Fleet Week, Topanga Days, Smorgasburg, WeHo Pride Arts Festival, and more — your complete guide to Memorial Day weekend in Los Angeles, May 22–25.
The city doesn’t slow down for Memorial Day. It splits wide open. From the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro to the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu, from the infield at Santa Anita to a Hollywood Forever Cemetery lawn glowing blue under a movie screen, Los Angeles turns four days into something that feels like a full season compressed into a single weekend. If you know where to point yourself, May 22–25 is one of the best weekends of the year in this city. If you don’t, you’ll spend it sitting in traffic wondering where the party went.
Here’s where the party went.
Friday, May 22 — The Warm-Up
LA Fleet Week officially opens Friday morning at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, and calling it a warm-up undersells it completely.
Active-duty ship tours run 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily through Monday — this is the 10th year Fleet Week has taken over the waterfront, and 2026 marks its role as Southern California’s official kickoff to the America250 national commemorations. Free entry. Virtual queue for ship tours. Bring comfortable shoes and more time than you think you need.
Friday evening belongs to West Hollywood. Harvey Milk Day kicks off WeHo Pride season at 6 p.m. at West Hollywood Park — the annual celebration honoring the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to public office in California. This year’s event features the 4th annual José Julio Sarria Drag Pageant. It is, without question, the most spirited opening ceremony you’ll find anywhere in the city on a Friday night.
Jazz at LACMA also runs Friday evening with the Brian Swartz Quintet at 6 p.m. — free, outdoors, and reliably excellent.
LACMA’s free Friday jazz is one of the great open secrets of Los Angeles, which is to say it is not a secret to anyone who has ever lived here, only to the people who keep saying they’ll go someday.
Saturday, May 23
Saturday is where the weekend gets genuinely competitive. Topanga Days Festival opens at 10 a.m. at the Topanga Community Center — the 51st annual edition, headlined this year by Canned Heat, Cyril Neville, and Long Beach Dub Allstars across three days.
Topanga Days is the rare Southern California festival that hasn’t been consumed by brand activations and VIP tiers. It is still, after five decades, a community fundraiser for the Topanga Community Center, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes the whole thing feel different the moment you walk in.
Simultaneously, the Smorgasburg BBQ Invitational lands at Santa Anita Park’s infield Saturday through Monday — a three-day competition among SoCal’s best up-and-coming BBQ vendors, with the winner earning a permanent Sunday slot at Smorgasburg’s DTLA market. Filipino-Texan fusion, Guam BBQ, Central Texas style, East LA flavors. This is not a generic food festival. It is a genuine competition, and it shows in the cooking.
The WeHo Pride Arts Festival opens Saturday at noon at the LA LGBT Center’s Village at Ed Gould Plaza and runs through Sunday — two full days of theatre, film, literary readings, workshops, and performance, all free.
The graphic circulating online lists the Arts Festival as Sunday only — it isn’t. It starts Saturday. Show up a day early and you’ll have the place to yourself relative to what Sunday brings.
Sunday, May 24
Fiesta Hermosa runs all weekend along Hermosa Beach, but Sunday is the sweet spot — 250+ vendors, five stages of live music, a petting zoo, popup mini golf, and a 21+ Garden section. The shuttle system running 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. from multiple hubs makes it genuinely easy to get in and out without the parking situation becoming the entire story of your day.
The All White Yacht Party departs Long Beach Harbor at noon. The Golden Daze Pool Party runs at Level 8 in DTLA starting at 2 p.m.
Sunday evening closes at Hollywood Forever Cemetery with a screening of Moulin Rouge! — lawn, candles, the whole thing.
Hollywood Forever’s Cinespia series has been running outdoor screenings on that cemetery lawn since 2002, and Moulin Rouge! against that backdrop, surrounded by the graves of Hollywood’s founding era, is as LA as it gets.
Monday, May 25
The Topanga Days Memorial Day Parade steps off at 8:30 a.m. from Pine Tree Circle — floats, fire trucks, horses, kids on decorated bikes, the local Tae Kwon Do class. It ends at the Topanga Community Center, where the festival resumes. Active military get in free all day Monday. The parade is one of the last genuine community parades left in Southern California, and it earns that description.
Fleet Week closes Monday with a ceremony on the main stage adjacent to the Battleship Iowa in San Pedro at 5 p.m. — a solemn, well-earned close to four days of celebration.
The Dodgers host a Fleet Week game at Chavez Ravine at 6 p.m. Monday evening. LA Fleet Week at Dodger Stadium, on Memorial Day, in a pennant race year. If you need this explained, you’ve never been to a Dodger game in May.
Mini FAQ: LA on Memorial Day Weekend 2026
What is free to do in LA on Memorial Day Weekend 2026? Quite a lot. LA Fleet Week at the Port of Los Angeles is free, including the Expo and military demonstrations — only the Battleship IOWA express experience requires a ticket. The WeHo Pride Arts Festival at the LA LGBT Center’s Village is completely free both Saturday and Sunday. Jazz at LACMA Friday evening is free. Topanga Days is ticketed but affordable, with active military admitted free on Monday.
When does Topanga Days 2026 start and what time? Topanga Days runs Saturday, May 23 through Monday, May 25, opening daily at 10 a.m. and running until 7 p.m. The Memorial Day Parade kicks off Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. from Pine Tree Circle, about a mile from the festival grounds.
Is the Smorgasburg BBQ Invitational at Santa Anita Park ticketed? Packages start at $5 for general admission. The event runs Saturday through Monday, May 23–25, at the Santa Anita Park infield in Arcadia. Carnival rides, live music, and horse racing round out the program alongside the BBQ competition.
LA does this better than almost anywhere else
Four days. Every neighborhood in the city has something worth driving to. The move is to pick one anchor event per day, build loosely around it, and let the weekend be what it is — which is to say, a reminder that LA does this better than almost anywhere else when it decides to try. Don’t sleep on Monday. It’s always the day people underestimate.
