San Diego International Dragon Boat Race 2026 — Mission Bay

Coming Soon

4,440 exploring this week · 1,064 upcoming in SoCal

San Diego International Dragon Boat Race 2026 — Mission Bay

Name: San Diego International Dragon Boat Race 2026 — Mission Bay
Start: 2026-09-26T08:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-09-26T16:00:00-07:00
Location: Tecolote Shores North, 1346 E Mission Bay Dr, San Diego, CA 92109

Going? You can check in after it ends.

Saturday, September 26, 2026

8:00 AM PDT – 4:00 PM PDT

Tecolote Shores North, 1346 E Mission Bay Dr, San Diego, CA 92109

Free (spectators)

You found this. Be the first one here.

Join →

Tickets & More Info

IE International Food and Music Festival

Jul 29 · 20

International Surf Festival 2026 — South Bay LA

Jul 31

Epcot International Food and Wine Festival 2026 -- Walt Disney World

Aug 27

Orange International Street Fair 2026

Sep 4 · 5

San Diego-Tijuana International Jazz Festival 2026

Oct 1

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta 2026 — Albuquerque, NM

Oct 4 · 6

San Diego International Film Festival 2026

Oct 14

Cathedral City International Hot Air Balloon Festival

Nov 20 · 12

About

Twenty paddlers hit the water at the same instant, and for the next two hundred and fifty meters the only thing that matters is whether twenty strangers learned to breathe as one body. The San Diego International Dragon Boat Race has been doing this on Mission Bay since the early 2000s, and every September it draws teams from across the country to Tecolote Shores for two days of sprint racing, lion dances, taiko drums, and the kind of food-truck village that only appears when multiple cultures decide to throw a party at the same time. The boats are forty feet long, hand-painted with dragon heads and tails, and the races are loud and close and over before you finish your sentence. Registration opens in April for teams of all experience levels — corporate teams, community clubs, first-timers who saw a flyer and said yes before they thought about it. Free for spectators. Tecolote Shores North, 1346 East Mission Bay Drive, San Diego. September 26 to 27, 2026.

Your event has been discovered.

Claim it to see who found you.

I'm the one behind this →

Or email us about this listing

IE International Food and Music Festival

Coming Soon

20 Gathering

2 days away

IE International Food and Music Festival

In 3 days · Jul 29 – Jul 30 Mission Inn Avenue, Downtown River…

The freeway version of the Inland Empire is fast food and strip malls; the real one is Vietnamese and Mexican and Filipino and Central American and Lebanese and Ethiopian, all on the same blocks - and this festival puts that whole landscape on one street. A food festival here is genuinely different from one in a more homogeneous city, because the region it samples is genuinely diverse. Downtown Riverside's celebration of the IE's cultural breadth spreads across the blocks leading to the Mission Inn, with food from the region's communities and live music across multiple stages. Mission Inn Avenue in late July brings the architecture and the heat in equal measure, and the Mission Inn itself is visible from the festival - the kind of backdrop that makes a food festival feel like a cultural occasion rather than a weekend market. Come hungry, and come willing to eat something you did not know you were going to like. Leave with the full picture of what the Inland Empire actually is. Mission Inn Avenue, Downtown Riverside, July 29th. Schedule and full vendor and performer list at riversideca.gov.

International Surf Festival 2026 — South Bay LA

Coming Soon

4 days away

International Surf Festival 2026 — South Bay LA

In 5 days · Jul 31 Free Manhattan Beach Pier, Manhattan Be…

Every July, the South Bay remembers what it was built on — salt water, sand, and the particular stubbornness of people who believe the ocean is not something you watch but something you enter. The International Surf Festival has been running since 1960 across Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, and Torrance. Six days of competitions that exist nowhere else in quite this combination: the Dwight Crum Pier-to-Pier Swim sends hundreds of swimmers from the Manhattan Beach Pier to the Hermosa Pier — a mile of open water that looks short from the sand and feels infinite when you are in it. The Charlie Saikley 6-Man Volleyball Tournament fills the south side of the pier with teams that have been playing together for decades. Surfing contests, bodysurfing contests, paddleboard races, dory races, a two-mile beach run, and youth events for kids as young as eight. This is not a spectator festival. It is a participation festival. The people watching are the people who swam last year or will swim next year. Everyone in the water knows someone on the sand. Participants range from eight years old to their late eighties. No tickets. No entry fee. No app required. Just the South Bay being exactly what it has always been — a stretch of coast where community is measured in laps, not likes. July 27 through August 2, 2026. Free. Events across all four South Bay beach cities.

