Looking for events and things to do in Long Beach? A diverse coastal city, Long Beach hosts a Grand Prix, major festivals, and a packed waterfront event calendar. This local guide covers Long Beach’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.

Long Beach’s biggest annual events & festivals

Long Beach’s signature events include the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach (a legendary IndyCar street race), the Long Beach Pride Festival and Parade (one of the largest in the country), the Long Beach Jazz Festival, the Cambodia Town Culture Festival, and events aboard the historic Queen Mary.

Farmers markets & recurring things to do in Long Beach

Farmers markets run several days a week across the city (Downtown, Bixby, Marina); the waterfront, Shoreline, and Belmont Shore host regular festivals and concerts; and the East Village Arts District runs monthly art walks.

Long Beach through the seasons

Spring brings the Grand Prix and Pride; summer fills the waterfront with festivals, jazz, and beach events; fall offers cultural festivals; and winter features holiday events along the coast.

What to know about Long Beach events

The Grand Prix and Pride draw huge crowds downtown — plan transit and parking. The waterfront and Belmont Shore are the walkable event hubs. Many festivals are free and beachside.

What’s happening in Long Beach 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’ Long Beach community, real Long Beach residents post and discuss what’s happening right now. For more ideas any time, see our guide to the best things to do in Long Beach. Join your Long Beach neighbors free and never miss what’s happening →

The Long Beach angle

The best events here are seasonal and neighborhood-driven, so timing is everything. Half the fun of the local calendar in Long Beach is stringing it together with the places nearby. Belmont Shore is the landmark most people orient around, but neighbors will tell you the El Dorado Nature Center and the Naples canals are where the town really shows its character, with Bluff Park worth a look if you have the time. Use those as your reference points and this guide slots neatly into a day that feels like Long Beach, not a checklist.

Keep exploring Long Beach

If this was useful, these companion guides cover Long Beach from angles that pair naturally with it: Things to do in Long Beach, Free things to do in Long Beach, Things to do with kids in Long Beach. Together they add up to a full weekend without leaving town.

Ask a Long Beach neighbor

The best tips never make the guidebooks — they come from neighbors who know which spot is worth it this week. That is what the Long Beach community on Neighborhood Nurturers is for. Ask Long Beach locals what they would do, or join free and get honest answers from people who actually know Long Beach.

The Long Beach Annual Events Calendar

Long Beach runs a genuinely full events calendar, and several of these are large enough to change how the city functions for a weekend. Here is the year, in order, with the details that matter for planning.

Spring: the Grand Prix and the Cambodia Town Parade

The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach is the largest event in the city, drawing around 170,000 spectators to a street circuit through downtown. The 2026 edition runs April 17 to 19. If you are visiting downtown that weekend for any other reason, plan around it: road closures, hotel pricing and parking all change substantially.

Earlier in the month, the Cambodia Town Parade and Culture Festival takes place along the Anaheim Street corridor, with the 18th annual edition on Saturday, April 4, 2026. Long Beach has the largest concentration of Cambodians of any city outside Southeast Asia, and this is the single best day to experience that community’s food, music and dance in one place. It pairs naturally with a meal in Cambodia Town.

At the end of April the Congressional Cup yacht race runs at the Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier, with the 2026 event from April 29 to May 3. It is free to watch from the pier, which makes it one of the better-value spectator events in the city.

Late Spring: Long Beach Pride

Long Beach Pride is one of the longest-running Pride celebrations in the country and a defining event for the city. The 2026 edition falls on May 16 and 17, with the 43rd annual Long Beach Pride Parade plus festival events across the city. Downtown is the centre of it, and it is the busiest downtown weekend of the year outside the Grand Prix.

Summer: Food Scene Week

Long Beach Food Scene Week ran July 31 to August 9 in 2026 with more than 100 participating restaurants. It is the best week of the year to try somewhere new at a set price, and it covers restaurants across every district from Belmont Shore to Cambodia Town to Bixby Knolls.

