"The next few years are a defining opportunity to showcase Santa Monica at its best, from our beach and Pier to the heart of our downtown along our iconic coastline." — Mayor Caroline Torosis
Two Santa Monicas are running side by side this summer. One belongs to the world, and it lives on the Pier and the sand: World Cup fan zones in June and July, a two-day Goldenvoice music festival in the fall, ESPN staging its way toward 2027, and Olympic hospitality plans already being written for 2028. The other belongs to the people who live here, and it is quieter and much more useful. It is a bagel shop moving in from Brentwood, a Vietnamese coffee house taking a vacant corner on Wilshire, a burger window that finally landed on Montana.
If you already own a home in this ZIP code, the pier calendar is something you plan around. The corridor openings are the ones that actually change your week.
The Pier Goes Global For Eighteen Months
The city council spent last December approving a run of activations that will keep the sand in a state of near-continuous production through the 2028 Games. The Michelob ULTRA Pitchside Club will take over the Pier in June for the FIFA World Cup, Goldenvoice will produce a large-scale music festival adjacent to the Pier and along the sand in fall 2026, ESPN will build a fan festival and broadcast presence in February 2027, and the Annenberg Community Beach House will serve as Club France during the 2028 Olympic Games. The Goldenvoice concept envisions a single-day event with 30,000 to 35,000 attendees, 12 to 15 musical artists, food and beverage, art installations, and guest services.
For residents, the summer 2026 pier calendar looks like this:
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| June 11 – July 19 | Michelob ULTRA Pitchside Club watch parties tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup | Santa Monica Pier |
| June 27 – 28 | Pier 360 Beach Festival, two days of ocean sports, live entertainment, and community programming | Pier and beach |
| July 4 | Fourth of July Parade on Main Street, plus a new Revel Republic-produced event marking America's 250th and Route 66's 100th | Main Street |
| July 19 | Block Fest Volume V, an open-air electronic music and night market event spanning the Promenade and Metro stations across to Ocean Park Blvd, Colorado, Arizona, and the Pier as a car-free festival | Downtown |
| July 23 | State of the City with live entertainment, kids' activities, and community programming | Ocean Park Branch Library and Main Street |
| Summer opener | Inaugural Santa Monica International Jazz Festival featuring Kamasi Washington | Citywide |
| September | A two-day ticketed Goldenvoice music festival on the beach | Beach adjacent to the Pier |
If you drive Ocean Avenue on a Sunday, plan around June 27, July 19, and any weekend Michelob is running a match. The Pitchside Club runs through July 19, which is the same day as Block Fest, which is the same weekend as the last week of the group stage. Downtown will be closed to cars. That is not a complaint. It is a calendar.
The Corridor Updates You'll Actually Use
The interesting story this summer is that operators are opening on neighborhood streets rather than the tourist blocks, and the openings cluster on corridors residents already walk. Here is how the map is filling in.
Montana Avenue
The Win~Dow drew crowds around the block when it opened at 930 Montana Ave., taking over a space previously occupied by the Go Get Em Tiger coffee shop. The 50-seat restaurant was designed by the Klein Agency and features murals by Los Angeles artist KC Haxton. The concept is built around a purposefully affordable cheeseburger, launched at $3.95 and now around $4.50. Two blocks east, a second Santa Monica location of Italian gelato brand Bacio di Latte is coming to 1510 Montana Ave., next to Italian market Sogno Toscano.
Montana has been sliding toward small, daily-format food for a while. A five-dollar smashburger next door to Sogno Toscano gelato is not a coincidence. It is the corridor deciding what it wants to be.
Main Street
On Main Street, the closure of Holey Grail Donuts at 2441 Main St. has made way for La Diperie, a Montreal-founded chain specializing in dipped ice cream, cakes, donuts, and cookies served with a selection of chocolate dips and more than 20 toppings. With more than 65 locations across Canada and into Florida, the Santa Monica outpost would mark the brand's first West Coast location.
Main is also where the July 4 parade lives this year, and where the second half of the State of the City programming will spill on July 23. If your kids ride bikes down Main on weekends, expect two closed-street days back to back.
Downtown And The Third Street Promenade
The Promenade story is the one being watched most closely by anyone who has lived here through the last five years of vacancies. Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers cut the ribbon on the Third Street Promenade with Mayor Caroline Torosis in attendance, creating 100 local jobs as part of the city's downtown revitalization efforts. Nearby, Dragon Alley Coffee Shop has announced plans to set up at 312 Santa Monica Blvd. And later this summer, Gott's Roadside will open in Downtown Santa Monica, best known for burgers topped with things like green chile, griddled mushrooms, or kimchi, with a menu including garlic fries, cobb salads, hot dogs, and shakes.
Read the tenant mix and you can see the strategy. The city is filling the Promenade with volume operators that can carry the rent and pull daytime foot traffic while smaller cafes and coffee shops backfill the side streets. Whether you like Raising Cane's is beside the point. It signals that the leasing team downtown has stopped waiting.
Wilshire And 15th Street
A new coffee shop called Sonia's Café is in the Downtown area working to open at 1260 15th St. at the corner of Arizona Avenue. Along Wilshire, the vacant corner building at 1231 Wilshire Blvd. will soon host Vietnamese coffee specialists DOL Coffee House, which currently has a location in Gardena where it also serves boba and desserts.
Two coffee openings within a five-minute walk of each other, on a stretch that residents cross daily and tourists rarely see. If you have been counting empty storefronts on Wilshire for two years, this is the summer that count starts to move.
Colorado Center
A surf-inspired, all-day restaurant and community hub is set to open this summer at Colorado Center. Bower Santa Monica, spanning approximately 6,500 square feet, will offer food and beverage, health and wellness programming and "socialization rituals" at the 15-acre office campus at Colorado Center. BXP announced the concept alongside restaurateur Dave Harper and New School Hospitality; Harper is the founding partner of Amigo Roasters and the restaurateur behind Bondi Harvest, El Chucho, Palmys, and Likeminded Wellness Club. Bower has not announced a specific opening date beyond summer 2026.
Colorado Center has always been an island. Putting a Dave Harper concept on it, with wellness programming and an all-day format, is an attempt to convert the office campus into a place residents from Sunset Park and Ocean Park would actually walk to on a Saturday. Worth watching.
What The Pattern Tells You
Look at the two lists side by side. The Pier calendar is a stack of one-day and multi-week productions built to move tens of thousands of people through a small footprint. The corridor calendar is a set of small, permanent openings on streets residents already use. They are not competing. They are complementary, and the city is running them on purpose.
For a homeowner, the practical read is this. Downtown, the Pier, and Ocean Avenue will be crowded on specific dates you can circle now. Montana, Main north of Pico, the Wilshire corridor around 12th and 15th, and Colorado Center will be where daily life gets marginally better. The delta between the two experiences is going to be sharper this summer than it has been in years. If you have out-of-town guests visiting for a match, you already know where to send them. If you are just trying to get a bagel, the answer moved a few miles west.
Whether this rebalancing holds through 2028 is the actual open question, and it is the one that will matter most to values on the residential side. A downtown that finally leases up while the residential corridors keep their small-format character is a different Santa Monica from the one many owners have lived through since 2020. This summer is where you can start to see which way it tips.
If you are thinking about your own next move here, or just want a longer conversation about how these shifts are showing up on the residential side of the market, Susan Cosentino would be glad to sit down with you. Let's Chat — Schedule a Time to Connect.
