Family & Community Events

394 events you didn't know to search for

Anime & Manga Events Gaming & Esports Events Concert & Music Events Movie & Film Events Sports Events Comic & Superhero Events Convention & Expo Events Fashion & Streetwear Events Family & Community Events Comedy Events Theater & Dance Events Art & Culture Events Nation's Best

Coming Soon

45 days away

An Evening with Rachel Maddow

Nov 17, 2026 Democracy Center at JANM, 100 N Ce…

Sitting through a conversation about how democracies come apart hits differently inside a building that exists because this one already did it once. The museum on North Central stands a few blocks from where families were ordered to report with only what they could carry. The people who built it were the children on those buses, and they did not build a memorial. They built a civics argument with a roof on it. Maddow comes in to discuss her newest book with Ann Burroughs, the museum's president, and the pairing is the entire point: a broadcaster who traces how institutions fail, across from someone who was a political prisoner under apartheid before she ran an American museum. Neither of them is likely to be careful with the hour. Worth knowing: the Pavilion is closed for renovation, so the evening happens inside the Democracy Center, which seats far fewer people than the name suggests. Tuesday, November 17, 7pm, 100 N Central Ave.

GWAR: Gor Gor Must Die — House of Blues Anaheim

Coming Soon

46 days away

GWAR: Gor Gor Must Die — House of Blues Anaheim

Nov 18, 2026 House of Blues Anaheim, 400 Disney…

You do not go to a GWAR show because you like live music. You go because something inside you craves the chaos that the rest of your week refuses to give you. The blood. The costumes. The alien warlords shredding guitar in a puddle of fake entrails while the crowd loses its collective mind. This is not a concert. This is a permission slip. The Gor Gor Must Die tour brings the intergalactic shock-metal overlords to House of Blues Anaheim on a Wednesday night — because GWAR has never once cared about your Thursday morning meeting. Openers Mac Sabbath (yes, McDonald's-themed Black Sabbath, and yes, it works) and Midnight set the stage for one of the most gloriously unhinged live acts still touring. If you have never seen GWAR live, understand: you will be sprayed with things. Your shirt will not survive. You will leave looking like you lost a fight with a paintball gun operated by a demon. You will be grinning. This is the show you text your one unhinged friend about. Not because it is cool. Because they need to know it exists. House of Blues Anaheim, 400 Disney Way #337, Anaheim, CA 92802. Wednesday, November 18, 2026. Doors at 6:00 PM. All ages. Wear a shirt you do not love.

3BallMTY "Sin Permiso Sessions" — The Glass House, Pomona

Coming Soon

46 days away

3BallMTY "Sin Permiso Sessions" — The Glass House, Pomona

Nov 18, 2026 ✨ New $55.50 The Glass House, 200 W 2nd St, Pom…

A sound can belong to about two years of your life and to almost nobody you work with now. Pointed boots, a beat built in Monterrey bedrooms, ringtones traded hand to hand across a middle school hallway. It is still on a playlist you have never once explained. It did not die. It aged alongside you, and the three men who made it are doing something strange with it — small rooms instead of festival stages, open to close, no opener, no filter. Each plays alone first. Then all three together. A Wednesday in Pomona is an odd place to feel eighteen again, which is probably the point. This date got pushed back from August, so the room has been holding its breath since summer. All ages, doors at eight, fifty-five dollars. Bring the cousin who sent you the song first — that scene never actually left.

Rady Children’s Ice Rink 2026 — Liberty Station, San Diego

Coming Soon

47 days away

Rady Children’s Ice Rink 2026 — Liberty Station, San Diego

Nov 19, 2026 $20-$22 2875 Dewey Rd, San Diego, CA 92106

There’s a version of December where you don’t just survive the holiday chaos — you step into it on purpose. Where the cold isn’t something you avoid but something you glide through, laughing, wobbling, holding your kid’s hand while they pretend they don’t need it. Rady Children’s Ice Rink takes over Liberty Station’s Legacy Plaza every winter, turning a stretch of the Arts District into an honest-to-god ice skating rink — outdoors, under string lights, with San Diego’s mild December air doing that thing where it’s just cold enough to feel special. The rink opens November 19 and runs daily through January 3, 10am to 10pm, which means yes, you can go on a random Tuesday at 7pm and it will still feel like a holiday. Sessions are 90 minutes. Ages 12 and under skate for $20; ages 13 and up for $22. Skate rental is included. Modified hours on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve — they’re open on all of them, just shorter windows. The rink benefits Rady Children’s Hospital Foundation, so the money goes somewhere that matters. But that’s not why you go. You go because it’s December and you want your kid to remember this one. Or because it’s a Tuesday and the week has been long and you want to feel something besides your phone screen. The regulars know: go on a weeknight. It’s quieter, the lines are shorter, and the lights hit different when the crowd thins out. 2875 Dewey Road, Liberty Station, San Diego 92106.

