Looking for events and things to do in Los Angeles? The entertainment capital of the world, Los Angeles overflows with festivals, premieres, and world-class cultural events year-round. This local guide covers Los Angeles’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.

Los Angeles’s biggest annual events & festivals

LA’s signature events include the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl in Pasadena on New Year’s Day, the LA Marathon, Grand Performances and free summer concerts, the LA County Fair, CicLAvia open-streets events, film premieres and award shows, and endless music and food festivals.

Farmers markets & recurring things to do in Los Angeles

Farmers markets run nearly every day somewhere in the city (the Original Farmers Market, Hollywood, Santa Monica, and more); Grand Park, the Hollywood Bowl, and Levitt Pavilions host constant concerts; and neighborhoods run year-round cultural festivals in the mild climate.

Los Angeles through the seasons

The mild weather means events all year — the Rose Parade and awards season in winter, festivals and CicLAvia in spring, Hollywood Bowl concerts and fairs in summer, and food and film events in fall.

What to know about Los Angeles events

LA is enormous — pick events by neighborhood rather than crossing town, and use Metro where possible. Many events (CicLAvia, farmers markets, Grand Performances) are free. Traffic and parking reward arriving early.

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

Fitting it into a day in Los Angeles

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

More Los Angeles guides

Los Angeles rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Things to do in Los Angeles, Free things to do in Los Angeles, Things to do with kids in Los Angeles — 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 Los Angeles. Hours shift, favorites change, and residents always know what is genuinely worth it now. Ask Los Angeles neighbors directly or join your town community free to hear from real locals.

The free annual events worth planning around

Los Angeles runs a lot of ticketed events, but the ones that best show you the city are free, and three in particular are worth building a trip around.

CicLAvia is the most distinctive thing on the calendar. Several times a year the city closes a multi-mile stretch of street to cars entirely and opens it to people on bikes, on foot, on skates — the road becomes a temporary linear park. It is free for everyone, no registration, and the route moves around the county each time. The 2026 editions ran through West Los Angeles in April (a 3-mile route along Santa Monica and Westwood boulevards), South LA in June (3.6 miles connecting Leimert Park to Exposition Park), Hollywood and West Hollywood in July (more than 6 miles, 9am to 4pm), and again in October. If one falls while you are here, drop the rest of the plan.

The Lotus Festival at Echo Park Lake runs each July, timed to the lotus bloom, with free admission, dragon-boat races on the water and a different Asian or Pacific Islander culture honoured each year. Nisei Week in Little Tokyo is a nine-day Japanese cultural festival every August and is mostly free, including a parade and Ondo street dancing that fills 1st Street.

For all three, the binding constraint is parking rather than tickets. Arrive early or take Metro — during the Lotus Festival, street parking around the lake is close to hopeless.

Live music: the rooms to watch

Los Angeles has an unusually deep set of mid-size venues, which is where most of the interesting shows actually happen.

The Wiltern, 3790 Wilshire Blvd in Koreatown, opened on October 7, 1931 as the Warner Bros. Western Theatre inside the Art Deco Pellissier Building, closed in 1979, and reopened in May 1985 after restoration. It holds about 1,850 seated or 2,300 standing and runs a year-round calendar. It sits directly on the Metro D Line, which makes it the easiest large venue in the city to reach without driving.

The Echo, 1822 W Sunset Blvd in Echo Park, opened in 2001 and holds about 350 people, with the Echoplex in the same building below it. Between them they have hosted small touring bands and, on occasion, the Rolling Stones and Nine Inch Nails — the rooms famous acts pick when they want somewhere far smaller than they could fill.

For something that is not a concert, Highland Park Bowl, 5621 N Figueroa St, runs late on weekends in the oldest bowling alley in Los Angeles, dating to 1927.

The weekly events you can count on

Beyond the annual calendar, the most reliable recurring events in Los Angeles are the neighborhood farmers markets, and they run on fixed days regardless of season.

Sunday is the strongest day: Mar Vista 9am to 2pm, Atwater Village 9am to 2pm, Westchester 9am to 1pm and Larchmont 10am to 2pm all run weekly. Saturday has Silver Lake, 8am to 1:30pm at Sunset Triangle Plaza. Midweek there is Larchmont again on Wednesday afternoons, Silver Lake on Tuesday afternoons, and Westwood Village on Thursday from noon to 5pm. Several run year-round with no winter break. Our farmers markets guide has every address.

The Original Farmers Market at 6333 W 3rd St is the permanent version — open every day since 1934, free to enter, with more than 100 stalls.

How to find what is actually on this weekend

This is the honest limitation of any events page, including this one: a weekend in Los Angeles is assembled from dozens of one-off things — gallery openings in the Arts District, street festivals, pop-ups, screenings, neighborhood events — and no static page can be current about them. What a page like this can usefully give you is the durable structure, which is what the sections above are.

For the current week, the practical method is to work from the district rather than from a listings site. Pick where you want to be — Downtown, Koreatown, Echo Park, Highland Park — and then find out what is happening there. And for what is genuinely on this weekend, ask people who live in Los Angeles right now: residents know about the neighborhood events that never make a listings site at all.

Planning around Los Angeles events

Assume parking is the problem, not tickets. For every event listed here, the failure mode is arriving by car forty minutes before the start and spending those forty minutes circling. Metro reaches the Wiltern, Little Tokyo, Downtown and Highland Park directly.

Check the year, not just the month. Festival dates move, routes change, and editions get rescheduled — CicLAvia’s route is different every time, and the Lotus Festival honours a different culture each year. Confirm the current edition before you build a day around it.

Pair an event with the neighborhood it is in. An afternoon at the Lotus Festival works better combined with a walk up to the Carroll Avenue Victorians in Angelino Heights; a Wiltern show works better with dinner in Koreatown first. More ideas in things to do in Los Angeles, free things to do and date ideas.

Frequently asked questions

What are the biggest events in Los Angeles?

The Rose Parade and Rose Bowl, the LA Marathon, the LA County Fair, CicLAvia open-streets events, Hollywood Bowl concerts, and countless film and music festivals.

Does Los Angeles have farmers markets?

Yes — markets run nearly every day across the city, from the Original Farmers Market to Hollywood and Santa Monica.

What’s happening in Los Angeles this weekend?

With events all over the city every weekend, LA neighbors share the most current neighborhood picks — beyond the big listings — in our community.