Get us in your inbox

Search
Arroyo Seco Weekend
Photograph: Rozette Rago

Summer concerts in L.A.

Scope out the best summer concerts of 2023, plus the best free summer music series across Los Angeles

Michael Juliano
Edited by
Michael Juliano
Advertising

Get out your calendars: Your guide to the best summer concerts of 2023 has arrived. Here, our picks for the best warm-weather gigs, including summer concert series, free showssummer music festivals and more. Make sure to check out our monthly concert calendars, too, for shows in outdoor venues, clubs and theaters.

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to things to do in the summer in Los Angeles

Summer concert calendars by month

Advertising
Advertising

Summer music festivals

  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • San Bernardino

This springtime spin-off in Insomniac’s Wonderland series takes its whimsical, carnival-like atmosphere to this trance-heavy festival. The dreamy, multi-stage experience includes the likes of Dillon Francis, Flosstradamus, Kaskade, Tiësto, Rusko and more.

  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Indio

Nearly 125,000 music lovers make a pilgrimage to the Empire Polo Club during each identical weekend of Coachella, whether bound for campgrounds or shuttling over from golf resorts and midcentury modern homes. Though its bespoke dining experiences and hotel party scene may try to steal headlines, Coachella remains about the relaxed desert air euophoria of a well-curated music festival. Coachella’s all-embracing three-day lineup—topped this year by No Doubt, Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat and Tyler, the Creator—consistently crafts the pool of performers from which all other summer music festivals borrow.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Indio

Strap on your cowboy hat and make the pilgrimage to country music’s biggest jamboree, taking up residence at Coachella’s digs, the Empire Polo Club. Stagecoach is coming back for a three-day fest; expect the usual mix of contemporary and classic country. Eric Church, Miranda Lambert and Morgan Wallen headline the 2024 edition, with additional sets from Jelly Roll, Elle King, Post Malone, Willie Nelson and more.

  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Redondo Beach

This surf-inflected music fest will once again take over the Redondo Beach coastline for three days in May. Sting, Incubus, My Morning Jacket, Dirty Heads, Seal, Devo, Local Natives, Santigold, Fleet Foxes, Courtney Barnett and Trey Anastasio top this year’s lineup.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Rap, hip-hop and R&B

If you grew up around the turn of the millennium, this hip-hop–focused music fest in Las Vegas is like your middle school dance playlist come to life. Lovers & Friends features seemingly every hip-hop and R&B star from the late ’90s and early aughts, including Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Usher, Ludacris, Nelly, Ciara, M.I.A., Ja Rule, Ashanti, TLC, Akon and Ne-Yo. Also, like last year’s edition (which featured Missy Elliott, Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera, among others) you’ll find a few turn-of-the-millennium boy bands and pop performers like the Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Music festivals

Staged along the convention center side of San Diego’s downtown waterfront, the appropriately named Wonderfront includes sets from Kaytranada, JID, Weezer, Dominic Fike, Beck, Mt. Joy, the Roots, Carly Rae Jepsen, T-Pain, Polo & Pan and more. You’ll find Wonderfront from May 10 to 12 at Embarcadero Marina Park North, Seaport Village and Ruocco Park.

  • Music
  • Rock and indie
  • Pasadena

Cake on the eyeliner, cry it off and then dance away the tears at the return of this 1980s-to-aughts goth, new wave and punk fest with Duran Duran, Interpol, Blondie, Simple Minds, Placebo, Soft Cell, Adam Ant, Gary Numan and more. The one-day-only event features dozens of alt obsessions on the golf course next to the Rose Bowl, where it once again returns.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Music festivals

On the outskirts of town at the Motor Speedway, Electric Daisy Carnival is pure, condensed Vegas. There is a VIP Ferris wheel. Helicopters shuttle in high rollers. The 135,000-strong crowd is soaked in ecstasy and spray tan. Every millionaire DJ that plays the laser-riddled nightclubs on the Strip is here. EDC introduced EDM as a Day-Glo spectacle for the masses in America, and its lineups in recent years have certainly lived up to the hype (Tiësto, David Guetta, John Summit, FISHER, Kaskade, Diplo, Deadmau5, Peggy Gou play this year’s fest). Once you let the neon and bass wash over you, it is the time of your life.

  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Desert

Make your way to the desert for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, a gathering of like-minded indie musicians who will be rocking out to a dance-world-electro-funk’n groove. The biannual festival is a four-day party with over 30 bands in a unique lineup of artists who aren’t necessarily household names. There’s free water to all patrons, minimal service charges on tickets and yoga classes aplenty.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Pasadena

The aughts indie nostalgia shows no signs of stopping, so its no surprise that Just Like Heaven—a music fest that’s featured basically every beloved 2000s indie band—is coming back for its fourth edition. The fest will take over the golf course next to the Rose Bowl on May 18, 2024 with a lineup that’s pulled straight from your old iPod: The Postal Service, Phoenix, Death Cab for Cutie and the War on Drugs top this year’s lineup, with additional sets from Miike Snow, Gossip, Passion Pit, Tegan and Sara, Washed Out, Alvvays, Phantogram, Broken Social Scene and more.