December: two parades and the canal lights

December is when the southeast of the city becomes a destination in its own right. The Belmont Shore Christmas Parade runs on the first Saturday in December and is now Southern California’s second-largest holiday parade, drawing around 30,000 spectators. The 2026 parade is Saturday, December 5, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. The route runs east along East 2nd Street from Livingston Drive to Bay Shore Avenue then loops back west, so both sides of the street get a close view. It features over a dozen marching bands and around 100 entries. It is free, requires no tickets, and the streets close at 4:00pm so people can set up chairs.

Later in the month the Naples Island Christmas Boat Parade lights up the canals one bridge to the east. In 2025 it ran on December 20, with large boats from 6:00pm and smaller craft from 6:30pm under the theme “A Tropical Winter Wonderland”. Watching is free, and the best vantage points are Bay Shore Avenue, the 2nd Street Bridge, the Appian Way Bridge and Alamitos Bay Marina. Through the whole month the canal-side homes run elaborate displays, some with audio and animatronics. Full detail in our Naples Island guide.

Recurring Weekly and Monthly Events

Beyond the annual calendar, several things happen on a regular cycle. The Alamitos Bay Marina farmers market runs Sundays 9:00am to 2:00pm at 205 N. Marina Drive and is the largest in the city with more than 40 vendors. The Bixby Park market at 130 Cherry Avenue runs Saturdays 9:00am to 2:00pm and Tuesdays 3:00pm to 8:00pm, year round. A third market runs Sundays 8:00am to 2:00pm at Spring Street and Clark Avenue. See our Long Beach farmers markets guide.

First Fridays in Bixby Knolls is a monthly evening along Atlantic Avenue where businesses stay open late with live bands and street-side booths. It is a low-key, genuinely local event rather than a tourist draw, and it is one of the easiest ways to see that neighbourhood at its best.

Planning Around the Big Ones

Two weekends genuinely require planning: the Grand Prix in April and Pride in May, both downtown, both with major road closures and hotel demand. Book accommodation well ahead or stay outside the downtown core. The December parades are different in character: free, walk-up, and the constraint is parking rather than tickets. For the Belmont Shore parade, arrive well before the 4:00pm street closure or park several blocks out and walk in. For the boat parade, the island has no visitor parking lot at all, so park in Belmont Shore and cross the bridge on foot.

See also things to do in Long Beach and free things to do in Long Beach, since a large share of this calendar costs nothing to attend.

A Note on Long Beach Event Season

What distinguishes the Long Beach calendar from a typical city of its size is how much of it is genuinely free and outdoors. The two December parades, the monthly evening in Bixby Knolls, the weekly markets and the yacht racing off the pier all cost nothing to attend, and between them they cover most of the year. That matters if you live here rather than visit: the calendar is something you can participate in casually and repeatedly rather than budget for once.

The two ticketed heavyweights, the spring motor race and the Pride weekend that follows it a month later, are the exceptions, and they behave less like events than like temporary changes to the city. Both concentrate downtown, both close roads, and both fill accommodation across a wide radius. Locals tend to treat those weekends as either fully in or fully out; there is not much middle ground.

The other thing worth knowing is that the seasonal rhythm runs opposite to what visitors expect. Summer is the busiest period for beaches and restaurants but comparatively quiet for organised events. The dense stretches are spring, when the racing, the cultural parade and Pride land within weeks of each other, and December, when the southeast of the city runs its parades and lights. If you are choosing when to come for the calendar rather than the weather, those are the two windows.

The Long Beach events calendar, with 2026 dates

Long Beach has an unusually strong annual calendar for a city its size, and the anchors are genuinely distinctive rather than generic. Below are the fixtures worth planning around, with confirmed 2026 dates where organisers have published them.

