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San Diego Summer Movies in the Park 2026

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44 Gathering

2 days away

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San Diego Summer Movies in the Park 2026

Every Saturday · Next Oct 10 Free Waterfront Park, 1600 Pacific Hwy,…

Grass under a blanket, somebody's dog wandering the row, and a kid down front narrating the plot to nobody in particular. Half the neighborhood is out here and not one of them paid anything to be. Somebody decided that every part of this city deserved at least one summer evening of a movie outdoors under an actual sky, and then went and did it, park by park, year after year. The format is the whole idea: find the screening closest to you, bring something to sit on, arrive before dark. No seats to reserve, no venue with opinions about your shoes. Just a park turning into a theater for a few hours because people wanted somewhere good to be. The lineup runs wide enough that something is always worth the trip — a recent release, an old one, something the kids have not seen. Rotating locations from July into October, free. Find the one nearest you and tell your neighbors. That is genuinely all it takes.

Rocky Horror Picture Show — Live with Patricia Quinn at Balboa Theatre, San Diego

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21 Gathering

3 days away

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Rocky Horror Picture Show — Live with Patricia Quinn at Balboa Theatre, San Diego

In 3 days · Oct 11 Balboa Theatre, 868 4th Ave, San D…

Thirty newspaper bags. Six water guns. A roll of toilet paper you will throw at the exact right moment. And Patricia Quinn — Magenta herself — standing on the Balboa Theatre stage in the flesh. The Rocky Horror Picture Show screening is one of those events that exists in its own category. It's not a movie. It's not a concert. It's a participatory ritual that's been running for half a century and shows no sign of slowing down, because every generation discovers it at exactly the right age and never fully recovers. The Balboa Theatre showing features the original cast member Patricia Quinn live and in person, making this more than a screening — it's a pilgrimage. Costumes are encouraged. Props are required. The callback lines are non-negotiable. If you don't know them yet, the person sitting next to you will teach you before the opening credits end. Sunday, October 11, 2026. 7:00 PM. Balboa Theatre, San Diego. Shadowcast troupes run this all over the county on nights nobody advertises, and once you know the callbacks you start looking for them.

Silent Movie Mondays: The Headless Horseman (1922) — Balboa Theatre San Diego

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25 Gathering

4 days away

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Silent Movie Mondays: The Headless Horseman (1922) — Balboa Theatre San Diego

Every Monday · Next Oct 12 Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave, Sa…

The rumble of 1,800 pipes waking up inside the walls is the first thing you hear. The Wonder Morton Theatre Organ at the Balboa Theatre is not a soundtrack. It is a living instrument the size of a room, hidden in a chamber above the stage, and when Ken Double sits down to play it the whole building becomes the speaker. The Headless Horseman is the 1922 silent film adaptation of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane — yes, that Will Rogers, before he became the most famous man in America. The film has not been widely screened in decades. You are watching it the way it was meant to be watched: in the dark, in a theater built in 1924, with a live organist scoring every gallop and every shadow in real time. This is the Season Three premiere of Silent Movie Mondays, a series that runs seven films through the fall. The crowd is a beautiful mix — film students, retirees who remember when every theater had an organ, couples on dates who wanted something that wasn’t a streaming algorithm. Monday, September 21, 2026 at 7:00 PM. Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101.

Lyrical Exchange Open Mic — Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center, North Park

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5 days away

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Lyrical Exchange Open Mic — Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center, North Park

Every Tuesday · Next Oct 13 Queen Bee's Art & Cultural Center,…

Every Tuesday night in a North Park arts center, the mic goes live and the room fills with people who came to say something. Poets who have been carrying a verse in their pocket all week. Musicians who want to test a song on a crowd that actually listens. Comedians working out material that might be brilliant or might be a beautiful disaster. Nobody knows until the words leave their mouth. Lyrical Exchange is not a showcase — it is a conversation. The five-dollar cover keeps it intimate. The room at Queen Bee’s is small enough that you can feel the nervous energy of a first-timer three rows back, and the regulars treat newcomers like they belong because the whole point is that everyone does. The format rotates between spoken word, acoustic music, comedy, and whatever else walks through the door. This is the room where the city’s creative community shows up when they need to be heard, not applauded. Every Tuesday, 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM. Five dollars at the door. Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center, 3925 Ohio St in North Park.

San Diego International Film Festival 2026

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6 days away

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San Diego International Film Festival 2026

In 6 days · Oct 14 – Oct 18 Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, 701 Fi…

What you remember from a festival this size is not on the screen. It is the moment the lights come up and the person who made the film stands out of the row behind you and turns out to be a nervous human being answering questions. Bigger festivals cannot hand you that. Here you get a week of films that played Venice or Toronto or Sundance a few weeks earlier, screened downtown within walking distance of each other, with directors and cast actually in the building afterward. International competition titles, American documentaries, shorts programs, and features with local roots. The evenings turn social, premieres bleeding into parties until the entire arts scene of the city is in the same few blocks for the week. Downtown San Diego in October, passes or single tickets, trolley to the door. See one film alone and one with somebody. The second is the one you will still be arguing about in December.

Role Model: Chuck On Tour — Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, San Diego

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5 days away

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Role Model: Chuck On Tour — Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, San Diego

In 5 days · Oct 13 Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Th…

Somewhere between the second verse and the bridge of 'Blind,' you realized this wasn't just a song—it was a mirror. Role Model writes the kind of music that makes heartbreak feel like a shared language, the tracks you sent to someone at 2 AM not because you wanted them to hear a song but because you needed them to understand how you felt without having to say it. Now he's bringing the Chuck On Tour to San Diego State's Open Air Theatre with special guest Samia opening. The outdoor amphitheater sits on a hill at SDSU where October's warm San Diego night fills the space between songs, and the skyline behind the stage makes everything feel more cinematic than it has any right to. His live shows turn audiences into singalongs—strangers harmonizing on lyrics they each thought were private. If someone sent you 'Forever Oh' or 'Stealing the Show' at a weird hour, this is the show you send them back. Tuesday, October 13 at 7:30 PM. Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, 5500 Campanile Dr, San Diego, CA 92182.

