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Coming Soon

43 days away

Encinitas Oktoberfest

Sep 27, 2026 Mountain Vista Dr, Encinitas, CA 9…

Bratwurst and spilled beer and the ocean two miles west — that combination does not exist anywhere in Germany, and it is the entire reason this one works. For one Sunday in late September nearly a mile of Mountain Vista Drive closes and the whole town ends up on the same stretch of pavement. Beer gardens, pretzels the size of your head, an artisan faire, dance performances, and live oompah bleeding into indie rock by afternoon. The Chamber has thrown it for thirty years, which is long enough that it stopped being an event and became the unofficial start of a North County autumn. More than ten thousand people, free to walk into, and the dachshunds in lederhosen are not folklore. They are genuinely there. The locals who consider this their day arrive early. Go with them, and bring somebody who still thinks nothing happens up the coast.

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45 days away

Oh, Mary!

Sep 29, 2026 $45+ San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Thir…

Every so often a Broadway show comes along that people describe not as good but as insane in the best possible way, and Oh, Mary! is that show right now: Cole Escola's gleefully unhinged, historically irresponsible comedy about a boozy, thwarted-cabaret-star Mary Todd Lincoln that became the most talked-about ticket in New York. Watching it in a full house is closer to a rock concert than a history lesson, the kind of theater that leaves strangers gasping and cackling at each other between scenes. The touring production hits the San Diego Civic Theatre September 29 through October 4, 2026. Come for one of the funniest things to happen to American theater in years, bring the friend with the darkest sense of humor, and be able to say you saw it when it finally came to San Diego. Warning: you will quote it for weeks.

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46 days away

The Outsiders — Broadway in Hollywood

Sep 30, 2026 Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 H…

Stay gold. Two words a certain kind of kid has carried since the first time they read the book that finally saw them, the one about greasers and Socs and the unfairness you feel long before you have any language for it. The stage version won Best Musical, and it earns that with staging people cannot stop describing: a rumble played out in real rain and real dirt, close enough that the audience audibly stops breathing. What survives the adaptation is the part that mattered at 3 a.m. under the covers, which is the brothers, the loyalty, and the specific grief of being born on the wrong side of a town that has already made up its mind about you. The touring production brings the whole storm to the Pantages. For everyone who ever underlined a sentence in a paperback and felt less alone in their own house, and for the friend you would want sitting beside you when the rain starts.

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17 Gathering

48 days away

Avocado Festival — Carpinteria 2026

Oct 2 – Oct 4, 2026 Linden Ave, Carpinteria, CA 93013

The guacamole competition has an amateur bracket and a professional bracket, and the arguments about the results run exactly as hot as you would hope. Grudges carry between years. People bring notes. That is the sort of town this becomes for three days each fall — a small beach city that hands itself over completely to one green fruit and refuses to be embarrassed about it. Avocado ice cream. Avocado margaritas. Avocado worked into things it has no business being inside of. Live music on several stages down Linden Avenue, and an Avocado Queen coronation on the main stage played entirely straight. Getting in is free; the eating is not. Six figures' worth of visitors turn up across the weekend, so the train is the smart approach — there is a stop right there, and downtown is walkable the moment you step off. Send this to the person in your life with strong opinions about ripeness. You knew who before you finished reading that.

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66 Gathering

55 days away

OB Oktoberfest — Ocean Beach

Oct 9, 2026 Free entry Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA 92107

The band on stage plays with the commitment of people who have been doing this since before craft beer made it cool, and the Pacific two blocks away makes the whole afternoon smell right - this is not everyone else's Oktoberfest. This is Newport Avenue, a community built around surf culture and the specific California stubborn-independence that makes Ocean Beach what it is. The steins are real. The schnitzel is real. The street closes, the vendors fill the block, and the neighborhood shows up - the beach crowd, the locals who have come for years, the people who drove down from North County because it is worth the parking situation. It is. This is the fall version of what a Southern California beach can be: outdoors until dark, a crowd that came specifically for this. Come early. Stay for the full pour. Leave when Newport Avenue decides the night is over, which will not be before you are ready. Ocean Beach, San Diego, September 26th. Free.

Cynthia Erivo: Let Me Sing To You — Hollywood Bowl

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61 days away

Cynthia Erivo: Let Me Sing To You — Hollywood Bowl

Oct 15, 2026 varies Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Av…

A whole hillside forgetting to breathe at the same time makes a sound of its own, which is mostly the absence of one. That happens when a voice built for rooms this size stops performing and simply tells you something. One night, no opening act, no shared billing. A Tony winner, an Emmy nominee, an Oscar nominee, the voice behind Elphaba on film — alone on the largest outdoor stage in the country with nothing to hide behind and no visible interest in hiding. The set is built to prove that the Broadway voice, the pop voice, and the soul voice all live inside one person, and that she has never considered them separate things. A Thursday evening in October at the Bowl on North Highland, under the shell and the open sky. If you have ever watched a performance and forgotten your own body was in the room, this is the artist who does that to entire hillsides. Take somebody who has never had it happen.

