Looking for events and things to do in Santa Monica? A beachside LA destination, Santa Monica pairs its iconic pier with a walkable calendar of festivals, markets, and free events. This local guide covers Santa Monica’s biggest annual festivals, recurring markets and events, seasonal highlights, and how to find out what’s happening this weekend — straight from the people who live here.

Santa Monica’s biggest annual events & festivals

Santa Monica’s signature events include the free Twilight on the Pier concert series, the Santa Monica Festival, the GLOW and COAST open-streets events, holiday ice skating at ICE, and the constant programming along the Santa Monica Pier and Third Street Promenade.

Farmers markets & recurring things to do in Santa Monica

The Santa Monica Farmers Markets are among the most celebrated in the country (the Wednesday downtown market is legendary among chefs), and the Pier, Promenade, and beach host year-round concerts, festivals, and community events.

Santa Monica through the seasons

The mild coastal climate keeps events going year-round — summer brings Twilight concerts, beach festivals, and markets; fall offers open-streets events; winter features pier holiday events and ICE skating; and spring fills the calendar.

What to know about Santa Monica events

Downtown, the Promenade, and the Pier are very walkable, and the Expo Line connects to DTLA; beach parking is pricey. The chef-famous farmers markets and free pier concerts are signature draws.

What’s happening in Santa Monica this weekend

Printed event calendars go stale fast, and the best local happenings — pop-ups, block parties, last-minute shows — often never make the official listings. The most current, honest answer to “what’s going on this weekend?” comes from neighbors. On Neighborhood Nurturers’ Santa Monica community, real Santa Monica residents post and discuss what’s happening right now. For more ideas any time, see our guide to the best things to do in Santa Monica. Join your Santa Monica neighbors free and never miss what’s happening →

Fitting it into a day in Santa Monica

The best events here are seasonal and neighborhood-driven, so timing is everything. What sets Santa Monica apart is how close everything sits together. Start near the Santa Monica Pier, work in one of the spots from this guide, and you are minutes from Palisades Park if you want to keep going. Locals often round out the local calendar with a detour to the beach bike path or a quieter stop at Tongva Park. Because the distances are short, you can improvise as you go rather than lock the whole day down in advance.

More Santa Monica guides

Santa Monica rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Things to do in Santa Monica, Free things to do in Santa Monica, Things to do with kids in Santa Monica — enough to plan a whole day or two.

Get a local’s take

Guides are a starting point; the current, on-the-ground details come from people who live in Santa Monica. Hours shift, favorites change, and residents always know what is genuinely worth it now. Ask Santa Monica neighbors directly or join your town community free to hear from real locals.

Why This Page Does Not Publish Event Dates

Here is the worked example that explains the whole approach of this page. For years, the definitive Santa Monica summer event was the Twilight Concert Series on the Santa Monica Pier — free live music over a run of summer evenings, drawing enormous crowds to the beach. It is still the first thing many guides tell you to plan a summer visit around.

It is not coming back. Twilight on the Pier is not returning to the pier in its old form. The Santa Monica Pier Corporation has moved to a different model of local music programming instead.

Anyone who planned a trip around a listicle promising Twilight Concerts arrived to nothing. That is precisely why this page describes what recurs and roughly when, rather than printing dates that go stale within a season. Event listings age badly, and a beach city with a heavy tourism economy changes its programming more often than most.

What has replaced it is worth knowing about, and it is better suited to residents anyway: Local’s Night on the Santa Monica Pier, held the third Thursday of each month — a curated series for locals, by locals, rather than a mass summer draw. It is smaller, it is on the same pier, and it is the closest thing the city now has to a regular free music night.

The Recurring Rhythm of the Santa Monica Year

Strip out the one-off festivals and a fairly stable pattern remains, and it is organised around weather rather than around a calendar.

Late spring, roughly May and June: the quietest stretch, and the reason is meteorological. The marine layer settles in and produces the overcast pattern residents call May Gray and June Gloom. Outdoor programming exists but is frequently grey and genuinely cold in the evening. This is the period visitors most often misjudge, arriving expecting California summer and finding a wall of cloud until early afternoon.

High summer, July and August: maximum crowds, maximum programming, maximum parking difficulty. The pier and beach are at their busiest and the city absorbs an enormous daily influx from across Los Angeles County. Everything is on, and everything is full.

September and October: the best months of the year, and residents will all tell you the same. The marine layer has gone, these are the warmest and clearest days of the year, the summer crowds have thinned, and outdoor events are at their most pleasant. If you can choose when to visit for anything happening outdoors, choose now.

November through February: quiet, mild, and the season of indoor and holiday programming. Winter here does not close things down — this is Southern California — but the beach-facing programme contracts sharply.

The Reliable Weekly and Monthly Fixtures

The events that genuinely anchor local life here are not annual festivals at all. They are weekly.

The farmers markets are the city’s real recurring event. Santa Monica runs multiple markets across different days and different locations, and the Saturday and Wednesday markets in particular are institutions rather than tourist attractions — they are where a substantial share of the city’s better restaurants shop. There is a dedicated guide to them on this site with the current days and locations. Walking through one costs nothing.

Local’s Night on the Santa Monica Pier, the third Thursday of each month, is the monthly fixture worth building an evening around, and it is aimed at residents rather than visitors.

Harvelle’s at 1432 4th Street runs live music seven nights a week, roughly 8pm to 2am. It opened in 1931 and is the oldest surviving music venue on the Westside of Los Angeles, which makes it the most dependable live-music night in the city regardless of what is or is not scheduled elsewhere.

Bergamot Station Arts Center at 2525 Michigan Avenue holds more than 20 galleries and has been free to the public for nearly three decades. Gallery openings there are a genuine recurring cultural fixture. It is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm, closed Monday and Sunday, with free parking off Michigan Avenue.

Tongva Park downtown has an amphitheatre on its Gathering Hill section that hosts free concerts through the warmer months.

Going to an Event Here Without It Going Wrong

Parking is the event. On any day with significant programming on or near the pier, driving in and finding a space becomes the dominant experience of the afternoon. The city has four separate parking systems — numbered downtown structures, the pier deck, numbered beach lots, and metered streets with residential permit zones around them — and choosing wrong is expensive. The parking guide linked from this page is genuinely worth reading first.

Arrive by transit for anything big. Metro rail terminates in downtown Santa Monica and the Big Blue Bus is the city’s own network. For a busy pier event, this is not a compromise — it is straightforwardly faster and cheaper than driving.

Layer, always. Evening events by the water are colder than the daytime forecast implies, in every month of the year. This is the most common mistake visitors make.

Verify before you travel. The Twilight example above is the reason. Confirm any event directly with its organiser close to the date rather than relying on a guide, this one included. Programming here changes between seasons and sometimes within one.

Schedules shift, series end, and new ones start with little notice. The people who know what is actually happening in Santa Monica this week are the ones who live here and went last week.

Frequently asked questions

What are the biggest events in Santa Monica?

The free Twilight on the Pier concert series, the Santa Monica Festival, GLOW, holiday ice skating at ICE, and constant Pier and Promenade programming.

Does Santa Monica have farmers markets?

Yes — the Santa Monica Farmers Markets are among the most celebrated in the country, with the Wednesday downtown market legendary among chefs.

What’s happening in Santa Monica this weekend?

Santa Monica neighbors share the most current local events — from pier concerts to beach happenings — in our community.