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6 days away

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San Diego Gulls vs Ontario Reign

In 6 days · Oct 14 $20+ Pechanga Arena San Diego, 3500 Spo…

Every good hockey team needs a rival it genuinely can't stand, and for the Gulls that is the Ontario Reign — the LA Kings' farm club, a short drive up the freeway, and the kind of opponent that turns a regular Wednesday into a grudge match. AHL hockey at this level is a beautiful contradiction: the players are one call-up away from the NHL, the tickets cost less than a movie, and the hitting is somehow harder than the big league because everyone is fighting for a job. Pechanga gets loud and mean when the Reign are in town, the SoCal hockey diaspora out in force, beer cold and chants sharp. Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 7pm, Pechanga Arena San Diego. Come for the rivalry, stay for the specific joy of a well-timed hip check, and discover that the best sports deal in the county has been hiding in the Sports Arena this whole time.

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9 days away

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D6 Fall Festival

In 9 days · Oct 17 Verne Goodwin Mira Mesa Senior Cen…

Some neighborhoods have to build their own gathering place because the map never bothered to hand them one. Mira Mesa and the Convoy corridor did exactly that, and this is the autumn version of it. Same team as the night market, so the food-truck rows and vendor booths are what most people come for, and then it wraps all of that in everything a fall evening should have: a movie in the park, a trunk-or-treat, pumpkin decorating, live performances, and the particular warmth of an immigrant community that turns out in force for its own. It runs into the evening and it is free. You will watch three generations of one family split a single plate and stay until the movie ends, because nobody wants to be the one who suggests leaving. The senior center on Mira Mesa Boulevard, an October evening, no admission. If you grew up out here, you already know exactly who to send this to.

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10 days away

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Blitzkid, Zombeast, The Writhers

In 10 days · Oct 18 Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, San Die…

Two weeks before Halloween, the people who dress like this all year round get their actual holiday, and it looks nothing at all like the bar crawl everyone else is planning. Horrorpunk is a small and startlingly sincere world: B-movie imagery, greaser haircuts, songs about graveyards delivered with total commitment and absolutely no irony anywhere in the building. The West Virginia headliner has been at it since the nineties and carries a following that treats the band less like entertainment and more like a denomination — people who learned the words at fifteen and have not revised their opinion since. Two more acts sit underneath, both leaning the same direction, so the aesthetic holds all night instead of breaking between sets. If you have never been in a room like this, the thing that surprises people is how friendly it is. The look is hostile. The crowd is not. Doors at seven, first band at eight, a Sunday. October 18, Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd. Wear the jacket. San Diego runs a full calendar of this every October and it operates almost entirely by word of mouth.

San Diego Asian Film Festival 2026 (SDAFF)

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28 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 28 days away

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San Diego Asian Film Festival 2026 (SDAFF)

Nov 5 – Nov 14, 2026 Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, 701 5t…

You sit down in a 200-person theater for a film you could not have seen anywhere else in the country, and the director is in the seat next to you, waiting to talk about it when the credits roll. That is not a rare accident at this festival — it is the rule. For anyone who cares about Asian cinema, this is the most direct path into the full range of what is being made across a dozen countries and cultures, not just the handful of films that reach wide US release. The San Diego Asian Film Festival is one of North America's most significant Asian and Asian American film festivals, presenting over 100 films across ten days from November 5–14. Since 1999 it has been the destination for Asian cinema that has not yet found a theatrical home — often the first place American audiences discover films that later surface in awards-season conversation. Ten days of screenings run across multiple San Diego venues, from world premieres to retrospectives of Asian cinema classics, with real depth in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and South Asian film, plus narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and animation. Filmmaker Q&As are frequent, and the atmosphere is simultaneously cinephile-serious and community-celebratory. For Asian Americans it is one of the few film events where seeing yourself, your family, and your cultural reality onscreen is the rule rather than the exception. Many films here will not be available anywhere else in the US until months later, if ever. Festival passes offer the best value if you plan to see more than three films — single tickets sell out quickly for high-demand titles, and popular films at the main venue fill within hours of the programming announcement. The Opening Night Gala is a social event as much as a screening, and the Programmers Picks section is where to start if you are overwhelmed by choice. SDAFF runs at a moment when Asian and Asian American storytelling has moved from niche to center. Everything Everywhere All at Once, Past Lives, Minari, and the global dominance of Korean film and television have created an audience hungry for more. The festival has been feeding that hunger for 27 years. The mainstream finally caught up.

The Creepy Creeps, Mistress 77, Widows, Rey Wolf

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23 days away

The Creepy Creeps, Mistress 77, Widows, Rey Wolf

Oct 31, 2026 Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, San Die…

Halloween as an adult is usually a bar charging eleven dollars to watch strangers in store-bought costumes look at their phones. You have done that version. It is not the one you remember wanting. The alternative is a room where the band is also in costume and has been for twenty years. The Creepy Creeps play monster-movie garage surf in masks, which is the sort of commitment that stops reading as a gimmick somewhere around the second song and starts reading as a genuine belief system. Three more acts behind them, so the night has actual shape instead of one set and a DJ. Doors at eight, first band at nine. Four bands on Halloween night means you will be there until it is November. Saturday October 31, Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd. Wear something. The horror-punk corner of this city is small, permanent, and considerably older than you would guess from the crowd.

Medium Build — The King of Having Fun Tour at Observatory North Park

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25 days away

Medium Build — The King of Having Fun Tour at Observatory North Park

Nov 2, 2026 The Observatory North Park, 2891 U…

You know that feeling when the whole room is moving and nobody rehearsed it — when the bass line picks up and two hundred strangers decide at exactly the same moment that tonight is the night they stop being careful. Medium Build makes music for that moment. Nick Carpenter built this project in a garage in Boise and turned it into something that fills rooms coast to coast with people who never heard the word 'indie-folk' and don't care. The live show is a sweaty, theatrical, grinning mess — brass instruments nobody expected, singalongs nobody planned, and a drummer who looks like he's having more fun than anyone in the building. The Scratch opens. Monday nights at the Observatory have a different energy than the weekend — smaller crowd, louder per capita, everyone there on purpose. If you've never heard either act, that's the point. This is the kind of Monday night that makes Tuesday morning feel like a badge of honor. Monday, November 2, 2026 · Doors 7 PM / Show 8 PM · The Observatory North Park, 2891 University Ave, San Diego, CA 92104 · All ages · Tickets via Ticketmaster

