese military officials, the diplomatic corps and the Indian diaspora.
The Indian Navy's second indigenously built sail training ship, used to train naval and coast guard cadets in traditional seamanship. A 54-metre steel-hulled barque carrying about 20 sails over roughly 1,035 square metres of sail area, able to operate under sail or power and to stay at sea for at least 20 days with five officers, 31 sailors and 30 cadets embarked.
The Indian Navy's first sail training ship and the class leader that INS Sudarshini follows. A three-masted barque of about 513 tonnes and 54 metres, she became the first Indian naval ship to circumnavigate the globe, in 2003-04.
The defence public sector shipyard that built both Indian sail training ships, INS Tarangini and INS Sudarshini, to designs by the British naval architect Colin Mudie.
The Indian Navy's training command, which runs the bulk of the Navy's basic and specialist training establishments and to which the sail training ships are attached.
Indian Naval Sailing Vessel used for long-distance ocean sailing rather than cadet training; she carried the all-women circumnavigations Navika Sagar Parikrama I (2017-18) and Navika Sagar Parikrama II (2024-25).
Modern warships insulate a young officer from the sea: navigation is instrumented, propulsion is automatic, and the weather is something you route around. A square-rigged sail training ship removes all of that. Cadets must read wind and sea directly, work aloft as a team, and accept that the ship goes where seamanship takes her, which is why almost every serious navy keeps a tall ship long after sail ceased to be a fighting technology. The second purpose is diplomatic. A tall ship arriving in a foreign port is a benign, photogenic and welcome visitor in a way a destroyer is not, so a port call becomes an occasion for academy-to-academy contact, receptions for the local diaspora and quiet institutional relationship-building. The Lokayan 26 expedition is explicitly framed in those terms - training over 200 Navy and Coast Guard trainees while supporting India's MAHASAGAR maritime cooperation outlook.
Simple Analogy: A warship visit is a statement; a tall ship visit is an invitation.
Operation Vijay ends more than 450 years of Portuguese rule in Goa.
The Carnation Revolution in Portugal overthrows the Estado Novo, opening the way to normalisation with India.
India and Portugal sign the treaty recognising India's sovereignty over Goa, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli; it entered into force on 3 June 1975.
INS Tarangini, India's first sail training ship, is commissioned; built by Goa Shipyard Limited.
INS Tarangini becomes the first Indian naval ship to circumnavigate the globe.
INS Sudarshini commissioned, based at Kochi under the Southern Naval Command.
INSV Tarini commissioned; she later carries Navika Sagar Parikrama I (2017-18) and II (2024-25).
India and Portugal mark 50 years since the restoration of diplomatic relations.
Lokayan 26 flagged off from Kochi - about 22,000 nautical miles, 13 countries, 18 ports, four continents over ten months.
INS Sudarshini concludes a three-day port call at Lisbon, having also visited Ponta Delgada.
Lisbon lies on the estuary of the Tagus, Portugal's capital and principal Atlantic port, and hosts the Portuguese Naval Academy. Ponta Delgada, the other Portuguese port on this leg, is on Sao Miguel island in the Azores, a mid-Atlantic archipelago that has long served as a staging point for transatlantic crossings - which is what makes it a natural call on a ten-month transoceanic expedition. The ship's home port is Kochi in Kerala, headquarters of the Southern Naval Command, and she was built at Vasco da Gama in Goa.
GSL is a Ministry of Defence shipyard best known for coast guard patrol vessels, and it also built both Indian sail training ships to a Colin Mudie design. Pair the shipyard with its products in your notes - questions often ask who built a named vessel.
The sail training ships INS Tarangini and INS Sudarshini train cadets in large groups; the sailing vessels of the INSV series, such as Tarini, carry small crews on long-distance ocean voyages like Navika Sagar Parikrama. The prefixes INS and INSV mark the difference.
The bilateral relationship carries an unusual amount of history for its current size: Portuguese rule in Goa ended in 1961, ties were restored only after the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the treaty of 31 December 1974, and 2025 marked fifty years of restored relations. That history is exactly why an Indian naval visit to Lisbon reads as a milestone rather than routine.
General Awareness > Indian Navy ships, expeditions and commands
General Awareness > Defence and current affairs
GS Paper 2 > International Relations > India's bilateral relations and soft power
Named Indian Navy vessels and expeditions appear regularly in SSC, railway and defence general awareness; the sail training ships recur whenever an expedition is in the news.
A square-rigged or barque-rigged vessel used to train cadets in traditional seamanship. India has two: INS Tarangini (1997) and INS Sudarshini (2012).
A sailing ship of three or more masts, square-rigged on all but the aftermost mast, which is fore-and-aft rigged. Both Indian sail training ships are barques.
A planned visit by a naval vessel to a foreign port, used for replenishment and for structured engagement with the host navy, officials and the local diaspora.
INS Sudarshini's ten-month transoceanic sail training expedition, flagged off from Kochi on 20 January 2026, covering roughly 22,000 nautical miles, 13 countries and 18 ports across four continents.