South Bay Annual Events

The South Bay runs on a calendar. Two festivals that take over a whole downtown, a volleyball tournament that has been going since the 1960s, free concerts in four cities every summer weekend, and a boat parade in December.

This page is the year in one place. Individual events get their own pages as we build them out.

What is on in the South Bay this month?

Most of the calendar clusters between Memorial Day and early October, with a second smaller cluster in December.

Dates move year to year. Every event below links to its organizer so you can confirm the current one.

What are the biggest events of the year?

Ten, and between them they account for most of the weekends when the South Bay stops being a set of residential cities and becomes a destination. Three of them are benefit events, which is a South Bay particularity worth understanding: the largest gatherings here are often fundraisers, and they are where the community actually shows up.

Event	When	Where	Scale
The Manhattan Wine Auction	Late spring, typically a Friday evening in May or June	The Bay Club Manhattan Country Club, Manhattan Beach	Sold out at more than 2,400 guests. Raised $1.4 million for Manhattan Beach schools in 2025
White Light White Night	Summer, typically August	South Bay, venue changes year to year	More than 1,000 guests. Walk With Sally’s signature gala
Holiday fireworks and boat parades	December	Redondo Beach and King Harbor	The winter counterpart to the Fourth of July, and a local favorite
Skechers Pier to Pier Friendship Walk	October	Manhattan Beach Pier to Hermosa Beach Pier and back	More than 21,000 participants. One of the largest single-day gatherings on this coastline
Fiesta Hermosa	Memorial Day weekend and again Labor Day weekend	Downtown Hermosa Beach, on and around the pier	Billed as the largest arts and crafts fair in Southern California
Redondo Beach Super Bowl Sunday 10K and 5K	Super Bowl Sunday, February	Redondo Beach	More than 7,000 runners. One of the largest running events in Los Angeles County
Fourth of July	4 July	Across all the beach cities	The single busiest day on the sand
Hearts of Hermosa	Spring, typically May	Hermosa Vista School, Hermosa Beach	The Hermosa Beach Education Foundation’s annual gala, running since 1996
BeachLife Festival	Early May, three days	Seaside Lagoon and the Redondo Beach waterfront	Capacity around 11,000 a day. The largest ticketed music event on this coastline
Festival of the Kite	Early March, a Sunday afternoon	Redondo Beach Pier	Free, and one of the longest running kite festivals in Southern California. Past 50 years

What are the South Bay’s signature benefit events?

We wrote about why this pattern exists and what it says about these cities in The South Bay Gives Back.

If you want to understand how these cities work, look at what they raise money for. California funds its public schools at a level that leaves a gap, and in the beach cities the education foundations close that gap with events that have become the social calendar. You do not need a child in the district to go to any of them.

The Manhattan Wine Auction

The signature event of the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, and the largest of its kind in the South Bay. It started in 1993 as a small gathering of parents. The 31st annual auction, held 30 May 2025 at the Bay Club’s Manhattan Country Club, sold out at more than 2,400 guests and raised $1.4 million.

The format is more than 45 restaurants, roughly 80 wineries, breweries and distilleries, over 20 live auction lots and several hundred silent auction items. Proceeds go to the MBEF Endowment Fund, which in the 2024 to 2025 school year contributed $1.2 million, about 19 percent of MBEF’s total grant to the district.

Tickets sell out. If you want to go, get on the mailing list in winter rather than looking in May.

White Light White Night

The annual summer gala for Walk With Sally, a South Bay organization that provides peer mentoring to children whose families are facing cancer. It draws more than 1,000 guests, with live music and a long list of Los Angeles restaurants. Everyone wears white, which is where the name comes from.

It is typically held in August. Venue moves year to year, so check the organization directly rather than assuming last year’s location.

Skechers Pier to Pier Friendship Walk

Every October, more than 21,000 people walk the 3.5 miles from the Manhattan Beach Pier south to the Hermosa Beach Pier and back. It has run since 2009 and has raised many millions across that span.

Proceeds are split between The Friendship Foundation, which runs one to one peer mentoring and recreational programs for children with disabilities, local public education, and the Skechers Foundation scholarship program.

Practical note for anyone living along the route: the Strand and the streets feeding it are heavily affected that morning. It is the one October Sunday to plan around.

Hearts of Hermosa

The Hermosa Beach Education Foundation’s annual gala, and the older sibling of the whole genre here. It began on 14 February 1996 when about 50 parents put on a Valentine’s dinner to raise money for the schools. That dinner became the foundation.

It now runs as an auction, dinner and dancing evening at Hermosa Vista School in the spring, with food, drinks and auction items donated by local restaurants, bars, businesses and parents. Smaller and more neighborly than the Manhattan auction, which is rather the point.

What is the Festival of the Kite?

A free afternoon at the Redondo Beach Pier in early March, and it has been running for more than fifty years, which makes it one of the longest running kite festivals in Southern California. It is presented by the Redondo Pier Association with the Sunshine Kite Company.