Anaheim Fall Festival & Halloween Parade 2026

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70 days away

Anaheim Fall Festival & Halloween Parade 2026

Oct 24, 2026 Center Greens, Center St Promenade…

The parade has been rolling through downtown Anaheim since before Disneyland opened. That's the part that gets lost — this wasn't built to compete with anything. It was built because a neighborhood wanted an excuse to dress up, walk down the street together, and see what the kid next door turned herself into this year. The Anaheim Fall Festival fills Center Greens from 11 AM with live music, costume contests (for children and dogs, because this town knows its audience), craft vendors, photo ops, and enough face painting to keep a line moving until sundown. The free festival is the daytime version. The parade at 7 PM is the nighttime version — floats lit up on Anaheim Boulevard, community groups and school marching bands and the kind of participation that only happens when a tradition has been running long enough that the people in the parade used to be the kids watching it. No ticket. No admission fee. Just a park in downtown Anaheim where the city decided a long time ago that the Saturday before Halloween belongs to everyone. The costume contest has categories you won't find at a corporate event: scariest, funniest, most original, best group. And best dog. Always best dog. Saturday, October 24, 2026. Festival 11 AM–6 PM at Center Greens, Downtown Anaheim. Parade at 7 PM on Anaheim Blvd at Broadway, turning onto Center Street Promenade. Free.

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73 days away

The Music Man — Ahmanson Theatre

Oct 27, 2026 Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave,…

We keep coming back to the story of a con man in a small town because it is really about the moment a liar accidentally tells the truth and falls in love with the place he came to fleece. Meredith Willson's score has outlasted almost everything written around it: seventy-six trombones, a romance conducted over a library cart, melodies that get into people who arrived determined to resist them. This is the big version, full orchestra on the grand downtown stage, the kind of revival that makes the cynics in the audience mist up during the last number and then blame the air conditioning. The Ahmanson on Grand Avenue, an evening downtown. For anyone who has ever been won over, against their own better judgment, by a charming disaster of a person. Bring the grandparents. Bring the kids. Let it get you.

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73 days away

The Who's Tommy

Oct 27, 2026 $45+ Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 H…

Before jukebox musicals were a thing, The Who blew the doors off with a full-blown rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who becomes a pinball messiah, and the Broadway revival of Tommy reinvented it for the stage with jaw-dropping projections, strobe-lit spectacle, and that wall of guitar. Pinball Wizard hits differently when a live band is shaking the walls of the Hollywood Pantages. This is loud, strange, gorgeous theater for people who think they don't like musicals. The touring production plays the Pantages October 27 through November 15, 2026, in the heart of Hollywood off the Metro B Line. Come for the songs you already know by heart, stay for a story far weirder and more moving than the radio hits let on. Bring the classic-rock fan who swears they hate Broadway; watch them cave.

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74 days away

The Cottage

Oct 28, 2026 $40+ North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987…

Sometimes you just want to laugh until your face hurts, and The Cottage delivers: a gleefully filthy, door-slamming British farce of tangled affairs, mistaken beds, and very proper people behaving very badly across one chaotic English country weekend. It was a Broadway hit for a reason, and in the intimate confines of North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach, every double-take and every secret-revealed lands like a firecracker. This is date-night theater, the kind you leave grinning and quoting. The Cottage runs October 28 through November 22, 2026, at North Coast Rep. Come for a fizzy, wicked, perfectly-timed comedy, bring your most fun-loving couple friends, and settle in for a night where the plot twists faster than anyone on stage can keep their story straight. Warning: you will want to see it twice.

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76 days away

Dear Evan Hansen

Oct 30, 2026 $40+ La Mirada Theatre for the Performi…

Waving Through a Window became an anthem for a whole generation of anxious, lonely kids, and the musical it comes from turned the ache of not being seen into one of the most emotionally devastating shows Broadway has produced this century. Dear Evan Hansen follows a boy whose small lie spirals into a connection he desperately needed and never earned, and it lands hardest on anyone who has ever felt invisible at their own lunch table. McCoy Rigby stages it at La Mirada Theatre October 30 through November 22, 2026. Bring tissues, bring the teenager in your life, bring the version of yourself that needed to hear these songs at seventeen. This is theater that wrecks you and mends you in the same breath, performed close enough to feel every note. You will not leave unchanged.

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80 days away

The Outsiders

Nov 3, 2026 $45+ San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Thir…

Stay gold. S.E. Hinton's story of greasers and Socs and the ache of being sixteen and on the wrong side of town has moved generations, and the musical that won the 2024 Tony for Best Musical turns it into something startlingly physical: rain-soaked rumbles, live music, a cast that throws its whole body into Ponyboy's world. This is the rare Broadway hit that hits hardest for people who thought they were too cool to cry at theater. The touring production plays the San Diego Civic Theatre November 3 through 8, 2026. Reread the book on the drive downtown or come in cold; either way, bring the person who underlined half their copy in high school. It is a big, emotional, beautifully staged night of theater about loyalty, class, and the friends who feel like the only family you chose.

