Various locations in L.A.

Support women-owned restaurants and dine at some of L.A.’s best spots during the return of this annual food fest in honor of Women’s History Month. Regarding Her's festival will offer themed menu specials, cooking classes, convos and collabs from women restaurateurs all month long. Highlights from this year’s lineup include La Festa Della Donna, a special International Women's Day celebration at Smorgasburg (Mar 8); the Echo Park Bop, a walking food and drink tour of 10 women-owned restaurants including Quarter Sheets, Bakers Bench, Bar Flores, Tsubaki, Little Fish and Valerie Confections (Mar 22); Maydan Market Monday (Mar 23); the return of All Day Baby via a biscuit pop-up (Mar 28); and a women-powered Lincoln Avenue Parking Lot Party Benefit for Altadena (Mar 29). You’ll also find other fun one-offs on the calendar, including a cacao tasting at the Chocolate Dispensary (Mar 12) and a “Sweetcute” ice cream social at the Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World (Mar 21). Check the website for the full lineup.

Pasadena’s underrated collection of museums and performance spaces open up their doors for free at this biannual arts and culture open house. Take advantage of the free shuttle buses to travel between local institutions such as the recently reopened USC Pacific Asia Museum, ArtCenter, Norton Simon Museum, Gamble House, Kidspace Children’s Museum and more, many of which will be offering special arts programming and live performances. And, of course, no arts fest would be complete without food trucks, which often include pop-ups from local bricks-and-mortar businesses.

A site-specific sculpture park more than a decade in the making, sister dreamer is artist Lauren Halsey’s ode to her multi-generational South Central roots. The result is truly a sight to behold, adorned with eight sphinxes and Hathor columns carved with portraits of the artist’s personal heroes; a courtyard with water features, fruit trees and native plants; and a dedicated programming space that will host wellness classes, jazz nights, line dancing lessons, art conversations and more during the project’s 18-month run. This Saturday, the community is celebrating the opening with a four-block-long street fair at 76th Street and Western Avenue, full of food and shopping vendors, basketball, a bouncy house, board games, face painting, drill teams, DJs, double dutching and “krumping clowns”—plus a performance by Parliament Funkadelic.

Nasstive Entertainment hosts not one but two St. Patrick’s Day bar crawls in Los Angeles—one in Downtown and one in Hollywood—plus one in Long Beach. Channel the luck o’ the Irish with hundreds of other revelers as you hop from bar to bar and enjoy all-day drink specials, welcome shots, festive food, DJs and live music. For DTLA, you’ll check in at Karl Strauss Brewing, then grab a wristband and drink coupons and travel between participating bars including Pattern Bar, Broken Shaker, Beelman’s, Golden Gopher and more. In Hollywood, the crawl starts at Saint Felix on Cahuenga and includes stops at Jameson’s Irish Pub, Y2K-themed spot Zero Lounge, Boardner’s, Cabo Cantina and more. 

Shop local at this free, pet-friendly celebration of small businesses, which is expanding and trading in its Mar Vista setting for the heart of Venice Beach: You’ll find live music, art, fashion and food under the famed Venice sign at Windward and Pacific Avenues. The festival brings together over 300 local brands and artists three times a year, attracting thousands of shoppers. This time around, there will be four stages for live music—with a TBA lineup of local musicians and surprise guests sponsored by the upcoming BeachLife Festival—as well as DJs, fitness and kids’ entertainment.

Netflix’s stand-up specials keep us cackling at home, but the streaming service’s ambitious comedy festival is nothing to laugh at. For its second iteration, Netflix is a Joke Fest is headed back here May 4 to 10, 2026, and upping the ante: We’ve counted over 350 shows slated for venues across the city, boasting sets from Ali Wong, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, John Mulaney, Taylor Tomlinson and a reunited Flight of the Conchords, plus literally hundreds of others. This year, the lineup also includes the surprise addition of music (Jelly Roll, Lizzo) and a ton of podcast tapings (The Pete Davidson Show, Giggly Squad, The Viall Files and more). The event is a bit more of a marathon than a traditional festival: There’s not an all-encompassing festival pass, but you can buy individual tickets to shows throughout its run. You’ll find shows staged at venues as big as the Hollywood Bowl and Greek Theatre (absolutely don’t drive and instead take the shuttle to both of those) and as intimate as Dynasty Typewriter and UCB, plus seemingly every major arena, theater and comedy club in between. Keep in mind that for shows at spots that are normally general admission, that means sitting in stiff, tightly packed folding chairs with limited views (the Palladium and ground floor of the Wiltern have particularly poor sightlines)—but the vast majority of venues thankfully have permanent seats. It’s TBD if outdoor event Outside Joke—which in the past was set up in a parking lot behind the...

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 Renaissance and the Hilton Palm Springs (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 air-conditioned 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.

Get ready: In 2028, Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympic Games. After initially vying for a bid in 2024, L.A. was awarded the ’28 Games back in 2017.