After a year in L.A. like 2025, we could all use something to look forward to. And while there’s no guarantee that 2026 will be good, there are certainly enough major local milestones to provide some much-needed optimism.
In a year that’ll see celebrations for the United States’ 250th anniversary and a California law that requires apartments to come with a working stove and fridge (honestly, one of those things is way more exciting than the other), L.A. promises its own slate of museum debuts, major sporting events, transit expansions, restaurant openings and art exhibitions worth looking forward to.
Normally I’d be pretty picky in my year-ahead selections, narrowing them down to things that I feel pretty confident will actually happen and excluding projects with wish-washy deadlines. But given the difficult year, I’m feeling charitable about adding a few holdovers that missed their 2025 targets as well as just a couple of maybe-2026-maybe-later projects to this list—so please, please don’t disappoint us, LAX People Mover.
Tickets for the 2028 Olympics go on sale
The 2028 Olympics are still two-and-a-half years off, but the multi-step process to secure tickets for L.A.’s first Summer Games in four decades starts in mere weeks. On January 14, registration will open on the LA28 site—but don’t expect to walk away that same day with seats for the gymnastics final. That’s merely how you express interest in buying tickets; if you’re then selected in a random drawing, you’ll be assigned a time slot for ticket drops later on. At least a million tickets will start at just $28, though they’ll likely top out at a way-less-cute number.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art lands in Exposition Park
“It belongs in a museum!” I’m preempting all of the quips you’re bound to hear come September 22, 2026, when the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will finally open its doors in Exposition Park. Though filmmaker George Lucas is behind the forthcoming venue, it’ll be considerably less Star Wars or Indiana Jones-y than you might think; expect the verdant spaceship-like building to be filled with paintings, murals and comics from the likes of Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo and Jack Kirby. Years of delays and, more recently, layoffs and curatorial shakeups have left some in the art scene wondering what in the world is going on there at an institutional level; as for us outsiders, the glimpses of the exterior I’ve caught from the neighboring Natural History Museum grounds look truly out of this world, so here’s hoping the substance inside can match that.
World-famous restaurant Noma pops up in L.A.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about Noma’s stint in Los Angeles, but when one of the world’s best restaurants says it’s planning a residency here in 2026, that’s pretty much enough to land on this list. René Redzepi’s three-Michelin-starred Copenhagen icon will pop up in L.A., though for now all you can do is sign up for the restaurant’s newsletter to stay up to date on reservation info. Will it be as scenic or delicious as the quaint Copenhagen waterfront originator? Will a meal drain your bank account? And will landing a reservation require a miracle? We don’t know quite yet, but if the Kyoto residency is anything to go by, plan on bookings to fill in minutes for a meal that might very well cost you close to a thousand dollars.
LACMA’s long-awaited new building welcomes museumgoers
In the works for well over a decade and under construction since 2020, the David Geffen Galleries, a single-building replacement for LACMA’s eastern campus, will finally welcome museumgoers in April. The Peter Zumthor–designed amoeba-shaped structure will have shopping and restaurant spaces on the ground floor, while its sprawling single floor of galleries floats above both sides of Wilshire Boulevard. Exhibition details are still to come, as is word of any sort of opening celebrations, but you can keep tabs on the art installation process on LACMA’s Instagram.
The building has invited plenty of strong opinions over the years on its design and square footage, but come this spring we’ll all be able to weigh in on what it’s actually like to see art here. I was able to step inside the empty galleries over the summer for a one-of-a-kind performance from Kamasi Washington; the elevated views were dreamy though the all-concrete-everywhere look made navigation a bit dizzying—granted, that was with zero artwork on the walls. Now, you can easily spot the installation work underway: A mock-up of Henri Matisse’s colorful ceramic cut-out, La Gerbe (The Sheaf), is visible from the second you exit the parking garage elevators, and if you peer over the construction fences to the south, you’ll spy the top of Split-Rocker, a monumental rocking horse and dinosaur mash-up from Jeff Koons covered in roughly 45,000 perennials and succulents.
