Events in Long Beach Highlights
- The World Cup Final kicks off Sunday at noon, and every bar will host watch parties throughout the city.
- Love Long Beach Festival runs Saturday and Sunday from 2 PM to 10 PM at ShoreLine Aquatic Park, with presales nearly sold out.
- Enjoy Beach Streets: Kickin’ It, a car-free event Downtown on Sunday from 11 AM to 4 PM, featuring big-screen watch parties.
- Catch Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the Long Beach Shakespeare Company, running Friday to Sunday.
- Check out free events like Rumble King’s anniversary show, tai chi at Marine Stadium, and a ska matinee at The 4th Horseman.
Okay, Long Beach. Deep breath. The weekend is here.
Sunday is the World Cup Final — Spain vs. Argentina, kickoff at 12:00 PM our time — and if you think this city is going to watch that quietly at home with a bowl of chips, you have not been paying attention to the last six weeks. Every bar with a TV and a pulse is throwing a watch party. Pine Ave is going to be feral. Belmont Shore is going to be feral. Your neighbor with the projector and the garage is going to be feral. Pick a spot early, because “we’ll just walk in somewhere” is not a plan on July 19th.
Meanwhile, Love Long Beach Festival takes over ShoreLine Aquatic Park both Saturday AND Sunday, 2 PM to 10 PM, for its 11th year — house, techno, bass, yoga meadow, fire spinners, kids’ corner, the whole beautiful lighthouse-framed situation. You can grab discounted tickets by clicking here.
And then Sunday morning, Beach Streets: Kickin’ It shuts down Downtown to cars from 11 AM to 4 PM — the longest route they’ve ever done — with big-screen watch parties of the final built right in. So yes: you can bike a car-free Pine Ave, grab a beer in the Promenade sip zone, and catch the World Cup without ever getting in your car. Grab your bike. See you out there.
But hey — maybe you don’t do soccer. Maybe you don’t do techno. Maybe your idea of a good time is a Victorian farce or a beer garden or literal tai chi at Marine Stadium. That’s valid! Long Beach has range, baby. Here’s what else is happening.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Dates: Friday, July 17 & Saturday, July 18 at 8:00 PM · Sunday, July 19 at 2:00 PM (running through July 25) Address: Long Beach Shakespeare Company at the Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave, Long Beach, CA 90807 Cost: Tickets at LBShakespeare.org
Good news for the overcommitted: this one’s playing all three days, so it fits into whatever hole your weekend has left. Long Beach Shakespeare Company is staging Oscar Wilde’s sharpest comedy as a Victorian-meets-1980s-New-Romantic mashup — if you mixed Adam Ant, Grace Jones, eyeliner and shoulder pads on a comedy of manners — and I want to be very clear that I did not know I needed this until I read that sentence. It’s directed by Rebekah Walendzak Slepski, who teaches sketch comedy at Second City, which tells you everything about the energy they’re going for. Wilde’s whole thing was that wit outlives everything; the man wrote a play about two guys lying about their names to get out of social obligations and it’s still funnier than most things released this year.
The Helen Borgers is an intimate little jewel box up on Atlantic in Bixby Knolls, the kind of room where you’re close enough to watch the actors’ faces do the work. Friday and Saturday are 8 PM if you want a proper night out, or take the Sunday 2 PM matinee, catch the first half of the World Cup final, duck into a dark theater, and find out the score from strangers on Atlantic when you come out. Chaotic, but so is Long Beach.
2026 Clean & Crispy Beer Fest
Date: Saturday, July 18, 2026 Time: 1:00 PM Address: Long Beach Beer Lab – Wrigley, 518 W Willow St, Long Beach, CA 90806 Cost: From $23
Let’s be clear about what this is, because the name is doing work: Clean & Crispy is a lager festival. Levi and Harmony Fried built this thing as the loving antithesis to fifteen years of SoCal beer fests where every table was pouring a 9% triple IPA and looking at you funny for asking what else they had. This is lagers, pilsners, and crispy perfection — twenty-plus breweries pouring unlimited samples in the Beer Lab’s back lot, plus house-made bubbly waters and soft drinks so the designated drivers and the sober-curious aren’t stuck nursing a warm Sprite in the corner like it’s 2011. Outside of Lagerville in Ventura, it’s the region’s biggest festival dedicated to light, refreshing beer.
Twenty-three dollars for unlimited samples from twenty breweries is, mathematically speaking, an outrageous deal, and I need you to understand that “unlimited” is a promise and a warning. Eat lunch first. Bring a friend who likes you enough to drive. Long Beach Beer Lab has one of the best reputations in the city for a reason — 4.6 stars across 500+ reviews doesn’t happen by accident — and a Saturday afternoon in their Wrigley back lot is basically the platonic ideal of a Long Beach summer weekend.
