LA Jazz Festival 2026 — Citywide Los Angeles

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You grew up hearing jazz leak through somebody's window on a summer night — not a performance, just a sound that meant your neighborhood was breathing. A saxophone curling through screen doors. A bass line so low it hummed under your feet on the sidewalk. That sound wasn't trying to find you. It was just there, the way heat is there, the way light from a streetlamp is there. And then one day it wasn't.

The inaugural LA Jazz Festival runs August 8 through 23, 2026 — seventeen days of live jazz across every corner of Los Angeles, making the city itself the venue. This is the first time Los Angeles has ever hosted a citywide jazz festival, and the scale matches the ambition: over 175 free concerts, 250,000 expected attendees, and programming designed to reach neighborhoods that rarely see a stage.

Jazz in the Park brings 25 free concerts to urban parks in underserved communities across LA County from August 8 to 16 — no ticket required, no cover, just music in the open air where people already live. Jazz After Dark turns 150 shows loose inside woman- and person-of-color-owned venues and community restaurants from August 8 through 23 — the kind of rooms where the bartender knows your order and the band plays three feet from your table. Jazz on the Beach closes the festival August 22 and 23 on Dockweiler Beach, where the Pacific meets the music and the sand is your seat.

Airbnb is the title sponsor. The city of Los Angeles is behind this — not a promoter, the city itself, through Mayor Bass's office and the Department of Cultural Affairs. This is a cultural declaration: jazz belongs to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is giving it back to every neighborhood that shaped it.

Full schedule and free registration at lajazzfestival.com.