Epcot International Food and Wine Festival 2026 -- Walt Disney World

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 31 days away

Epcot International Food and Wine Festival 2026 -- Walt Disney World

Aug 27 – Nov 21, 2026 Epcot, Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830

Late August through mid-November, Epcot stops being a place you take children and turns its World Showcase into a global food market for adults — eighty-plus kiosks representing countries that do not share borders but do share this pavilion. The atmosphere is unmistakably grown-up. Wine, craft beer, international street food, live concerts in the Eat to the Beat series, and cooking demonstrations by culinary professionals fill the hours between the park's permanent attractions. The World Showcase lagoon path becomes a global food walk - French crepes alongside Canadian craft beer alongside Japanese sushi alongside Brazilian cheese bread. The scale is enormous but the pacing is deliberately slow; this is wandering, tasting, settling in at a lakeside table and watching the October sky come down over the water. If you have any affinity for food, international cuisines, or Disney, it lands: the festival is included with standard EPCOT park admission and the food kiosks are paid separately in small, affordable sampling portions. For non-Disney regulars, Epcot's single loop layout makes the festival more accessible than most of the park, since one path covers nearly all the festival content. For Disney regulars, the August-through-November window is one of the best times to visit - lower crowds than peak summer, full festival atmosphere. A few things veterans know: weekday mornings are least crowded for the kiosk lines. The Eat to the Beat concert series, included with admission, runs multiple times daily at the America Gardens Theatre, so arrive 30 minutes early. The annual festival passport lets you stamp each global marketplace kiosk - casual visitors ignore it and obsessives complete it on day one. Party for the Senses premium dinner events sell separately and book out quickly, so reserve early if interested. Disney Transportation runs from most on-property resorts directly to EPCOT; the parking lot is paid. More than two million people participate each year, most of them not because they are Disney fans but because the festival delivers one specific feeling: the world's food culture on the same block, walkable in an afternoon. The Epcot International Food and Wine Festival runs from late August through mid-November at Walt Disney World.

Coming Soon

40 days away

Orange International Street Fair 2026

Sep 4 – Sep 6, 2026 Old Towne Orange Plaza, Chapman Av…

Fourteen countries set up kitchens on the same four blocks in Old Towne Orange, and for three days the entire town smells like something your grandmother would have made if your grandmother had been from everywhere at once. The Orange International Street Fair has been running for decades and it operates on a principle that most food festivals have forgotten: no entrance fee, no VIP section, no corporate sponsors telling you which direction to walk. You show up. You eat Brazilian food next to a stage playing Irish music next to a booth selling Greek pastries. You lose your children in the kids' street and find them covered in face paint and holding a stick of something fried. It is organized chaos and it works because nobody is trying to optimize it. The 2026 edition runs September 4-6 in the Orange Circle — the historic plaza at the center of Old Towne Orange. Friday 5-10pm. Saturday and Sunday 10am-10pm. Eight stages run live entertainment continuously. Arts and crafts booths line the streets. The kids' street features family-friendly performances, games, and its own food vendors. The food spans America, Asia, Australia, Brazil, France, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Polynesia, and Switzerland. This is not a sampling of cuisines. This is fourteen complete kitchens competing for your attention on the same block. The line for the gyros is next to the line for the lumpia is next to the line for the schnitzel. Free admission. Street parking and nearby lots available (local nonprofits run the lots). Bring cash — some vendors are cash-only. Come hungry. Leave converted.

San Diego-Tijuana International Jazz Festival 2026

Daily

67 days away

San Diego-Tijuana International Jazz Festival 2026

Every day · Next Oct 1 California Center for the Arts, 34…

A horn section does not care about borders. It never has. The notes float across the line the same way the smell of street tacos drifts north and the hum of freeway traffic drifts south — because the line is a legal fact but not a musical one, and musicians on both sides of it have known this since before anyone drew it on a map. The third annual San Diego-Tijuana International Jazz Festival runs October 1 through 4, 2026, expanding to four days for the first time. The festival stretches across both cities — free concerts in downtown Tijuana and downtown San Diego, plus a ticketed headliner concert at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido — turning the border region into a single stage. This year's lineup features eleven bands and solo artists from across North America and beyond. Headlining is five-time Grammy Award-winning drummer Brian Blade with his genre-blurring Fellowship Band, a group that moves between jazz, rock, folk, and gospel without ever asking permission to cross a boundary. Also performing is Mingus Dynasty, the seven-piece ensemble honoring the legacy of Charles Mingus with a lineup that includes tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Helen Sung, and Russian-born bassist Boris Kozlov. The free concerts are the heart of the festival — open-air performances in public spaces on both sides of the border, designed to bring jazz to the streets rather than behind a velvet rope. The ticketed indoor concert at the California Center for the Arts brings the full production: world-class acoustics, reserved seating, and performers playing at the peak of their craft. Tickets available at sdtjjazz.org. California Center for the Arts, 340 N Escondido Blvd, Escondido, CA 92025.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta 2026 — Albuquerque, NM