The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary Celebration of Life Concert — SDCC 2026

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The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary Celebration of Life Concert — SDCC 2026

Jul 23, 2026 House of Blues San Diego, 1055 Fif…

Hasbro's tongue-in-cheek Apology Tour arrives at House of Blues San Diego during SDCC week — and if you grew up with the 1986 Transformers movie, you already know what they're apologizing for. Forty years after the animated film that traumatized a generation (yes, THAT scene), this is the live concert celebration that turns grief into guitar solos. Stan Bush performs The Touch — the anthem that has outlived the movie, the toys, and every live-action sequel since. Vince DiCola, who scored the original film, returns with the synth-heavy compositions that defined an era. Britta Phillips, the original singing voice of Jem from Jem and the Holograms, brings an unexpected crossover that 80s kids didn't know they needed. Knights of Unicron and Cold Slither round out a lineup built for people who know that 1986 was the year animation got serious. This is not a nostalgia act. This is the room where people who cried at a cartoon robot's death — and never fully recovered — gather to hear the music that made it hit so hard. The kind of night where a stranger next to you mouths every word to Dare and you realize you've known each other your whole life. Doors open at 7 PM. Show starts at 8 PM. General admission is 50 dollars. VIP is 100 dollars and includes early entry, exclusive merch, private viewing area, and a gift bag of curated items. House of Blues San Diego is at 1055 Fifth Ave — walking distance from the Convention Center. Part of Hasbro's year-long 40th anniversary celebration of The Transformers: The Movie.

Three Days Grace: Alienation Tour with I Prevail — Viejas Arena, San Diego

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43 days away

Three Days Grace: Alienation Tour with I Prevail — Viejas Arena, San Diego

Nov 20, 2026 Viejas Arena at Aztec Bowl, San Di…

The lights drop. The bass hits first. And for two hours, every person in Viejas Arena gets to be exactly as angry as they actually are. Three Days Grace and I Prevail together is a co-headliner built for the crowd that discovered rock music when it felt like a lifeline — and never stopped needing it. The Alienation Tour is named for the feeling, and the setlist is designed to burn through it. TDG brings twenty years of anthems that never left rotation. I Prevail brings the metalcore energy that makes the floor move in waves. The Funeral Portrait opens and sets the tone early — dark, theatrical, and loud. Viejas Arena at SDSU is an underrated rock venue — small enough that the sound stays thick and fills the room, loud enough that the student section makes it feel like a festival. November in San Diego means the night air carries the bass through the parking lot long after the house lights come up. Friday, November 20, 2026. Doors 6:00 PM. Show 7:00 PM. Viejas Arena at Aztec Bowl, San Diego State University.

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41 days away

San Diego Gulls vs Bakersfield Condors

Nov 18, 2026 $18+ Pechanga Arena, 3500 Sports Arena …

Somewhere on that ice is a kid who will be in the NHL sooner than anyone expects and does not know it yet. That is the whole appeal of minor league hockey — everyone plays like their life is one shift from changing, because it is. Bakersfield brings Edmonton's prospects down, so both benches are full of players auditioning in real time. It is fast, it is loose, and the mistakes are as interesting as the goals. A weeknight at Pechanga is the connoisseur's ticket: easy to get into, cheap enough to decide over dinner, and close enough to the glass that you can hear what they say to each other out there. Pechanga Arena on Sports Arena Blvd, on a November weeknight. Duck out of the middle of your week and go watch somebody's career turn over in front of you. It costs about what a movie does and you will be describing it far longer.

San Diego Environmental Film Festival 2026 — UC San Diego

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43 days away

San Diego Environmental Film Festival 2026 — UC San Diego

Every day · Next Nov 20 Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic …

The ocean doesn't lobby. The kelp forests off La Jolla don't run ad campaigns when they collapse. And the people who spend their lives documenting what is happening to the natural world — the filmmakers who wade into wildfire zones and dive into dying reefs — rarely get a red carpet. This weekend, they do. The San Diego Environmental Film Festival returns to UCSD's Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts with three days of films you will not find on any streaming platform: stories about water, land, creatures, and the people who still believe the fight is worth having. The campus kickoff on Friday features surf punk band KOCEAN at CHE Cafe. Saturday is the community gathering. Sunday night brings the red carpet showcase. The screenings are flanked by filmmaker panels, local food, and the kind of conversations that happen when a room full of people actually care about the same thing. This is not a lecture. It is the room where the people who have not given up find each other. Co-sponsored by the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, John Muir College, and Environmental Studies at UC San Diego. The arguing carries into the courtyard afterward, where the rest of it happens.

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73 Gathering

70 days away

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Avengers: Doomsday — Opening Night

Dec 17 – Dec 18, 2026 AMC Mission Valley 20, 1640 Camino…

There is a half-second of dead silence in a packed theater right before something enormous lands, and then a sound five hundred people make at once that does not exist anywhere else on earth. Those two seconds are the entire reason to leave your house. You cannot download them. Opening night of an Avengers picture is its own category of evening. Years of setup arrive simultaneously, and the room's reaction becomes part of what the movie actually is — the gasp, the swearing two rows back, the guy who claps alone and is immediately joined by everyone. Watch it on a laptop in three months and you are watching a different film. Book a premium format early. This was built for the largest screen you can find, in Mission Valley or anywhere else. Send this to whoever sat beside you for the last one. You already know the name. Ask them now, before the good seats go.

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53 days away

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The Meteors

Nov 30, 2026 Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd, San …

Psychobilly is a genre almost nobody stumbles into by accident — you get handed it, usually by one person, usually around sixteen, and then it stays. This is the band that invented it, in England, in 1980, out of rockabilly played too fast and horror movies watched too often. The rule their following adopted decades ago is that only the band matters and politics stay outside, which produced one of the most stubbornly self-contained scenes in music. Forty-odd years on the founder is still leading it and the upright bass is still doing the heavy lifting. Rooms for this are full of quiffs and people who have flown in. The San Diego bar on El Cajon Boulevard is small, dark, and exactly the correct scale. Music at 8:00 PM, doors an hour earlier, twenty-one and over. Monday nights in this city are usually dead, and the people who fill one for a band like this all know exactly who else is going to be there.

