The flow past stalled airfoils is generally unsteady and can result in large force fluctuations. This paper addresses the relationship between airfoil stall type and the level of large-scale unsteady flow at stall. A total of 12 airfoils, encompassing different stalling characteristics were tested over a large angle of attack range at a Reynolds number of 300,000. Time-dependent lift data, wake hot-film data and flow visualization data were acquired. The time-dependent lift data were low-pass filtered with a 20 Hz cut-off to remove unwanted contributions to the fluctuating lift (C_l,rms) from model and lift-balance resonances. The results show that airfoils having trailing-edge stall experience minimal lift fluctuations at stall (C_l,rms < 0.04). The fluctuating lift for leading-edge stall airfoils increases sharply (to C_l,rms ~ 0.04) with the abrupt loss of lift associated with this stall type. For thin-airfoil stall types, the fluctuating lift gradually increases to high levels (0.04 < C,rms < 0.08) as maximum lift is attained. Finally, for airfoils having a combination of thin-airfoil and trailing-edge stall the lift fluctuations at maximum mean lift were very high (C_l,nns > 0.08). The fluctuating lift spectra for the latter two stall types contained distinct low-frequency peaks, indicating the large-scale unsteadiness associated with these stall types.