Rumble King – 30 Year Anniversary
Date: Saturday, July 18, 2026 Time: 8:00 PM Address: Altar Society Brewing and Coffee Co., 230 Pine Ave, Long Beach, CA 90802 Cost: FREE — and all ages
Thirty years. THIRTY. Rumble King formed in Southern California in 1996 and came up during the rockabilly and swing revival of the late ’90s — but here’s the thing that makes them special: they’re a piano-and-sax-driven rock ‘n’ roll band. Aaron Deily hauls a genuine upright acoustic piano to every single show. For most of their run they didn’t even have a guitar, building their whole sound around piano, tenor sax, upright bass, and drums. They spent fourteen years under contract at Disneyland playing the Tomorrowland Terrace. Their drummer is Corey Miller — yes, that Corey Miller, the tattoo artist — whose punk background is a big part of why they sound like nobody else. And since 2024 they’ve had Mike Eldred on guitar, who founded Lee Rocker’s Big Blue with the Stray Cats’ bass player.
They’re celebrating thirty years with a free all-ages show at Altar Society on Pine, with special guest Ry Bradley flying in from Nashville and DJ Tom Ingram — who, if you know, you know — spinning records. Altar Society is a full bar with food, housed in the 1903 Masonic Temple, one of the oldest buildings Downtown and one of the few that walked away from the 1933 earthquake intact. Dark walnut, custom chandeliers, prohibition-era warmth, brew tanks running up from the basement. There is no better room in this city for this show. And because it’s on Pine, you can roll straight out of this into the rest of Downtown’s Saturday night without ever calling a rideshare. Free, all ages, thirty years of a Long Beach institution — show up and be a good hang.
Free Long Beach Tai Chi for Beginners with SHCollective
Date: Sunday, July 19, 2026 Time: 12:30 PM (1 hour) Address: Marine Stadium, Long Beach, CA Cost: Free
Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m out here doing tai chi at Marine Stadium on a Sunday. But I respect it, and honestly if you’re going to move your body slowly and intentionally anywhere on this earth, doing it on the grass at Marine Stadium with the water right there is a genuinely elite choice. Hosted by Angie Sierra and SHCollective, it runs every Sunday at 12:30, it’s completely free, it’s built for total beginners, and it’s exactly one hour — in and out, no commitment, no membership, no one judging your form. Bonus: it wraps right around the time the World Cup final is getting spicy, so you can go from inner peace to screaming at a television in under fifteen minutes. Balance. That’s what it’s all about.
Too Much Fun Club with VESSELS + The Legendary Swagger
Date: Sunday, July 19, 2026 Time: 3:00 PM Address: The 4th Horseman, 121 W 4th St, Long Beach, CA 90802 Cost: FREE — 21+, RSVP in their IG bio
A ska matinee. On a Sunday. At the 4th Horseman. For free. If you need more information than that, I don’t know what to tell you. Too Much Fun Club brings the ska tones, VESSELS brings indie rock, and The Legendary Swagger brings — and I’m quoting the flyer here — swag rock, which is a genre I’ve decided to accept without question. The 4th Horseman is the dark, dystopian, gloriously weird craft beer and specialty pizza spot on 4th, and a 3 PM Sunday show there is peak Long Beach behavior: day drinking that’s technically respectable, live music that’s technically a matinee, pizza that’s genuinely excellent. It starts right when the World Cup final is wrapping up, which means you can walk from the Beach Streets watch party over to 4th Street and keep the day rolling. Always free, always 21+, RSVP in their IG bio.
So, What’s the Move This Weekend in Long Beach?
Here’s my honest read: this is one of the biggest weekends Long Beach has had in years, and you are not going to do all of it. Stop trying.
Pick a lane. Saturday is a beer day (Clean & Crispy at 1, Rumble King at 8, and Love Long Beach humming down at ShoreLine all afternoon and night). Sunday is a bike day — roll Downtown for Beach Streets at 11, watch the final on a big screen with a few thousand of your neighbors at noon, then choose your own adventure: Wilde in Bixby Knolls, ska on 4th Street, or right back to ShoreLine to close out Love Long Beach as the sun goes down over the marina. And if none of that fits, Earnest is also on Friday and Saturday nights at 8 — it’s the one thing on this list that’ll wait for you.
That’s the beauty of things to do in Long Beach this weekend — you don’t have to choose between the big citywide thing and the weird little neighborhood thing, because they’re all within about four miles of each other and half of them are free. That’s not an accident. That’s just how this city is built.