Sleepless in Seattle in Concert — San Diego Symphony at The Rady Shell

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64 days away

Sleepless in Seattle in Concert — San Diego Symphony at The Rady Shell

Dec 11, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 124…

Near the end of the movie, Sam stands on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and the camera holds on his face for three full seconds before Meg Ryan appears. In those three seconds, the orchestra carries everything the character cannot say. You've heard it through speakers a dozen times. You've never heard it performed by a live symphony while the film plays on a screen overlooking the San Diego bay. The San Diego Symphony performs the complete score of Sleepless in Seattle at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park — Marc Shaiman's arrangements, the Nat King Cole needle-drops, the Jimmy Durante moment that lands harder than it has any right to. The orchestra sits between you and the screen, and the score exists in the room as a physical thing, vibrating in the air, rather than a signal compressed into a speaker. Every romantic movie you've ever watched alone on a couch prepared you for exactly this feeling, and none of them prepared you for how different it is when you can see the violinist's face. One performance only: Friday, December 11, 2026 at 7:30 PM. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 1245 Seventh Ave, San Diego. Tickets via the San Diego Symphony box office.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York — Live in Concert with the San Diego Symphony

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65 days away

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York — Live in Concert with the San Diego Symphony

Dec 12, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 124…

You already know the ending. You've seen Kevin outrun the Sticky Bandits a hundred times. You've memorized the face he makes at the concierge, the Plaza Hotel lobby, the way the pigeon lady turns out to be the bravest person in the whole movie. None of that matters, because you've never heard John Williams' score performed live twenty feet from your chair while the film plays on a screen the size of a building. The San Diego Symphony performs the complete Home Alone 2 score at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park — outdoors, under the December sky, with the bay behind you and Williams' orchestral arrangements filling the kind of open air they were always meant to fill. The brass hits different when there's no ceiling. The strings hit different when you can see the cellist's bow. The moment Kevin walks through a snowy Central Park and the full orchestra swells beneath it — that's the moment you understand why people keep coming back to this format. You already knew the movie. You didn't know the music. This is a holiday tradition built for the person who watches Christmas movies year-round and the person dragged along by them. Both leave converted. One night only: Saturday, December 12, 2026 at 6:00 PM. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 1245 Seventh Ave, San Diego.

Elf the Musical — Broadway San Diego at the Civic Theatre (Holiday Season 2026)

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17 Gathering

82 days away

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Elf the Musical — Broadway San Diego at the Civic Theatre (Holiday Season 2026)

Every day · Next Dec 29 San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 3rd …

The movie became a meme became a cultural institution became a Broadway musical became the thing every family does between Christmas and New Year's because nothing else captures that specific week-between-holidays energy quite like Buddy the Elf trying to hug a stranger. Elf the Musical at the San Diego Civic Theatre is the holiday show that works for the four-year-old and the forty-year-old in the same row — and both of them will be singing 'Santa's Coming to Town' on the drive home. The touring production brings the full Broadway staging: the sets are enormous, the costumes are absurd, and the cast treats the material with exactly the right amount of seriousness, which is none at all. Broadway San Diego closes the 2026 calendar with this one, and the timing is perfect — the week between Christmas and New Year's when nobody has anywhere to be and everyone needs somewhere to go. December 29, 2026 through January 3, 2027. San Diego Civic Theatre, downtown.

World Ballet Company: The Nutcracker — Balboa Theatre, San Diego

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World Ballet Company: The Nutcracker — Balboa Theatre, San Diego

Dec 26, 2026 Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave, Sa…

The tree has been opened. The presents have been sorted. The relatives have gone quiet. And now it is the evening of December 26 and you are looking for the thing that extends the feeling one more day — the warm, orchestral, velvet-curtain feeling that December gives you when it's working. World Ballet Company brings The Nutcracker to San Diego's Balboa Theatre with 40 dancers, over 150 hand-sewn costumes, and the kind of hand-crafted sets that make you forget you're in a theater and not inside a music box. This is the post-Christmas Nutcracker — the one for the people who didn't get tickets to the earlier run, or who want to see a different company's interpretation, or who simply believe that one Nutcracker per season is not enough. The Land of Sweets scene alone justifies the evening. One show only: Saturday, December 26, 2026 at 7:00 PM. Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave, San Diego. Tickets through AXS and the Balboa Theatre box office.

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73 days away

Love Actually Live In Concert

Dec 20, 2026 from $45 Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave, Sa…

You have argued about this film. Everyone has. Somebody at some point told you the Keira Knightley cue-card scene is indefensible and somebody else cried at the airport montage in front of you, and the argument is now an annual fixture of your December whether you want it or not. What a live orchestra does to it is strange and worth reporting: the score stops being wallpaper. Craig Armstrong wrote something genuinely sad under all that Christmas, and when forty musicians play it in a room instead of through a laptop, the scenes people mock get very quiet and the ones people love get almost unbearable. The film runs complete and uncut on the screen above the players. The crowd laughs in the right places, loudly, because a cinema full of people who chose this is a different animal to a sofa. Go with the person you have the argument with. Balboa Theatre, downtown San Diego, a Sunday evening five days before Christmas, seven o'clock.

Noel Noel — San Diego Symphony Holiday Concert at The Rady Shell

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71 days away

Noel Noel — San Diego Symphony Holiday Concert at The Rady Shell

Every day · Next Dec 18 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 124…

When a brass section plays a carol outdoors in December, the music doesn't bounce off walls and come back to you compressed. It goes out into the night air and keeps going, mixing with the salt and the cold and the ambient hum of a city settling into the holidays. That's what Noel Noel is — the San Diego Symphony's annual holiday concert, performed at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park where the bay sits behind the stage and the December sky sits above it. The program is a mix of orchestral holiday arrangements, singalong carols, and the kind of show-stopping vocal moments that remind you why live music exists. This isn't background music at a mall. This is a full symphony orchestra playing holiday repertoire with the same intensity they bring to Beethoven, because the music deserves it and so do you. The crowd is families, couples, groups who made this the anchor of their December calendar years ago and aren't stopping now. Three performances: Friday, December 18 at 7:30 PM, Saturday, December 19 at 6:00 PM, and Sunday, December 20 at 4:30 PM. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 1245 Seventh Ave, San Diego. Tickets through the San Diego Symphony box office.