Cambodia Town Parade & Culture Festival — Saturday 4 April 2026

The single most distinctive event in the Long Beach year. The Khmer New Year celebration runs from 10am to 9pm, with the parade stepping off at 10am at Anaheim Street and Orange Avenue and travelling west along Anaheim Street for about a mile through the heart of the Cambodia Town district. The Culture Festival follows from noon until 9pm at Long Beach City College’s Trade and Technology Campus, with cultural performances, concerts, food, arts and community exhibits.

Long Beach is home to the largest Cambodian population outside Southeast Asia, and this is the event where that shows up most publicly. If you can only make one Long Beach festival, make it this one — there is nothing else like it in the country.

Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach — 17 to 19 April 2026

Three days of street racing on a temporary circuit through downtown Long Beach, running since the mid-1970s and the largest event on the city calendar by attendance and by disruption. The circuit uses Shoreline Drive and the streets around the convention centre, which means downtown traffic and parking are genuinely difficult across the whole weekend.

Practical advice if you live here and are not attending: plan around it. If you are attending, use the Metro A Line rather than driving in.

Long Beach Pride — 15 to 17 May 2026

One of the longest-running Pride celebrations in the United States. The 2026 theme is Fearless and Free. Teen Pride runs on Friday 15 May, the main festival on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 May at Marina Green Park, and the parade steps off on Sunday 17 May at 10am. The parade route runs through the downtown and Alamitos Beach area, and it draws very large crowds.

Long Beach Food Scene Week — late July into early August

A citywide restaurant week with participating venues across the city, including the Second Street restaurants in Belmont Shore. The 2026 edition ran from 31 July into the first week of August. It is the best-value window of the year for eating out here, and a good excuse to try somewhere you would not normally book.

Long Beach Jazz Festival — 8 to 9 August 2026

Returning for its 36th year after being postponed from 2025, held as a seaside festival on the waterfront. The setting — outdoor, on the water, in August — is a large part of the appeal.

2XU Long Beach Marathon — 10 to 11 October 2026

Marathon weekend spans two days and includes a full marathon, a half, and shorter races. The course runs along the urban coastline, which makes it one of the flatter and more scenic big-city marathons in Southern California. Expect road closures across the waterfront and downtown on the Sunday.

December: two parades, one week apart in spirit

The Naples Island Boat Parade runs for its 78th edition in 2026, with decorated boats moving through the canals in the evening — a genuinely unusual thing to watch, and free from the canal footpaths. Separately, Belmont Shore runs its own Christmas parade along Second Street. These are two different events and people conflate them constantly.

December is also when the canal-front homes on Naples Island light up, which is the most popular free evening out in the city all year. Confirm exact 2026 dates and start times with the organisers before building travel around them.

The smaller, more regular things

Beyond the big fixtures, the recurring rhythm of the city matters more to residents: the farmers markets that run on fixed days across several neighbourhoods, the arts and music nights along the Bixby Knolls Atlantic Avenue corridor, and the ordinary weekend life of Retro Row on Fourth Street. Our Long Beach farmers markets guide has the schedule detail.

The waterfront also hosts a steady run of concerts, festivals and one-off events at the convention centre, the arena and the outdoor spaces around Shoreline Village and the Rainbow Lagoon throughout the year.

How to plan around all of this

Two rules. First, dates move — every one of the events above has shifted at some point, and a couple have been postponed outright. Confirm with the organiser before you book travel or a hotel. Second, the big three (the Grand Prix in April, Pride in May, the Marathon in October) all close roads and fill hotels, so if you are visiting for something unrelated, check whether your dates collide.

And the smaller things — the pop-up, the street fair, the thing happening this Saturday that never makes a published calendar — only ever come from people who live here.

Frequently asked questions

What are the biggest events in Long Beach?

The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the Long Beach Pride Festival and Parade, the Long Beach Jazz Festival, and the Cambodia Town Culture Festival.

Does Long Beach have farmers markets?

Yes — markets run several days a week across Downtown, Bixby, and the Marina, alongside East Village art walks.

What’s happening in Long Beach this weekend?

Long Beach neighbors share the most current local events — from waterfront festivals to Cambodia Town celebrations — in our community.