Wear sunscreen. Hydrate. Tip your bartenders. And if you’re looking for more events in Long Beach all summer long, you know where to find us.
See you out there.
Got an event we should know about? Hit us up — LBC Vibe is Long Beach’s home for things to do in Long Beach this weekend, every weekend.
FAQs
What are the best things to do in Long Beach this weekend (July 17–19, 2026)?
The big three are the World Cup Final on Sunday at noon (watch parties citywide, plus big screens at Beach Streets), Love Long Beach Festival at ShoreLine Aquatic Park both Saturday and Sunday from 2–10 PM, and Beach Streets: Kickin’ It, the car-free open streets event Downtown on Sunday from 11 AM to 4 PM. Beyond that: Clean & Crispy Beer Fest at Long Beach Beer Lab on Saturday, Rumble King’s free 30th anniversary show at Altar Society on Saturday night, free tai chi at Marine Stadium on Sunday, The Importance of Being Earnest at the Helen Borgers Theatre all three days, and a free ska matinee at The 4th Horseman on Sunday.
Where can I watch the World Cup final in Long Beach?
Spain vs. Argentina kicks off at 12:00 PM Pacific on Sunday, July 19. The city is putting big-screen watch parties right in the middle of Beach Streets Downtown as the finale of its Soccer in the LBC programming, so that’s the free, family-friendly, no-reservation option. Just about every bar Downtown, on Retro Row, and in the Shore will have it on too — but this is the World Cup final on a Sunday afternoon in a soccer town. Get there early or don’t get a seat.
Is Beach Streets free?
Yes. Beach Streets is free and open to everyone — no ticket, no registration. It runs Sunday, July 19 from 11 AM to 4 PM, and this year’s route is the longest they’ve done, covering Pine Avenue from 1st to 9th, Broadway from Pine to Redondo, Cherry from Broadway to 4th, and 4th from Cherry to Junipero. Bring a bike, skates, a skateboard, a stroller, whatever rolls.
Do I need tickets for Love Long Beach Festival?
Yes — 1-day and weekend passes are available, and presales were reported at over 80% sold, so don’t plan on walking up. It’s at ShoreLine Aquatic Park, 200 Aquarium Way, Saturday and Sunday from 2 PM to 10 PM. It’s an all-ages event with a Kids’ Corner, yoga meadow, sound healing, food trucks, and the Whole Earth Village vendor marketplace alongside the house, techno, and bass stages.
What free events are happening in Long Beach this weekend?
More than you’d think. Beach Streets (Sunday, 11 AM–4 PM) is free. The World Cup watch parties at Beach Streets are free. Rumble King’s 30th anniversary show at Altar Society (Saturday, 8 PM) is free and all ages. Free Long Beach Tai Chi for Beginners at Marine Stadium (Sunday, 12:30 PM) is free. And Too Much Fun Club with VESSELS at The 4th Horseman (Sunday, 3 PM) is free, though that one’s 21+.
What’s family-friendly this weekend?
Beach Streets is built for families — car-free streets, soccer activities, entertainment hubs along the route. Love Long Beach is all-ages with a dedicated Kids’ Corner. Rumble King at Altar Society is an all-ages show. Tai Chi at Marine Stadium works for pretty much any age. The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners, so it’s fine for older kids who can sit through a play. The 4th Horseman show is 21+ only.
How much is the Clean & Crispy Beer Fest?
Tickets start at $23 through Eventbrite (the official seller, and prices include fees). It’s Saturday, July 18 at 1 PM at Long Beach Beer Lab – Wrigley, 518 W Willow St. It’s a lager and pilsner festival specifically — twenty-plus breweries pouring unlimited samples, plus house-made bubbly waters and soft drinks for non-drinkers.
Is The Importance of Being Earnest playing more than one day?
It is. Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s production runs July 10 through July 25 at the Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 2 PM. So this weekend you can catch it Friday night, Saturday night, or Sunday afternoon. It’s staged as a Victorian-meets-1980s-New-Romantic mashup, directed by Rebekah Walendzak Slepski. Tickets at LBShakespeare.org.
How should I get around Downtown Long Beach on Sunday?
Not by car, if you can help it. Beach Streets closes major Downtown corridors to vehicles from 11 AM to 4 PM, Love Long Beach is happening at ShoreLine the same afternoon, and the World Cup final is drawing crowds on top of all of it. Bike, walk, take the A Line, or use the Passport shuttle. Parking Downtown on Sunday is going to be a full contact sport.
Where can I find more events in Long Beach?
Right here. LBC Vibe covers events in Long Beach every week — concerts, festivals, food, nightlife, and the weird little neighborhood stuff you won’t find on a tourism site. New roundup every Friday.