San Diego Gulls vs. Tucson Roadrunners — Sunday at Pechanga

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80 days away

San Diego Gulls vs. Tucson Roadrunners — Sunday at Pechanga

Dec 27, 2026 Pechanga Arena San Diego, 3500 Spo…

The Sunday between Christmas and New Year's is the flattest day of the year. Everybody is home, nobody has plans, and the default is another afternoon of the same television. A five o'clock puck drop rescues it for the price of a movie ticket. Pechanga Arena in that dead week fills with families who have run out of things to do with visiting relatives, which makes for a forgiving, cheerful, slightly chaotic crowd — the opposite of the tense building a playoff race produces. Tucson visits for the second time in a month, and the Gulls will have scores to settle from it. Worth knowing: the arena is a genuinely old building, concrete and loud, and the upper seats have a better view of the full ice than the expensive ones do. Concessions are the old-fashioned kind rather than a curated food hall, and in that week of leftovers a plain arena hot dog is oddly the correct meal. Five o'clock, Sunday the twenty-seventh, Sports Arena Boulevard.

Little Italy Summer Film Festival 2026 — Amici Park, San Diego

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Little Italy Summer Film Festival 2026 — Amici Park, San Diego

Sep 26, 2026 Free Amici Park, W Date St & State St, …

The marine layer usually arrives around the third act, which is when everyone reaches for the jacket they were told to bring and nobody leaves anyway. Amici Park is a small amphitheatre wedged between restaurants, so the air smells like garlic and jasmine while an Italian film runs with English subtitles and the whole park spends two hours living somewhere else. Cinema Little Italy has been doing this quietly for years, without fanfare, on a patch of grass most of the city walks straight past. The programming rotates week to week — neorealism one Saturday, comedy the next, always something you would never have found on your own. People bring their own blankets and a bottle of something red. Free, outdoors, summer evenings in the heart of the neighborhood. Bring the person who will argue with you about the ending the entire walk home.

Beach Movie Night — Mission Beach, San Diego (Summer 2026)

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Beach Movie Night — Mission Beach, San Diego (Summer 2026)

Aug 30 – Aug 31, 2026 Mission Beach, San Diego, CA 92109

You find out about it from someone who went last month — that is the only way anyone finds out. No venue, no ticket booth, no marketing budget: just a projector, a screen on the sand, and the Pacific close enough that you can hear it between scenes. Beach Movie Night is about as genuinely word-of-mouth as San Diego events get. The film is chosen by community vote on Instagram and projected on the beach after dark, free to attend, with fire-pit energy and the ocean for a soundtrack. The film changes every edition. The beach stays the same. Send this to the friend who is always trying to find the thing nobody else knows about. July and August editions run on Saturday evenings at Mission Beach. Exact dates and film are announced via @beachmovienightsd on Instagram. Show up as the sun sets, bring a blanket and something to eat, and know that the best seats on the sand go early.

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Cradle of Filth: Majestic in Death II — The Observatory North Park

Sep 29, 2026 2891 University Ave, San Diego, CA…

Thirty years ago, Dani Filth screamed over a pipe organ on Dusk... and Her Embrace and built a cathedral inside extreme metal that nobody else has been able to replicate since. The Majestic in Death II tour celebrates that anniversary with the kind of theatrical darkness that only a band with three decades of gothic spectacle can deliver. At The Observatory North Park, where the ceiling is low enough that the fog machines transform the room into a crypt, the production hits differently than it does in a festival field — you can feel the bass in your sternum and see the stage paint on Filth's face from the fourth row. Black Satellite, Worm, and Moonspell open, making this a bill designed for the person who keeps a battle jacket in the back of their closet and has been waiting for an excuse to pull it out. Doors at 5 PM, show at 6 PM on Monday, September 29, at 2891 University Avenue in North Park.

The Midnight: Time Machines Tour — SOMA San Diego

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The Midnight: Time Machines Tour — SOMA San Diego

Sep 18, 2026 SOMA, 3350 Sports Arena Blvd, San …

You know the feeling at two in the morning when an old synth line comes on and the highway briefly looks like a movie you starred in twenty years ago. That is the entire catalog, and live it is worse, or better, depending on how much of yourself you were planning to hold together tonight. Tyler Lyle and Tim McEwan write like the soundtrack to a John Hughes film that never got made: neon-drenched synths, saxophone breaks with no business being that devastating, and a treatment of nostalgia as a superpower rather than an affliction. The newer record leans harder into the sci-fi end of it. But the show is where the thing reveals itself, because this is not an audience watching a band. It is a room of people who each independently worked out that synthwave is a feeling, and then discovered they were not alone in it. SOMA in San Diego, all ages, a concrete room where the sound finds you personally. Bring whoever used to drive around with you at night with nowhere to be.

Screen on the Green 2026 — Balboa Park, San Diego

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Screen on the Green 2026 — Balboa Park, San Diego

Aug 27, 2026 Free Botanical Garden Lawn, 1549 El Pra…

The California Tower goes dark against the August sky, and below it, a lawn full of strangers settles in for two hours of something they did not plan. The San Diego Museum of Art sets up the screen on the Botanical Garden Lawn, and by sundown the grass is a quilt of blankets and camp chairs and families who carried their dinner in a tote bag because they know the drill. The films change weekly — sometimes a classic, sometimes a crowd-pleaser — but the real draw is the night itself: the silhouette of the California Tower behind the screen, the kids who fall asleep before the second act, the couples who came for the movie and stayed for the quiet walk back through the park after the credits roll. Grab sandwiches from Panama 66's Grab and Go before it closes at sundown. Arrive early for the Lovesac Lounge giveaway if you want the best seat in the house. Free admission. Thursdays in August, screenings begin at sundown (approximately 8 PM). Botanical Garden Lawn, 1549 El Prado, San Diego.

