December 2026 events calendar for Los Angeles

Every Sunday, you can find dozens of food vendors at this market at ROW DTLA, a Brooklyn import that boasts a mix of much-loved pop-ups and future foodie stars. A new batch of vendors just joined the lineup: Feast on brisket from Black Almond BBQ, Dominican and Puerto Rican dishes from Casa de Lola, Cambodian skewers from Kreung LA, ultra-thin-crust pizza from Lindfors Farms and Triple Berry Cake from Sweet Lady Jane. You’ll also find shopping stalls selling everything from framed vintage ads to jewelry made locally with ethically sourced gemstones. Entry and the first two hours of parking are free.

Perhaps the Los Angeles area’s most iconic flea market, this event around the exterior of the Rose Bowl is staggeringly colossal—but what else would you expect from a 90,000-seat stadium? The sheer size and scale of this flea market means that it encompasses multitudes: new and old, hand-crafted and salvaged, the cheap and the costly. On the second Sunday of each month, an odd mix of vendors populates the loop around the stadium: for every eye-catching artwork, there’s a ratty $5 T-shirt, and for each elegant craft there’s a competing “as seen on TV” demo. But you may have more luck in the rows and rows of old furniture, albums and vintage clothes and accessories that fill the adjacent parking lot. There are plenty of duds, to be sure, but come out early enough and you may go home with that perfect purchase. This destination flea market attracts bargain hunters, collectors, and antique aficionados from all over the county, so the organizers have instituted an extensive tiered entry/admission system, allowing professional and dedicated shoppers early access at a premium.

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings to LEVEL in Downtown L.A. Known for excellent film choices and a steady supply of snacks and booze, Rooftop Cinema Club is your snazzy, comfortable and less stressful alternative to other outdoor movie screenings. You don’t even need to bring your own camping chair—Rooftop Cinema Club provides you with your very own comfy lawn chair (with optional blankets for purchase to up the coziness). And instead of listening to the movie over loudspeakers, you’ll get a set of wireless headphones so you never have to miss a word. Find the full schedule on their site, or in our outdoor movie calendar.

Co-organized with Warner Bros. Archives, this immersive exhibition explores the world-building of Ryan Coogler’s record-breaking and Oscar-winning film Sinners. Centered around the film’s iconic Club Juke sequence, it uses music as an ancestral thread to trace Black cultural memory and the Great Migration from the Mississippi Delta to California. Featured artifacts include original film costumes for Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke and Stack, the Club Juke sign and Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore’s guitar. On your way out, stop by the interactive installation “Sounds That Carry Us,” where visitors can reflect on their own musical memories.

Street Food Cinema has put together a series of outdoor holiday screenings in the closest thing to a Dickensian town square in L.A.: Heritage Square. In between Victorian home tours, piano sing-alongs, strolls through a light tunnel and sips on hot chocolate and mulled wine, you can catch screenings—many of them double features—of flicks like Elf, Home Alone, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Muppet Christmas Carol and more. Just make sure to bundle up in your best Christmas sweater.

You might have seen ads on Instagram over the past couple of months for Hospital of Emotions—a colorful, cartoony flyer that heralds a site-specific art pop-up located in a real hospital with the tagline “a place to heal your heART.” The conceit intrigued me off the bat: 70 artists (both local and international) given hospital rooms as a canvas to transform as they wished. Hospital of Emotions ads are also referring to it as “the experience of the year.” We’re only in May so that’s still TBD, but I do think the exhibition—which is inhabiting the former St. Vincent Medical Center in Westlake and is officially open to the public as of May 27—is well worth your time. While the entire experience is hospital-themed—you walk through a waiting room and are given an intake form and hospital wristband, employees are in doctors’ coats—it’s not the cheesy type of immersive exhibition (read: selfie factory) that you might expect. Instead you’ll find 80 rooms filled with thought-provoking, visually dazzling and, yes, eminently photogenic installations. But there’s both style and substance here. And though the tickets are definitely on the pricey side, there’s so much to see—I spent nearly two hours there during my visit—that it (almost) makes up for it. The rooms are organized by theme; you start at the top of the building in the “Resilience Department” and make your way through clusters of rooms inspired by feelings like joy, sadness, anger, grief, fear and hope. The emphasis on...

Organized by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and presented by the Hammer Museum, the MoMA Contenders series presents 10 influential, innovative films made in the past year that MoMA’s Department of Film believes are bound for big things (whether that means awards-season glory or cult-classic status). In addition to screenings of all 10 films, most are normally accompanied by a post-screening discussion with some of the creatives involved in the project. This year’s picks include Coyote vs. Acme (followed by a conversation with director Dave Green and producer Chris DeFaria), I Want Your Sex (writer Araki), Obsession, Project Hail Mary (directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller), All of a Sudden (writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi), Possible Love (director Lee Dhang-dong), The Invite, La ola negra, Once Upon a Time in Harlem and Clarissa. More special guests will be announced soon. The Contenders isn’t strictly an awards-season spoiler; MoMA considers its picks as movies that will stand the test of time. But the series has turned out to be a pretty good Oscars predictor, with nearly all its films nabbing nominations in recent years.

Cole Escola’s gleefully irreverent comedy—a hilariously anachronistic historical burlesque about Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination—is the funniest play in years. The touring production hits Downtown L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre this fall, with Alaska Thunderfuck in the title role. Check out our full five-star review of its Broadway run.

Admire suspended sheets of textiles—including the metallic ones that would be incorporated into the curtains at the new David Geffen Galleries—along with colorful sketches and a recreation of Tokyo store NUNO at LACMA’s showcase of pioneering textile designer Reiko Sudō.

An evolution of the long-running Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, the newly dubbed DTLA Artnight finds dozens of Downtown businesses opening their doors to art lovers on the first Thursday of every month, when over 25 galleries will debut new exhibitions. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure kind of experience, but if you start at Emerging Gallery (125 E 4th St), you can pick up a map of all the participating spots. MOCA even joins the fun as the cultural event expands from the Historic Core to Grand Avenue.