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219 Gathering

83 days away

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Fleet Week San Diego 2026

Nov 6 – Nov 9, 2026 Free admission Broadway Pier, 1000 North Harbor D…

Your chest hears them before your ears do. A sound comes in off the water, every conversation on the Embarcadero stops mid-sentence, and a few thousand heads tilt back at the same moment. This is the week the Blue Angels belong to San Diego Bay, flying low enough that the downtown skyline becomes their backdrop. What visitors miss is the quieter half. You can walk aboard Navy destroyers, submarines, and amphibious ships free of charge, up the gangway and into the passageways where somebody's kid stands on deployment. The Parade of Ships moves through the bay, the bands play, and the city says out loud that the Navy is its largest employer. This is not a show San Diego hosts. It is San Diego looking at itself. Free, family-friendly, on the Broadway Pier and Embarcadero in October, and the trolley beats parking on air show day. Bring the person who has never stood underneath one of those passes.

Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

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85 days away

Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Nov 8, 2026 $30+ Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe …

For San Diego, the holidays don't really start until the Grinch turns green in Balboa Park. The Old Globe's Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has been the city's defining Christmas tradition for more than a quarter-century, the show grandparents take grandkids to in the same seats they once sat in themselves, all Whos and roast beast and a heart that grows three sizes right on cue. It is warm, silly, gorgeously designed, and just short enough for the youngest theatergoers. This year it runs November 4 through December 31, 2026, on the Old Globe Theatre stage in Balboa Park. Book early (it sells fast every December), make it part of a day among the park's lights and museums, and come do the single most San Diego thing there is to do at Christmas. Some traditions earn their place; this is one of them.

Diwali Mela 2026 — Artesia Little India Street Festival

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87 days away

Diwali Mela 2026 — Artesia Little India Street Festival

Nov 10, 2026 Pioneer Blvd (183rd to 188th St), …

Pioneer Boulevard shuts down, and for one day the biggest Little India in Southern California becomes the biggest Diwali party west of the Mississippi. The Artesia Diwali Mela takes over seven blocks of Pioneer Boulevard — from 183rd Street to 188th Street — with a main stage of Indian music and dance performances, dozens of food vendors serving everything from chaat to biryani to fresh jalebi, cultural booths, merchants with jewelry and textiles, and a street-level energy that makes Diwali feel like exactly what it is: the festival of lights brought to life in a California parking lane. Sunday, November 10, 2026, 11 AM to 10 PM. Pioneer Boulevard, Artesia, CA. Free admission. If you know someone who grew up celebrating Diwali and hasn't been to this yet, send them this. If you didn't grow up celebrating Diwali and want to understand why a billion people do — come find out.

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87 days away

Water for Elephants

Nov 10, 2026 $45+ Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 60…

Grown adults come out of this one surprised to be wiping their eyes, which is not what anybody expects from a show with aerialists in it. A Depression-era circus, a runaway veterinary student, and a love story told under canvas that smells of sawdust and something more dangerous. Sara Gruen's novel had a long life in book clubs before Broadway got to it, and the staging is why people talk about the production rather than the plot: real circus arts, bodies in the air, puppetry conjuring an entire menagerie out of almost nothing while you watch it happen. It is a big old-fashioned romance done in a way theater has not quite managed before. The touring production plays Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, off the 405 near South Coast Plaza, in November. Bring somebody who still cries at the good ones and does not apologize for it.

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90 days away

Bluey's Big Play

Nov 13, 2026 $35+ San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Thir…

If there is a toddler in your life you already know the theme music, the accents, and precisely which episode makes you quietly lose it on the couch while claiming you have something in your eye. This is a brand-new story from the show's creator, staged with life-sized puppets of Bluey, Bingo, and Mum and Dad — which sounds like a novelty right up until the moment your kid works out that the dog is actually there, in the room, moving. Short, joyful, and scaled exactly right for small people: a real theater outing that respects how long a little one can sit still, full of the games and the heart that made the show what it is. Three days in November at the Civic Theatre downtown. Get the good seats. Let them wear the costume. Fair warning — you are the one who is going to get emotional, and everybody around you will notice.

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98 days away

Candide

Nov 21, 2026 $40+ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N G…

Bring the person who insists opera is not for them. This is the one that wins the argument, and it wins inside twenty minutes, because nobody warned them it would be funny. Bernstein wrote something that refuses to sit still in any genre, part opera, part Broadway musical, part gleeful philosophical cartoon, and sent a wide-eyed hero racing across a world absolutely determined to prove this is not the best of all possible worlds. Then he dropped Glitter and Be Gay into the middle of it, a coloratura fireworks display that leaves audiences roaring and justifies the seat on its own. LA Opera stages it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown, in the run-up to the holidays. Come to laugh where you expected to be lectured, and spend the second act watching your skeptic's face instead of the stage.

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