The FIFA World Cup comes back to the U.S. for the first time since the ‘90s
L.A.’s multi-year marathon of major sporting events kicks off in February with the NBA All-Star Weekend at Inglewood’s Intuit Dome. But the inarguable sporting centerpiece of 2026 arrives across the street in June with the FIFA World Cup—or rather, just a small fraction of it, as the 2026 edition will be spread across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. SoFi Stadium boasts eight matches, including a quarterfinal as well as the USA men’s team’s opening match against Paraguay (June 12); Iran, New Zealand, Switzerland and Belgium round out the other confirmed teams, plus a pair of TBD European nations. Expect to pay in the triple digits for the bulk of matches, though the U.S. ones are already fetching in the thousands. (FIFA will also price a very limited number of seats at $60 for loyal fans.)
Dudamel conducts his final season at the L.A. Phil
He’s turned the Los Angeles Philharmonic into one of the most lauded orchestras on the planet—and even played Coachella—but now Gustavo Dudamel will wrap up his 17-year tenure as the institution’s music and artistic director. The L.A. Phil has already kicked off Dudamel’s farewell season with a steady slate of shows at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. But that’s not the last you’ll see of Dudamel before he departs for the New York Philharmonic: He’ll still be conducting classical shows on Tuesday and Thursday nights at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. Look out for the Bowl’s full schedule release in February—and keep your fingers crossed for a star-studded send-off on the lineup.
A Fast & Furious roller coaster drifts into Universal Studios Hollywood
If you’re the kind of person who lives your life a quarter mile at a time—and have the patience to wait in a line potentially that long—then you’re going to want to race over to Universal Studios Hollywood in the upcoming year. The theme park will welcome its first outdoor roller coaster, “Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift,” and it quite literally does drift as the coaster’s Dodge Charger-themed cars (à la Dominic Toretto) rotate around turns. It’ll be fast too, with a teased top speed of 72mph. There’s no specific opening date yet aside from sometime in 2026, but if you venture to the park right now you can walk past the brick garage-like queue and might even spot the cars testing on the hillside track.
Metro’s newest subway extension will whisk you from DTLA to Beverly Hills
Though it missed its late-2025 target, the first section of Metro’s D Line expansion is now looking at winter 2026 for its debut. Like the short-but-transformative Regional Connector, this mere four-mile stretch of subway track is easily one of the most momentous additions to L.A.’s public transit system, as it’ll extend the existing DTLA-to-Koreatown route as far west as Beverly Hills. If you’ve driven along Wilshire Boulevard, you’ve probably already seen the nearly-ready-to-open stops: at Wilshire and La Brea, about a half block down from République; at Wilshire and Fairfax, right next to the Petersen Automotive Museum and across the street from LACMA and the Academy Museum; and at Wilshire and La Cienega, just past the Saban Theatre. It’ll further expand to Rodeo Drive and the edge of Century City by spring 2026, and near UCLA and the VA in fall 2027—but like this first phase, those dates can always shift.
Live music returns to the Santa Monica beachfront
Santa Monica’s ever-popular Twilight Concert Series reached a tipping point in the late 2010s: It was simply too popular. Though it had a brief, pared-down reprise in 2019, large-scale concerts haven’t returned to the iconic beachfront ever since. But come fall 2026, Goldenvoice (the folks behind Coachella, Stagecoach and the Rose Bowl’s era-specific fests) will stage a still-untitled large-scale music festival next to the Santa Monica Pier. Details are still light, but the city sees it as a single-day fest for up to 35,000 attendees, with 12 to 15 acts on the lineup. The event’s announcement comes after a few years of thinning tourist crowds, climbing retail vacancy rates and a worsening homeless crisis in downtown Santa Monica.
Nancy Silverton brings one of L.A.’s best steakhouses west
While Angelenos are still patiently waiting hours for Larchmont diner Max & Helen’s, chef Nancy Silverton already has another new restaurant up her sleeve—well, two actually, with Koreatown pasta bar Lapaba theoretically slated to open by the end of 2025. But here I’m talking about Spacca Tutto, a casual spinoff of Silverton’s celebrated Chi Spacca. Unlike the Melrose original (among L.A.’s finest steakhouses), this Pacific Palisades restaurant will lean a little more American than Italian—though it’ll still boast a lengthy Italian wine list—with all-day service and some seafood and veggies alongside its signature steaks. Spacca Tutto is expected to open in August alongside the rest of Palisades Village, the Rick Caruso–owned shopping center that was one of the few commercial complexes to survive 2025’s Palisades Fire.
