Los Angeles is getting another big music festival, and this one comes with sand. Goldenvoice, the promoter behind Coachella and Stagecoach, is planning the Ocean Way Festival, a two-day event on the beach at the foot of the Santa Monica Pier this fall.
What's planned
The festival is set for September, staged on the sand where the pier meets the beach, one of the most recognizable stretches of coastline in the region. Organizers describe a lineup of roughly 12 to 15 artists alongside the usual festival trappings, food and drink vendors, art installations and a beach-club zone, framed as a celebration of Santa Monica itself. As of now, Goldenvoice has not released the lineup or ticket on-sale dates, instead teasing the event on social media and inviting fans to sign up for alerts.
More than a concert
The promoter has paired the event with a set of local commitments meant to answer the familiar complaint that big festivals take more from a city than they give. Those include free community concerts at Reed Park and Tongva Park and beach cleanups run with the environmental group Heal the Bay, plus vendor space pitched to local businesses and programming tied to students. The City of Santa Monica has signed on, and organizers cast the festival as a way to draw visitors and revenue to a beach town that, like much of Los Angeles nightlife and live music, has felt the squeeze in recent years.
Why it matters locally
For Angelenos, a marquee festival on the Santa Monica beach is both an event and a bet, that a purpose-built, ocean-side weekend can carve out a place in a crowded Southern California calendar already anchored by Coachella in the desert and a steady stream of stadium and amphitheater shows. Whether the Ocean Way Festival becomes a fixture will depend in part on who ends up on the bill, and Goldenvoice, for now, is keeping that under wraps.
The safe bet is that the lineup, when it lands, will be the headline. Until then, what is confirmed is the setting: two days of music with the pier's Ferris wheel turning in the background and the Pacific a few steps away, an unmistakably Los Angeles backdrop for a festival betting on the beach.