Coming Soon

47 days away

Manic Street Preachers

Nov 19, 2026 $81+ The Observatory North Park, 2891 U…

Some bands write songs; this one wrote a manifesto and then spent thirty years living inside it. The Manic Street Preachers came out of a dying Welsh mining town with more rage, eyeliner, and paperbacks than anyone knew what to do with, lost a member to a mystery that still aches, and somehow turned all of it into the most improbable thing — huge, soaring anthems for the defeated. When a whole room lifts on the chorus of A Design for Life, it does not feel like nostalgia; it feels like a working-class hymn being sung by people who still need it. These are literate, furious, gorgeous songs about class and grief and stubborn hope, played by survivors who mean every word. The Observatory North Park is the perfect scale for that intimacy and that force. Thursday, November 19, 2026, doors 7pm, show 8pm, North Park, all ages. Come sing the anthem for everyone who was told to expect less, and feel it land like it was written for you.

Coming Soon

11 Gathering

47 days away

An Evening of Alton Brown at Pechanga

Nov 19, 2026 $55+ Pechanga Resort Casino, 45000 Pech…

If you have ever argued out loud with the television about the correct way to sear a steak, Alton Brown has been talking directly to you for twenty years. The Good Eats mastermind turns his live show into something no cooking segment ever allowed on basic cable -- part food-science lecture, part stand-up set, part gleefully dangerous stage demonstration that the front rows should genuinely worry about. It is nerdy in the most joyful way, a night for the kind of person who owns a kitchen scale and has opinions about it. Pechanga hosts it on a November evening, a short drive for the whole valley's home cooks and food obsessives. Come with the friend who narrates their own cooking like a documentary. You will leave knowing something weird and useful, and probably a little afraid of what he does on that stage.

Steve Lacy: Oh yeah? Tour — Gallagher Square at Petco Park, San Diego

Coming Soon

47 days away

Steve Lacy: Oh yeah? Tour — Gallagher Square at Petco Park, San Diego

Nov 19, 2026 Gallagher Square at Petco Park, 10…

Dark Red comes on in the car and nobody says anything. Not because they do not like it — because they all feel it at the same time. That guitar tone does something to your chest before the lyrics even land. Steve Lacy writes songs for that exact version of you — the one who is thinking about it but not saying anything about it. Lacy built his reputation as the youngest member of The Internet, Syd's Grammy-nominated collective from the Odd Future orbit, before Bad Habit turned him into a generational voice in 2022. His guitar work is deceptively simple. His falsetto cracks in places that feel intentional. The production is warm and analog and sounds like it was recorded in a room where someone recently burned incense. He makes R&B for people who also listen to Radiohead and are not embarrassed about either. The Oh yeah? Tour brings him to Gallagher Square at Petco Park in San Diego on Thursday, November 19. This is the outdoor stage adjacent to the ballpark — open air, downtown skyline, and a crowd that already knows every word to Helmet before the set list drops. If you have a person who needs to hear this live, you already know who they are. Tickets available through Ticketmaster. Show at 8:00 PM. Gallagher Square at Petco Park, 100 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92101. All ages.

Cathedral City International Hot Air Balloon Festival

Coming Soon

19 Gathering

48 days away

Cathedral City International Hot Air Balloon Festival

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

An hour before dawn out in the desert, the air goes completely dead still and the light has not yet decided what color it intends to be. That is the hour hundreds of balloons choose to leave the ground together. The mass ascension is the entire event. Every burner on the field firing at once, color swelling up out of the dark, then the slow collective lift until all of them are airborne over the valley floor at the same moment. Nothing else in Southern California does that to a person. The part nobody expects to be the highlight is the glow. On the evening sessions the balloons light from the inside against a black desert sky — tethered, breathing — and people who came for the morning end up talking about the night instead. November out here sits in the exact temperature band where standing outside at dawn is a reward rather than a hardship. Wake somebody up for this. They will forgive you by the second balloon.