The format is simple: kites over the water, flying contests with prizes for categories like highest flying and best design, live music, and activities for children. Nothing is ticketed.

It is the answer to a question people ask a lot here, which is what there is to do on the coast in early spring before the summer calendar starts. This is it, and it costs nothing.

What is the BeachLife Festival?

A three day music festival on the Redondo Beach waterfront in early May, staged at Seaside Lagoon with the ocean behind the stages. It started in 2019 and has run annually since, with a daily capacity of roughly 11,000. It is the largest ticketed event on this stretch of coast and it books national headliners rather than local acts.

What makes it a genuinely local event rather than a festival that happens to be here is the siting. The stages face the water, the layout runs along the harbor, and a large share of the audience walks or rides in from the neighborhoods around it. It also runs a separate food and drink program built around South Bay restaurants and breweries.

Practical notes for anyone living nearby: the Redondo waterfront parking structures fill, Harbor Drive and Catalina Avenue carry the traffic, and the sound carries across the harbor and up into the Hollywood Riviera on a clear evening. Residents either buy tickets or plan the weekend around it, and both are reasonable choices.

There is a separate autumn edition in some years. Check the organizer rather than assuming the May dates are the only ones.

What is the International Surf Festival?

A week of competition in late July and early August that runs across four cities at once: Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and Torrance.

It is unusual for being genuinely regional rather than belonging to one city, and it is the clearest annual expression of the fact that these beach towns function as one coastline with four city halls.

What is the 6-Man?

The Charlie Saikley 6-Man Beach Volleyball Tournament, held on the south side of the Manhattan Beach pier in late July or early August.

Six players a side instead of the usual two, costumes, team names, and a crowd. It is a local institution rather than a professional event, and it is one of the days Manhattan Beach is busiest all year.

Where are the free summer concerts?

Four separate series, in four cities, most of them free.

• Manhattan Beach, Polliwog Park. Sundays 5pm to 7pm, running from early July to early September.
• Torrance Summer Nights. Saturdays from June through mid September, mostly at the Wilson Park Amphitheater.
• El Segundo, Library Park. Concerts start at 4:30pm with food trucks from 4pm.
• Hermosa Beach. A short series south of the pier on the two Sundays following Labor Day weekend, which makes it the one that extends the season after everything else has finished.

Bring a low chair. Most of these fill.

Where are the 4th of July fireworks?

Redondo Beach, over King Harbor. That is the big one, and it is the answer most people are looking for.

Manhattan Beach does not have a fireworks show. Worth stating plainly, because people assume the beach city with the pier must have one and then find out on the day. Manhattan Beach runs daytime events instead, including a pool party at Begg Pool.

Other South Bay cities including El Segundo, Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes and San Pedro run their own Independence Day celebrations, and formats vary. Some have moved away from traditional fireworks in recent years, so check the city rather than assuming.

If you are choosing where to watch, the harbor is the anchor. If you are choosing where to live and this matters to you, it is worth knowing which side of that you are on.

What is the Pumpkin Race?

Manhattan Beach does not run a Fourth of July fireworks show, which surprises people. What it does run, and has for more than three decades, is a pumpkin race.

Each October the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce closes part of downtown and turns the area near the pier into what it calls Pumpkin Race Land. Competitors fit wheels to pumpkins and race them down Manhattan Beach Boulevard. The 2026 edition was the 36th annual, held on 18 October, which puts the first one around 1990. It is free, it starts at midday, and it runs as a day-long Downtown Halloween Festival with activities alongside the racing.

You can build a racer on the day. That is the part most people do not realize, and it is why the event has lasted: it is a participation event rather than a spectator one.

It falls in the same month as the Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair, so early October and mid October are both busy weekends in that downtown. If you live nearby, plan parking around both.

What happens in December?

Two things, and they are both worth building an evening around.

The King Harbor Holiday Boat Parade sends decorated boats through the harbor under the theme Light up the Harbor, organized by the King Harbor Yacht Club. Free to watch from the shore, no boat or membership needed, typically a Saturday in mid December.

The Sleepy Hollow Christmas Lights in Torrance turn a residential neighborhood into a drive-through and walk-through display through December. Robert Road, Reese Road, Sharynne Lane and Doris Way carry most of it, reached from Pacific Coast Highway at Calle Mayor. Participation is voluntary and changes year to year.

When is the South Bay busiest?

Memorial Day weekend, the last week of July into the first week of August, and Labor Day weekend.

Those three windows carry Fiesta Hermosa twice, the Surf Festival and the 6-Man. If you are moving during one of them, plan the truck around it. If you are listing a property near a pier, plan the photography around it too.

The flip side is that these weekends are what people mean when they say they want to live here, so there is a version of this where you stop fighting the calendar and lean into it.

Go deeper on these

Three parts of the calendar have enough going on to need their own page.

Continue exploring

Compiled from city parks and recreation listings and event organizer announcements, verified 15 September 2026. Dates move every year and some events change format or pause entirely. Confirm with the organizer or the city before making plans around any of these.