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MTG The Hobbit Prerelease — TCS Rockets

Aug 7, 2026 7626 Miramar Rd Suite 3900, San Di…

Nobody at the table has played with these cards before, and that's the entire appeal. A Prerelease is the weekend you get Magic's newest set before it's officially out — six sealed packs, a deck you build from whatever you crack, and a pod of strangers all solving the same puzzle at once. This one drops Middle-earth onto the table: Bilbo and Gandalf, the One Ring, and a Smaug card that will wreck you at least once before you work out the answer to it. Sealed is the great equalizer — no netdeck, no advantage, just you and what the packs gave you. You show up alone and leave having spent four hours with people who now also have strong opinions about how to beat a dragon. There and back again, in card form. Bring the friend who quotes the movies from memory.

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My Chemical Romance: Black Parade 20th

Aug 30, 2026 From $65 100 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92101

For a certain generation this record was the soundtrack to becoming a person - the theatrical, operatic sound that shaped an entire decade, tracks like 'Welcome to the Black Parade,' 'Famous Last Words,' and 'I Don't Love You' that stayed anthems long after the kids who memorized them grew up. Now the band returns to perform The Black Parade in full, marking the album's 20th anniversary, at an open-air stadium built for exactly this kind of night. This is the definitive version of a full-album anniversary show, one of the most important rock records of the 2000s played start to finish. Petco Park holds over 40,000 for stadium shows, with clear sightlines from the field and lower bowl; doors open at 5:00 PM. The stadium is easily reached from the 5 Freeway, the Gaslamp Trolley Station is a short walk away, and parking in the East Village and Gaslamp Quarter is widely available. My Chemical Romance: Black Parade 20th, at Petco Park in San Diego.

The Cybertronic Spree — Live at Brick by Brick, San Diego

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The Cybertronic Spree — Live at Brick by Brick, San Diego

Aug 12, 2026 Brick by Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave, S…

The guitarist is dressed as Arcee. The drummer is Bumblebee. Every member performs in full Transformer armor, and the genuinely surprising part of the whole spectacle is that the playing is unreasonably good. This is a touring band that plays the entire 1986 Transformers: The Movie soundtrack live. The one with The Touch by Stan Bush. The one with Dare and the Weird Al track and the Vince DiCola score that wrecked you when Optimus Prime died. They do all of it, in full robot regalia, with the attack of a metal band that happens to love Saturday morning cartoons. Brick by Brick is the correct room for this, a two-hundred-capacity grimy little jewel box San Diego keeps for loud music and weird bills. It falls midweek. You will have to explain to your boss why you are wrecked the next morning, and the explanation will be worth it. If you ever rewound that VHS tape, or air-guitared to The Touch alone in your car, somebody needs to send you this.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Concert — Rady Shell San Diego

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Concert — Rady Shell San Diego

Aug 21, 2026 Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222 Mar…

The first four notes of Hedwig's Theme have never failed to do the thing they do - and hearing them played by a full orchestra, in real time, while the film runs on a screen above the water, is a different order of the feeling entirely. This is not a concert with some Harry Potter branding stapled on; the San Diego Symphony performs John Williams' complete score for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone live, synchronized to the movie, every scene he scored - the quidditch match, the troll in the dungeon, the final confrontation. It plays three nights at the Rady Shell, the waterfront amphitheatre on the Embarcadero, with the San Diego skyline behind the stage. The fandom in this city has been waiting a long time, and three nights is still not enough seats for everyone who wants to go. August 21, 22, and 23, 2026, 7pm. Tickets at theshell.org. Book early.

Interpol — North America Tour 2026 at The Rady Shell San Diego

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Interpol — North America Tour 2026 at The Rady Shell San Diego

Aug 15, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 200…

There's a sound that belongs to the moment when the streetlights come on and you're walking somewhere you shouldn't be going but can't stop yourself. Interpol has been making that sound for twenty-five years, and it hasn't lost a single watt of its pull. Interpol plays The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego on Friday, August 15 at 7 PM, with julie opening. The Rady Shell is one of the most beautiful outdoor concert venues in Southern California — an open-air bandshell on the downtown waterfront with the harbor behind the stage and the skyline framing the whole production. Seeing a band this atmospheric in a venue this cinematic is the kind of alignment that only happens a few times a year. The Rady Shell's open seating and lawn sections mean the experience scales from front-row intensity to blanket-on-the-grass chill depending on where you plant yourself. The venue is at 200 Marina Park Way, walking distance from the Convention Center trolley stop and the Gaslamp Quarter. The kind of night where the venue and the artist are saying the same thing. Bring someone who understands why that matters.

Catamaran Resort Bayside Movie Nights - San Diego (Summer 2026)

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Catamaran Resort Bayside Movie Nights - San Diego (Summer 2026)

Jul 13, 2026 Catamaran Resort Hotel, 3999 Missi…

The Catamaran runs outdoor movies on Mission Bay every Monday through summer, and the setting changes what watching a movie means. The water is a few feet away. The air smells like salt and sunscreen. The screen is outside in the way only San Diego can justify on a July Monday night. They show films the way the venue earns them: movies that make sense with the bay behind the screen. Tropical resort energy, bring-a-blanket, the kind of place where people show up early to claim the right spot on the grass. The analog version, sound carrying across the open air the way it always did. Monday nights June through September. Check the resort calendar for the specific film each week. The bay does not change. The movie does.

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Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra

Aug 23, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222…

Half the room came for the man from the movies and leaves having fallen for the piano player. Something delights in watching a face you associate with dinosaurs and eccentric monologues sit down at a jazz piano and turn out to genuinely, unfussily swing. Jeff Goldblum has been playing standards on quiet Monday nights for decades, and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra is a real band, loose and warm and funnier than it has any right to be. He'll tell a rambling story, take a request, tease the crowd, then drop into a ballad that shuts the whole lawn up. It's the rare night where the jazz obsessive who owns the vinyl and the person who just wanted to see a celebrity end up elbow to elbow, both grinning like idiots. He always ends up chatting with the front row between numbers. Bring someone who swears they don't like jazz and watch them quietly cave over the course of one warm, slightly ridiculous evening on the downtown bayfront.

clipping. + Open Mike Eagle + Pedestrian Deposit

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clipping. + Open Mike Eagle + Pedestrian Deposit

Aug 4, 2026 $25-$30 Music Box, 1337 India St, San Dieg…

Imagine a rap album where the beat is a sample of broken machinery and the verse is a whole short story about the apocalypse -- and then imagine it's actually good. That's clipping., the trio of Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, who decided rap could share a stage with horror movies and harsh noise and nobody had to apologize for either. Open Mike Eagle is on the bill tonight, which is the right pairing: ten years of the funniest, saddest, most articulate underground rap in California. Pedestrian Deposit opens with their harsh-noise duo set -- exactly the warmup this room needs. Music Box on a Tuesday is the place that books the shows nobody else in San Diego will -- about five hundred capacity, downtown. Bring the friend who taped Open Mike's mixtapes off Bandcamp before he had a Wikipedia page; the whole room did. Doors at seven, music at eight. Twenty-five dollars.