  • Music
  • Music festivals

After years on the Central Coast, the annual event has more recently made a move significantly closer to L.A., at Bakersfield’s Buena Vista Aquatic Recreational Area. Sure, it’s still a bit of a trek, but where else can you find a sustainable, vegetarian festival dedicated to equal parts music, food, art, yoga and wellness? Skrillex, Labrinth, Lane 8, James Blake and M.I.A. top the 2024 lineup.

Advertising
  • Music
  • West Hollywood

This weekend-long concert will once again return to West Hollywood Park as part of WeHo Pride. Kylie Minogue, Janelle Monáe and Diplo headline this year’s fest with additional sets from Doechii, Ashnikko, Noah Cyrus, Trixie Mattel, Keke Palmer, Channel Tres, Yaeji, Big Freedia, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, VINCINT and more.

 

  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Chinatown

The long-running L.A. Pride has left West Hollywood for destinations farther east, including for this music festival on the edge of Chinatown. There’s no lineup yet for this year’s edition (Megan Thee Stallion and Mariah Carey headlined last year’s) but the Christopher Street West-produced concert will once again set up at L.A. State Historic Park on June 8, with all sorts of other LGBTQ+ programming between sets.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Punk and metal
  • Pomona

As Coachella has become increasingly pop-friendly, promoter Goldenvoice has made it up to aging locals with more and more genre-focused music festivals with stellar lineups. The latest such case: No Values, a fest filled with punk legends you’re almost sure to find in Gen X’ers T-shirt drawer. The Original Misfits, Social Distortion, Iggy Pop, Turnstile, Bad Religion and Sublime top the lineup for the June 8 show at Fairplax in Pomona, with additional sets from the Dillinger Escape Plan, Power Trip, the Damned, Joyce Manor, Suicidal Tendencies, the Vandals, Black Flag, the Jesus Lizard, L7, the Dead Milkmen and more.

  • Music
  • Dance and electronic
  • Long Beach

House music hits the Queen Mary waterfront during this two-day fest. Though the 2024 lineup is still to come, last year’s edition of the multi-stage event featured the likes of Dombresky, Duke Dumont and Dom Dolla.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Music venues
  • Inglewood

EDM juggernaut HARD Summer has hopped around Southern California in recent years, and last year returned to L.A. proper—and for 2024 now heads to the grounds of Hollywood Park, next to SoFi Stadium. No matter the location, its dedication to bringing the biggest names in the hip-hop and electronic scene has stayed the course. This year’s lineup includes Disclosure, FISHER + Chris Lake: Under Construction, Nelly Furtado, REZZMAU5, Major Lazer, Jamie xx, Subtronics, Zeds Dead and more.

Advertising
  • Clubs

Say goodbye to dusty thoroughfares and violent porta-potties: Splash House takes the music festival concept off of sweltering desert land and places it poolside. Movers and shakers at this multi-location getdown are shuttled between the Saguaro, the Margaritaville and the Renaissance (with after-hours programming at the Palm Springs Air Museum) to lap up big-name dance acts and DJ sets. With the added comforts of AC rooms and critically acclaimed restaurant fare just steps away from the party scenes, the experience will make you question whether to bother with more punishing locales come next year’s festival season.

  • Music
  • Funk, soul and disco
  • Inglewood

Lionel Richie and Diana Ross top this inaugural fest filled with soul and R&B legends. Held on the Hollywood Park grounds, next to SoFi Stadium, the August 31 event also includes the likes of Santana, Al Green, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, the Isley Brothers, Charlie Wilson, Eric Burdon & the Animals, the O’Jays, and the Jacksons.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Rock and indie
  • San Bernardino

Radio-friendly, sort-of-hard, sort-of-soft, sometimes-Christan rock is back with a vengeance. Creed is embarking on a reunion tour, and here in SoCal we’ve been blessed(?) with the Creed-iest date of them all: a mini festival at San Bernardino’s Glen Helen Amphitheater that also features 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, Finger Eleven, Fuel, Vertical Horizon and the Verve Pipe.

  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Orange County

Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival once again lands at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point, and though we don’t yet know the lineup, there’s a pretty good chance the Pearl Jam frontman will once again be on it. Last year’s fest included the Killers, HAIM, the Chicks, Foo Fighters and Pretenders—we’ll have to wait and see who tops this year’s edition from September 27 to 29.

Advertising
  • Music
  • Music festivals
  • Inland Empire

Desert Daze is your antidote to the typical desert gathering (think a noisier, more indie lineup than Coachella and less dirt than Burning Man). Though it’s close enough to L.A. to go just for the day, the Lake Perris fest caters to campers with easy access to hiking trails and a bazaar of mystics and wanderers.

  • Music
  • Punk and metal

Well, I’m not okay after seeing the lineup for When We Were Young: My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy top the now-annual Las Vegas festival that features just about every emo-pop act from the early 2000s. Seriously, we’re not kidding: A Day to Remember, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Simple Plan, Coheed and Cambria, the All-American Rejects, New Found Glory, Motion City Soundtrack, Silverstein and more are all set to take over the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on October 19 and 20, 2024, with a special focus on each band’s most beloved album.

Recommended

    More on Summer

      You may also like
      You may also like
      Advertising