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 70 days away

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta 2026 — Albuquerque, NM

Oct 4 – Oct 12, 2026 From $15 (daily) Balloon Fiesta Park, 5000 Balloon …

At dawn on mass ascension days, hundreds of hot air balloons inflate on the field at once and rise together above the Rio Grande valley. The Sandia Mountains turn pink behind them. You will describe this to people for years. The Mass Ascension is the centerpiece: twice during the fiesta's run, hundreds of hot air balloons — ranging from classic teardrops to balloons shaped like animals, cartoon characters, and abstract sculptures — launch in waves from the launch field as the sun rises over the mountains. The scale of it is genuinely difficult to photograph adequately. You are standing in a field watching the sky fill, slowly and then all at once, with color. The Balloon Glow events — where tethered balloons illuminate simultaneously after dark, turning the field into a landscape of lanterns — are equally stunning in a quieter way. Is the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta worth it? Yes, with no caveats. This is one of the most visually singular events in North America. You do not need to be a balloon enthusiast to be moved by the Mass Ascension. The event is family-appropriate, accessible, and designed for the general public — not a niche audience. The Special Shape Rodeo, where unusual balloon designs launch together, is particularly good for children and for anyone who has ever found a hot air balloon shaped like a bee with a thousand others inexplicably delightful. Before you go: the event grounds open at 5am for Mass Ascension days — arrive early for field access and good viewing position. Parking is extensive but fills fast; shuttle services from remote lots are the recommended approach. October mornings in Albuquerque are cold (30s–40s°F at launch time) and afternoons are warm; dress in layers. The Gondola Club offers premium field access. Many attendees come for a single day; the full nine days is for balloon devotees. Tickets are purchased in advance. Albuquerque, New Mexico. October 4–12, 2026. The Albuquerque Box Effect — a unique wind phenomenon created by the surrounding mountain geography — is what makes the city the balloon capital of the world. Balloons can fly in different directions at different altitudes, allowing pilots to navigate with precision that would be impossible elsewhere. Festival organizers understood this in 1972 and built an institution around it. The location is not incidental. It is the reason the event is what it is.

San Diego International Film Festival 2026

Coming Soon

79 days away

San Diego International Film Festival 2026

Oct 14 – Oct 18, 2026 Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, 701 Fi…

The best moment at a film festival this size isn't on screen - it's the director in the row behind you staying for the Q&A of a film that premiered at Venice or Toronto or Sundance a few weeks earlier. The San Diego International Film Festival is built for exactly that kind of access. Over its six-day October run, SDIFF screens roughly 80-100 films across multiple downtown venues - Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15 as the primary house, with additional screenings at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park and event spaces throughout the Gaslamp Quarter. The programming pairs international competition entries with American documentary features, short film programs, and special presentations of films with local connections. The Filmmaker in Focus program brings guest directors and cast for post-screening Q&As - the kind of proximity larger festivals can't provide. The Gaslamp Quarter's concentration of restaurants and bars makes SDIFF a social festival as much as a cinematic one: evening premieres are followed by parties and gatherings that pull the film community and the broader San Diego arts scene together for the week. Individual tickets and festival passes are available via the SDIFF website, and the Gaslamp Trolley Station provides easy Metro access.

Cathedral City International Hot Air Balloon Festival

Coming Soon

12 Gathering

116 days away

Cathedral City International Hot Air Balloon Festival

Nov 20 – Nov 22, 2026 Cathedral City Community Amphithea…

There is an hour before dawn when the desert air is dead still and the light has not yet decided what color it is going to be - and that is the hour hundreds of hot air balloons choose to rise together over the Coachella Valley floor. The mass ascension is the whole event. When every balloon on the field inflates at once, the burners firing, the color swelling up out of the dark, the slow collective lift until they are all airborne over the desert at the same moment - there is nothing else like it in Southern California. November in the Coachella Valley sits in the exact temperature band where standing outside at dawn is not a hardship but a reward. Then there is the balloon glow: on Friday and Saturday evenings the balloons light from the inside against the black desert sky, and it is consistently the thing people did not expect to be the highlight. Live entertainment and vendors fill the rest. Come early for the morning ascension. Stay for the glow. Cathedral City Community Amphitheater, 68700 Avenue Lalhambra, November 20-22, 2026. Tickets and schedule at cchotairballoonfest.com.

You found your people.

They didn't know each other before Falkor either.

San Diego International Dragon Boat Race 2026 — Mission Bay

IE International Food and Music Festival

International Surf Festival 2026 — South Bay LA

Epcot International Food and Wine Festival 2026 -- Walt Disney World

Orange International Street Fair 2026

San Diego-Tijuana International Jazz Festival 2026

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta 2026 — Albuquerque, NM

San Diego International Film Festival 2026

Cathedral City International Hot Air Balloon Festival

Heading out?

Leaving Falkor