Christkindlmarket Chicago 2026 — 30th Anniversary at Daley Plaza

Coming Soon

23 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 48 days away

Christkindlmarket Chicago 2026 — 30th Anniversary at Daley Plaza

Nov 20, 2026 Daley Plaza, 50 W Washington St, C…

Thirty years, and the glühwein still hits the same. Chicago's Christkindlmarket is the reason half the Midwest has a Nuremberg-style mug in their kitchen cabinet and cannot explain how it got there. The 30th anniversary edition opens November 20 at Daley Plaza, and for five weeks the Loop smells like cinnamon and bratwurst and the particular warmth of a crowd that came here because they needed to feel something that a screen could not provide. Hand-carved wooden ornaments from German artisans who flew in for this and will stand in their booths through Christmas Eve in twenty-degree weather because the tradition is bigger than the thermostat. Bratwurst from a vendor who has been in the same spot for a decade and knows your order by your coat. Stollen that tastes like your grandmother made it, even if your grandmother was from Milwaukee and never left. The Christkind herself wanders the market in a gold crown and white dress, blessing the season the way she has in Nuremberg since the 1600s, and if that sounds like a fairy tale it is because it is one — the real kind, the kind that happens every year whether anyone believes in it or not. The market sprawls across Daley Plaza beneath the Picasso sculpture, with wooden huts selling hand-blown glass ornaments, nutcrackers, advent calendars, leather goods, and jewelry that you will give as gifts while pretending you did not consider keeping for yourself. There is a Kinder Klub for children and a beer garden for the adults who brought them. Lebkuchen hearts hang from every booth. The smell of roasted almonds follows you three blocks after you leave. Also returning to Gallagher Way outside Wrigley Field and to west suburban Aurora, each with its own personality — Wrigley's runs through New Year's Eve and feels younger, Aurora's feels like a small-town Bavarian square planted in the suburbs. Daley Plaza, 50 W Washington St, Chicago, IL. November 20 – December 24, 2026. Open daily, Sundays–Thursdays 11 AM to 8 PM, Fridays–Saturdays until 9 PM.

Daily

17 Gathering

48 days away

Los Angeles Auto Show 2026

Every day · Next Nov 20 Paid — see laautoshow.com Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

You are allowed to open the door and sit in a car that has not gone on sale and may never go on sale. Nobody stops you. That is the whole appeal, and it is a strange kind of privilege. For over a century this has been where automakers make the announcements that decide the next few years. Concepts still months away from a yes or no. Battery platforms shown in public for the first time. Model years kept secret until somebody pulls a sheet off. The trade days come first and take most of the reveals, and the public days that follow add ride-alongs, driving demos and enough floor space to lose an afternoon in. Performance, luxury, trucks and the electrified stuff each get their own territory. Downtown at the convention center in November, Metro to Pico Station. Take the kid who draws cars in the margins of their homework. Then watch what happens to their face.

Descanso: Enchanted Forest of Light 2026-2027

Coming Soon

48 days away

Descanso: Enchanted Forest of Light 2026-2027

Nov 20 – Jan 11, 2027 Timed entry tickets — descansogardens.org

Descanso Gardens transforms into a one-of-a-kind nighttime experience each winter season with Enchanted: Forest of Light, running from late November through early January. The 150-acre botanical garden in La Canada Flintridge becomes a glowing landscape of illuminated art installations, light tunnels, reflective pools, and custom soundscapes designed to guide visitors through the garden after dark. Each section of the garden tells its own visual story. The California Sycamore Grove, the Rose Garden, the Oak Forest, and the Japanese Garden all receive distinct light treatments that make familiar daytime spaces completely unrecognizable at night. The annual experience has sold out years in advance in previous seasons and draws visitors from across the country. It has been called one of the best holiday light experiences in the United States. Descanso Gardens is located at 1418 Descanso Drive in La Canada Flintridge, about 15 minutes north of Pasadena via the 210 Freeway. Parking is available on-site. Timed entry tickets are required and sell out quickly — book well in advance at descansogardens.org. Children under 3 are free. The experience takes approximately 90 minutes to walk. Dress in layers as November and December evenings in the San Gabriel Mountains can be cold. Bring a jacket, wear comfortable shoes, and plan to arrive 10 minutes before your timed entry slot.

Holiday Ice Rink at Pershing Square 2026 — Downtown Los Angeles

Coming Soon

48 days away

Holiday Ice Rink at Pershing Square 2026 — Downtown Los Angeles

Nov 20, 2026 Pershing Square, 532 S Olive St, L…

You step onto the ice at Pershing Square, look up instead of down, and the downtown skyline is right there — every building lit and leaning in over a rink that should not exist in a city where December afternoons hit seventy-two degrees. But it does exist, and it has been coming back for over twenty years, and that persistence is part of the charm. The Holiday Ice Rink converts a concrete downtown plaza into seven thousand two hundred square feet of real ice — not synthetic, not a simulation — underneath the annual tree lighting that officially declares it winter in a city that refuses to cooperate with the concept. Over fifty-four thousand people will lace up before the season ends. Skates are included. No experience required. The regulars identify first-timers by the rail grip, and nobody minds, because everyone was that person once. Weeknight sessions after six are the move the city knows about. The tourists stack Saturdays. The locals come on Tuesdays, when the rink is half-empty and the skyline belongs to whoever showed up. One hour on the ice, noon to ten PM, every single day through January. Opens mid-November 2026, daily noon to 10 PM through January. Pershing Square, 532 S Olive St, Los Angeles, CA 90013. Twenty-two dollars per one-hour session, skates included. Metro accessible at Pershing Square station.