Meow Wolf expands its psychedelic installations to L.A.
I’m sure I’m not alone here: When I hear “immersive experience” these days, my eyes kind of glaze over as I think, great, another one of these… But that’s certainly not my response to the forthcoming arrival of Meow Wolf: Known for its fully-enveloped environments filled with secret passages, touchable decor and tons of neon, the Santa Fe company currently operates five sites across the Western U.S.—with a brand-new one due to arrive in L.A. in 2026. Teased as a “maximalist fantasy” that takes design cues from the city’s history of filmmaking, the L.A. location (which, despite a relatively quiet year of updates, I’m told is still on track for 2026) will land at the Cinemark complex at HHLA, right along the 405 and just south of the 90.
The city’s best pizzeria moves into a larger space
It sits comfortably atop our own list of the best pizza in L.A. and has landed near the top of nationwide and global pizza rankings, as well. So when Pizzeria Sei says it’s opening a new location, it’s kind of a big deal. Once slated for this past fall, the pint-sized Tokyo-style pizzeria in Pico-Robertson expects to complete its move to Palms in March 2026, into a larger indoor-outdoor space at the corner of Overland Avenue and Tabor Street. When we last spoke with chef-owner William Joo, he teased the introduction of a new, airy double-baked pizza to the menu after the move.
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing lets L.A.’s wild animals safely cross the 101
It looks kind of like any other under-construction freeway overpass right now—except, when work wraps in late 2026, this bridge won’t be connecting to any other roads. Instead, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will offer bobcats, birds, lizards and, most prominently, mountain lions safe passage across the 10 lanes of the 101 in Agoura Hills. In October, the first native plants were placed in the cutoff section above the freeway, while next year that land bridge will connect to the hillsides on either side of the 101, including a second span over the adjacent Agoura Road.
Immersive horror experience The Willows expands into an all-year production
The Halloween season has crept ever longer, with events this past year starting as early as August. Now, The Willows, an immersive theater production that feels like stepping into an A24 horror film, has proved so popular that it’s expanding to a year-round event. And I’m certainly not complaining: JFI Productions’ unsettling two-hour family drama left such an impression on our Things to Do editor, Gillian Glover, that it earned a spot on our Best of the City list for 2025. At $250, tickets are expensive—but that hasn’t stopped its January reprise inside a West Adams mansion from completely selling out (at the time of publication, ticket availability looks better from mid-February onward).
DATALAND, a museum dedicated to AI art, debuts in DTLA
When I wrote about DATALAND’s then-looming opening in late 2024, I noted that you might be “a little bit hesitant” about the idea of a museum of AI art—unaware that AI would absolutely devour 2025, to the point that “slop” would go on to be dubbed “word of the year.” But Refik Anadol’s works aren’t of the sixth-finger-hallucinating variety: For about a decade, Anadol and his wife and studio cofounder Efsun Erkılıç have been translating troves of data into morphing images and rippling particles. Come the spring of 2026, DATALAND will debut in the Grand L.A. (across the street from the Walt Disney Concert Hall) with five galleries of installations, including floor-to-ceiling projections in a rainforest-inspired Infinity Room.
The LAX People Mover will make getting to the airport a little less awful… maybe
The nearly-finished LAX Automated People Mover project is just as L.A. as the rest of us: It says it’ll be there at a certain time, just to blow right past that again and again. So here I am, adding the People Mover to yet another year-ahead list and hoping that this will really be the last time I have to write this—but knowing full well that I may end up feeling like a fool by the end of the year.
So let’s all believe, for a moment, that this game-changing transit project will actually debut in 2026—maybe by June, maybe later. These 44 automated train cars will begin ferrying passengers for free along an elevated 2.25-mile line that bypasses the area’s notorious traffic jams and connects the airport terminals with the new-ish economy parking garage (and pick-up and drop-off area), as well as the consolidated rental car facility. It’ll also connect directly with the K (Crenshaw) Line station that opened in June—meaning, yes, you’ll finally be able to take a train to LAX, with no bus transfers required.