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The Music of John Williams — Rady Shell San Diego

Jul 31, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 200…

Close your eyes during the Imperial March and tell me you don't straighten your spine. Open them during the Hedwig's Theme and tell me you don't feel eleven years old, standing in a hallway that shouldn't exist. John Williams didn't write movie music. He wrote the emotional architecture of three generations, and on July 31 the San Diego Symphony Orchestra performs it live under the open sky. Conductor David Newman leads the full orchestra through an all-Williams program at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park — the waterfront amphitheater where the bay stretches out behind the stage like it was designed for this exact purpose. Harry Potter. Indiana Jones. Star Wars. E.T. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Jaws. Each piece performed live while San Diego's skyline glows behind eighty musicians who know exactly what these notes mean to the people in those seats. The Rady Shell sits on the harbor. The sound carries across the water. The program moves through decades of cinema like a highlight reel of every feeling you've ever had in the dark of a theater — except now the dark is a summer sky and the strangers beside you are all holding their breath at the same moment. Lawn seating. Table seating. Either way, by the time the brass reaches the Star Wars finale, nobody is sitting down.

Kevin Smith Live at American Comedy Co — SDCC 2026

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Kevin Smith Live at American Comedy Co — SDCC 2026

Jul 23 – Jul 25, 2026 818 Sixth Avenue, San Diego, CA 92…

The best Comic-Con happens when you leave the convention center. Kevin Smith has run on that principle for over a decade, and his SDCC residency is the proof -- a filmmaker who genuinely cannot stop talking, in a room full of people who genuinely want to listen. From July 23 through 25, 2026, Smith brings four of his signature live formats to the 200-seat American Comedy Co in the Gaslamp Quarter. Thursday opens with Fatman Beyond, Smith's weekly deep-dive into superhero movies and comic book culture, co-hosted with Marc Bernardin. This is the format that predicted the DCU reboot two years before it was announced. The crowd is not passive -- they shout corrections, demand hot takes, and occasionally know more than the hosts. Friday doubles up: Jay and Silent Bob Are In The Hizzhouse brings Jason Mewes for the duo's famously unpredictable chemistry, followed by Comics On With Jay and Silent Bob, a show-and-tell of the week's actual comic books. Saturday finishes with Diary of a Man Child and Hollywood Babble On, Smith's signature irreverent Hollywood storytelling format. The venue seats 200. Comic-Con draws 130,000. The math is the appeal -- this is the show your friends cannot get into. Smith has been doing these SDCC residencies for over a decade, and the regulars treat it like a reunion. The comedy is not polished stand-up; it's a filmmaker who cannot stop talking, in a room full of people who want to listen. Every show is different because Smith does not have a set -- he has stories that have not been told yet. Tickets are 53 dollars per show, 21 and over, with a two-drink minimum. American Comedy Co is at 818 Sixth Avenue in the Gaslamp, walking distance from the Convention Center. Shows sell out -- the 2025 run was gone within hours of announcement.

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Disney ’80s–90s Celebration in Concert — The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park

Aug 7, 2026 $39-129 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222…

The opening notes of Under the Sea land and thirty years collapse. You are on a living room carpet, the television is the entire world, and Sebastian is completely correct that everything is better down where it is wetter. A full symphony orchestra plays it straight, which is the part that gets people — no wink, no irony, Broadway vocalists singing this material like it deserves the treatment, because it does. Hercules, A Goofy Movie, Toy Story, Newsies, Aladdin, The Lion King, Tarzan, Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, The Disney Afternoon. Rock-concert lighting and animation thrown up above the harbor while the orchestra works underneath it all. This is not a children's show. It is the soundtrack of one specific emotional era, played outdoors on the water for the adults who never stopped humming it. Bring whoever watched those movies on the carpet beside you. Do not pretend you are going to hold it together.

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Rooftop Cinema Club — World Cup Final Watch Party at Porto Vista Hotel, San Diego

Jul 19, 2026 1835 Columbia St, 5th Floor, San D…

You already know where you will be on July 19. The question is whether you will watch the World Cup Final from a couch or from a rooftop overlooking San Diego Bay with a cocktail in your hand and the entire city below you holding its breath at the same time. Rooftop Cinema Club transforms the fifth floor of the Porto Vista Hotel into a watch party with sweeping views of Little Italy and the harbor. The FIFA World Cup 2026 Final kicks off at 1:00 PM Pacific on a large LED screen — the same setup that makes this one of San Diego's most coveted outdoor entertainment venues. Personal wireless headphones ensure you hear every whistle and every roar. Fresh popcorn is included with most tickets. A full bar and food menu are available. The kind of World Cup moment that becomes a story — the final watched from a San Diego rooftop in July sun, the city visible in every direction, strangers becoming friends for 90 minutes because the stakes are high enough to make you forget you just met. Located at 1835 Columbia Street, Fifth Floor. Doors open 30 to 60 minutes before kickoff. Tickets from $11 with military and student discounts.

Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc — Fan Screening Community Event San Diego

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Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc — Fan Screening Community Event San Diego

Jun 7, 2026 AMC Mission Valley, 1640 Camino de…

Chainsaw Man: The Movie — Reze Arc is in theaters now across San Diego, and the local anime fan community is gathering. The film adapts the Reze Arc from Tatsuki Fujimoto manga — a self-contained story with Reze as one of the most complex characters in the Chainsaw Man universe. Whether you are a manga reader who has waited for this or an anime-only fan, this is the recommended community theater experience. AMC theaters in San Diego are showing the film — check AMC Mission Valley, AMC La Jolla, and AMC Chula Vista for current showtimes. Subbed and dubbed versions available. Crunchyroll Fan subscribers may have early access screening access at participating theaters. Running time approximately 1 hour 45 minutes. Post-credits scene worth staying for. This community event page is for SD-area fans who want to watch together and meet other fans. Check r/ChainsawMan Reddit for local fan coordination. Bring a friend who has not seen the series — the Reze arc works as a standalone entry point.

Rosalia: LUX Tour 2026 — Pechanga Arena San Diego

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Rosalia: LUX Tour 2026 — Pechanga Arena San Diego

Jul 3, 2026 3500 Sports Arena Blvd, San Diego,…

Rosalia brings her LUX Tour to Pechanga Arena San Diego on July 3, 2026. Grammy winner redefining Spanish-language pop with flamenco roots. The LUX Tour is built around light as its central design element, evolving from intimate acoustics to overwhelming spectacle. Pechanga Arena is at 3500 Sports Arena Blvd, San Diego, CA 92110. MTS Bus Route 928. On-site parking opens 90min before showtime. The show runs approximately two hours. General admission is largely sold out; premium seating remains available at Ticketmaster. Sold-out sections possible — check Ticketmaster for current availability before purchasing. This is part of the North American tour leg that also hit Kia Forum in Los Angeles June 29 and July 1. For SD fans, this is the date. The venue holds approximately 14,500. Rideshare is recommended as parking fills quickly for arena shows. The show typically includes her full catalog from Los Angelxs to Motomami with theatrical staging.

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Disney's Beauty and the Beast — Broadway San Diego at Civic Theatre

Jul 7 – Jul 12, 2026 San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Thir…

Something happens in the first ten minutes of Beauty and the Beast that no amount of knowing the story prepares you for. The curtain rises, the orchestra swells from somewhere you cannot see, and a room full of grown adults who came because their children asked suddenly forget they are grown adults. Disney is bringing Beauty and the Beast back to San Diego for the first time in over 25 years, and this is not the movie you remember projected onto a stage. This is a full-scale Broadway touring production with sets that transform in front of you, costumes that make you forget there are people inside them, and an orchestra playing the Oscar-winning score live — "Be Our Guest," "Something There," "Beauty and the Beast" — every note earned in real time. The production runs July 7-12, 2026 at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Eight performances over six days. Matinee and evening shows available. What makes this production different from the dozens of Beauty and the Beast stagings over the years is that Disney waited. They waited until they had spectacular new sets, new costumes, new choreography — and they waited until a generation of children who grew up on the animated film now have children of their own. The parents in the audience are not revisiting something. They are watching their children discover it for the first time. Tickets start at 2 through Ticketmaster. The Civic Theatre seats 2,967 — this is not a small show in a small room. This is Broadway landing in San Diego for one week.

Dandadan: First Encounter — U.S. Theatrical Screening

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Dandadan: First Encounter — U.S. Theatrical Screening

Jun 6, 2026 AMC Theatres and Cinemark location…

Dandadan: First Encounter brings the wildest anime of 2025 to U.S. theaters on June 6, 2026 — a limited theatrical run from GKIDS and Fathom Events that packages the first arc of the beloved series for the big screen experience it deserves. The series follows Momo Ayase, who believes in ghosts but not aliens, and Ken Okarun, who believes in aliens but not ghosts — until the day they both turn out to be right. What follows is a supernatural action comedy that mixes paranormal investigator energy with shounen battle sequences and genuine emotional depth. The theatrical presentation brings the animation's kinetic visual style — OLM's dynamic direction, Eunyoung Choi's fluid action choreography — to a format where the scale actually registers. GKIDS theatrical screenings typically run at AMC, Regal, and Cinemark locations with subtitled and dubbed options. Check your local listings for exact showtimes and theater availability in Los Angeles and San Diego. This is not a watch-at-home event. The theatrical window is limited. If you've already watched the series on Netflix, this is the original Japanese broadcast presentation — the one that made the animation community stop what it was doing when it premiered. Tickets available through Fandango and the AMC app. Limited dates, limited theaters.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End — Special Screening

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Frieren: Beyond Journey's End — Special Screening

May 30, 2026 $12 Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 5665 Balb…

Alamo Drafthouse San Diego. May 30th. $12. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End gets a special screening in a room designed to be the right room for it — Drafthouse, full service, the film playing in the dark with the kind of audience that chose to see it in a theater because they understood what that meant. Frieren is the anime that caught people off guard. It looks like a fantasy adventure and operates as a meditation on time and grief and the way memory functions in the people left behind. The pacing is deliberate. The emotional payoff arrives when you're not defending against it. Watching it in a theater, surrounded by people who came for exactly this, in a venue that takes cinema seriously enough to build its entire identity around it — that is the version of this story that lands differently. Alamo Drafthouse got this right. $12. May 30th. Reserve your seat at drafthouse.com/san-diego. Come before the show starts — the pre-show programming at Drafthouse is curated, not filler. If you've been watching Frieren at home and want to see what an episode at full scale in the dark does to it, this is the screening. If you haven't started the series yet, this is the wrong entry point. Watch the show first. Then come back and see it in this room.

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Castle Rat

May 24, 2026 400 W Disney Way, #337, House of B…

The Parish at House of Blues Anaheim, 400 W Disney Way. May 24th. Castle Rat — the band operating in the tradition of theatrical doom, heavy psych, and the visual world that heavy music has always conjured when it's doing it right — bringing their show to the Anaheim mid-size room that was built for exactly this kind of performance. The Parish is the venue that puts the crowd and the stage in the right relationship for a heavy bill. The sound is designed for the frequencies. The standing floor creates the specific pressure of a crowd that arrived for the music and knows it. Castle Rat live is the experience that the recordings are blueprints for — the theatricality, the density of the sound in a room at volume, the set building toward something that pays off. Tickets at ticketmaster.com. May 24th. The Anaheim location makes this accessible from across Orange County and from LA. If you've been following Castle Rat's trajectory and waiting for the Southern California date on this run, this is the Parish show. Get your ticket before the floor goes.

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