Skating by the Sea 2026 — Hotel del Coronado Beachfront Ice Rink

Coming Soon

48 days away

Skating by the Sea 2026 — Hotel del Coronado Beachfront Ice Rink

Nov 20, 2026 Hotel del Coronado, 1500 Orange Av…

Lace up a pair of skates at the Hotel del Coronado and glide across a rink that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and the absurdity of it never stops being beautiful. Skating by the Sea returns to the Del's Windsor Lawn for another season of beachfront ice skating — the kind of experience that exists nowhere else on Earth. You are skating. Sand is twenty feet away. The Victorian turret glows behind you. Waves are breaking within earshot. Your brain cannot reconcile any of it and decides to just enjoy the moment instead. The rink runs nightly from late November through early January, which means it is there for Thanksgiving week, Christmas, New Year's, and every quiet Tuesday in between when San Diego remembers that winter is a feeling, not a temperature. Ninety-minute sessions, skate rental included in the ticket price. Proceeds support Make-A-Wish San Diego, so every stumble on the ice is technically philanthropy. This year's theme is A Holiday Through Time. Tickets from $35. The line moves faster on weeknights — and the sunset from the rink on a Monday in December is worth more than anything you will find at the mall. November 20, 2026 through January 3, 2027. Hotel del Coronado, 1500 Orange Ave, Coronado, CA 92118.

Coming Soon

48 days away

Knott's Merry Farm 2026 — Buena Park

Nov 20, 2026 8039 Beach Blvd, Buena Park, CA 90…

There's a moment every November when the air shifts in Orange County — not just the temperature, but the whole energy of the place. Buena Park transforms under a canopy of millions of twinkling lights, and if you've ever walked through Knott's Berry Farm during the holidays, you already know what that does to you. It's the kind of evening where you forget your phone for whole minutes at a time. Knott's Merry Farm runs from November 20 through January 3, turning the park into a full holiday village. The rides stay open — yes, including the big ones — but the real draw is what happens between them. Live shows thread through the night with carolers and dancers, the tree lighting ceremony anchors the whole experience, and the food leans hard into comfort: boysenberry hot chocolate, funnel cake with seasonal twists, holiday turkey legs the size of your forearm. What makes this different from a generic lights display is the weight of the place. Knott's has been doing this for decades. The craft village isn't decoration — it's artisans who set up shop every winter. The Christmas Crafts Village dates back to the original Berry Farm days, and the handmade ornaments and blown glass you find there aren't available the rest of the year. Knott's Merry Farm is open daily during Thanksgiving week and on select days through the season — generally Friday through Monday, with extended dates as Christmas approaches. The park is at 8039 Beach Blvd, Buena Park. Daily admission starts around $60. Bring layers — Southern California evenings in December are colder than anyone from out of state expects.

ice! featuring A Charlie Brown Christmas — Gaylord Pacific Resort, Chula Vista

Coming Soon

48 days away

ice! featuring A Charlie Brown Christmas — Gaylord Pacific Resort, Chula Vista

Nov 20, 2026 $26 Gaylord Pacific Resort, 1000 H Str…

You remember the scene. Charlie Brown stands alone in front of a sad little tree while everyone else decorates something shinier. You were seven, or twelve, or thirty-four, and something about that quiet stubbornness — choosing the thing that needed you instead of the thing that impressed everyone — landed in your chest and never left. Gaylord Pacific brings ice! to the West Coast for the first time, and the theme is A Charlie Brown Christmas. Two million pounds of hand-carved ice re-create twelve scenes from the special, kept at nine degrees. Snoopy on his doghouse. Linus and his blanket. The sad tree, floor-to-ceiling in frozen crystal. Ice slides cut through the exhibit. The resort hands out oversized parkas at the entrance, and wearing one alongside two hundred other bundled strangers is half the charm. Outside the ice, the holiday program runs daily: Peanuts-character dining, ice tubing, a scavenger hunt, nightly entertainment, in a resort so new that most locals have never set foot inside. Weeknight slots are the move, and December evenings sell first. Chula Vista bayfront, twenty minutes south of downtown.

