Abstract. In this paper, we prove well-posedness of the Fornberg-Whitham equation in Besov spaces B s 2,r in both the periodic and non-periodic cases. This will imply the existence and uniqueness of solutions in the aforementioned spaces along with the continuity of the data-tosolution map provided that the initial data belongs to B s 2,r . We also establish sharpness of continuity on the data-to-solution map by showing that it is not uniformly continuous from any bounded subset of B s 2,r to C([−T, T ]; B s 2,r ). Furthermore, we prove a Cauchy-Kowalevski type theorem for this equation that establishes the existence and uniqueness of real analytic solutions and also provide blow-up criterion for solutions.