The offshore environment exposes floating wind turbines to peculiar physical conditions. One example is the pitch motion, which consists of the wind turbine tilting forwards and backwards, impacting on the rotor's aerodynamic performance. In this context, floating vertical axis wind turbines (FVAWT) are considered attractive alternative technologies, due to their low centre of gravity and a rotor that operates independently of the wind direction. In this paper a numerical analysis is carried out to investigate the aerodynamic performance of a small floating Darrieus wind turbine operating under pitch motion, in two fixed positions: vertical (0°) and tilted back (15°); employing URANS combined with the k-ω SST turbulence model. Once the feasibility of the numerical model has been verified the results are elucidated showing a 3.2 per cent reduction on the performance of the tilted rotor, in terms of torque and power, with the dynamic stall being longer lasting when the blades travel through the upwind region and less lasting in the downwind region. In both operating configurations, slight variations are seen in pressure and velocity fields over the blades, with both rotors operating under intense effect of dynamic stall for long periods of time. The mid region of the turbine's aerodynamic wake shows to be more affected by the rotor's tilting, with values for the velocity, vorticity and turbulence intensity leaning towards their initial values for undisturbed flow after travelling a distance between 5 and 10 wind turbine diameters.