Enchant Christmas LA 2026 — Santa Anita Park, Arcadia

Daily

48 days away

Enchant Christmas LA 2026 — Santa Anita Park, Arcadia

Every day · Next Nov 20 Santa Anita Park, 285 W Huntington…

The person you are buying for does not need another gift card. They need to walk through a maze made of a million Christmas lights and forget, for ninety minutes, that December is supposed to be stressful. Enchant Christmas arrives at Santa Anita Park for its Los Angeles debut, and what they built is unreasonable — the world's largest Christmas light maze threading through the historic racetrack grounds, an ice skating trail that loops through the installations instead of sitting in a parking lot, and a holiday village where the vendors actually made the things they are selling. Entry begins at 5:30 PM when the sun is just low enough for the lights to win. The maze is not a walk-through tunnel. It is a puzzle — paths that branch, dead ends that reward you with a view you would have missed on the straight route, and enough square footage that the crowd never feels like a crowd. Children run ahead. Couples slow down. The person who said they did not want to come is the last one to leave. Santa Anita's architecture does most of the heavy lifting. The Art Deco grandstand lit from below looks like it was designed for this, and the infield becomes an alpine village that smells like kettle corn and pine. The ice skating trail winds through themed zones instead of going in circles, and there is a snow slide for the family whose youngest member has never seen snow. November 20 through December 28, 2026, nightly. Tickets at enchantchristmas.com. The lights are the excuse. The feeling is the product.

Autumn Festival 2026 — Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach

Coming Soon

49 days away

Autumn Festival 2026 — Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach

Nov 21, 2026 Aquarium of the Pacific, 100 Aquar…

Your grandmother tried to teach you something once — a paper-folding thing, a dance step, the right way to hold the brush — and you were eleven and bored and did not pay attention, and now she is not around to ask. That small, specific regret is more common than anyone admits, and it is the reason events like this stay full. For its twenty-fifth year, the aquarium hands its halls over to the traditions of China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines for one weekend. Craft demonstrations where somebody will actually put the material in your hands. Music and dance on a stage a few feet from the sea otters. Storytelling sessions where the storyteller is usually somebody's actual grandmother. The detail worth knowing: because it is inside an aquarium rather than on a closed street, the whole thing happens at conversation volume. Nobody is shouting over a sound system. You can ask the woman doing the calligraphy what the character means, and she will tell you, and the fish will drift past behind her while she does it. Saturday, November 21 and Sunday, November 22, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Included with general admission; reservations required. 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach.

Coming Soon

24 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 49 days away

LA Auto Show 2026 — Los Angeles, CA

Nov 21 – Dec 6, 2026 0 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

In the most car-dependent city in America, the future of the thing everyone drives arrives for two weeks in a single hall - concept cars that may never be built, standing at full scale, glowing under dramatic light. The LA Auto Show opens at the LA Convention Center in late November, the world's automakers presenting their current thinking to the people who will actually drive it. Walking the floor is an exercise in cultural prediction. The main hall holds every major manufacturer's flagship display, vehicles you have only read about suddenly appearing at full scale, and the concept cars are the centerpiece every year - designed to show capability rather than sell product. Adjacent to the main floor, the Connected Car Expo runs at the same time, showing the technology that will eventually be embedded in every vehicle, while the Dream Drive pavilion offers test drives at select activations. AutoMobility LA, the industry media days the preceding week, produces most of the announcement news; the public show is where those announcements become tangible. Is it worth attending? For car enthusiasts, straightforwardly yes - the density of new vehicles in one place, with full access and no appointment, is rare. For casual visitors, the show rewards curiosity: the concept cars are genuinely strange and beautiful in ways photographs never capture, and the electric vehicle pavilion gives most major manufacturers' EV lineups the same room, the clearest possible illustration of where the industry is in its transition. Tickets are available online and at the door - online saves time at entry. The Convention Center is reachable by Metro (Pico or Convention Center stations), and weekday mornings are the least crowded windows if you have flexibility. The show runs from late November into early December, coinciding with the opening of the holiday retail season downtown, so the area is busy beyond the show itself. It has historically allowed children under 12 free with an adult - check the official site for 2026 pricing and hours. What makes it worth the trip is simple: it is one of the few annual events in any industry where the most powerful companies in the world put their most ambitious work in one room and ask the public to react. The automotive industry employs more people than any sector in the United States, and the LA show is its most public annual report. Even without buying a car, walking it is a way of reading the industry's intentions for the next decade.

There's more here for you.

An account shows you family & community events matched to your exact taste — not just what's popular.

Find mine Log In

Family & Community Events

Leaving Falkor