Ocean Way Festival, the ambitious new Goldenvoice festival that was supposed to bring The Killers, Olivia Dean and Jack White to the sand in Santa Monica later this month, has been canceled. Organizers said the remnants of Hurricane Marie left the festival site too damaged to safely stage the two-day event on Sept. 26-27.
“Due to the impacts of Hurricane Marie, the City of Santa Monica has canceled the inaugural Ocean Way Festival,” organizers said. “Storm surf and runoff have caused significant beach erosion and the festival can no longer be safely held as planned. Plans are already underway to bring the festival back to Santa Monica in 2027.”
The cancellation wipes out what Goldenvoice and the struggling city had promoted as the first major music festival ever staged directly on Santa Monica Beach. Ocean Way was to stretch across the sand between the Santa Monica Pier and Bay Street, with the Pier behind the main stage, two stages of music and gathering areas designed to mix standing-room crowds with the sort of blanket space normally associated with a day at the beach. Earlier city plans envisioned the festival drawing roughly 30,000 to 35,000 people, part of a larger effort to bring major events and tourism back to Santa Monica which has seen businesses shutter along its major streets, the Third Street Promenade and adjoining mall.
Goldenvoice had done their job pulling in the talent. The Killers and Olivia Dean were the headliners, joined by Jack White, Khruangbin, Sublime, Durand Jones and the Indications, Alvvays, SG Lewis, 54 Ultra, Hiatus Kaiyote, BLOND:ISH, Poolside, Hot Chip DJs and others.
The promoters who brought the world Coachella described Ocean Way as a mix of rock, soul, indie and house music, and pitched it as something that could become an annual Santa Monica institution rather than a one-off concert. The company even presented the festival as something of a homecoming, pointing to its history promoting shows at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and to Ocean Way Recording, the legendary studio founded nearby by Allen Sides.
Santa Monica has certainly seen enormous crowds on its beach before, although not for a ticketed rock festival quite like this one. For decades, the Santa Monica Pier also hosted the free Twilight Dance Series, later known as the Twilight Concert Series, with summer concerts traditionally held on Thursday nights and crowds often spilling from the Pier onto the beach below; by 2017, after 33 years, city officials said the concerts were drawing tens of thousands of people.
The closest historical comparison to Ocean Way may be Glow, the all-night art and music event that overwhelmed the Pier and beach in July 2008. Organizers expected about 25,000 people and instead nearly a quarter-million reportedly showed up, clogging the boardwalk and forcing officials to close the Pier and shut down some of the music. Ocean Way would have been much more controlled, fenced and ticketed, but Goldenvoice itself was careful to call it the first major music festival on Santa Monica Beach.
The official explanation for canceling Ocean Way is beach erosion, and one detail discussed after the announcement makes that explanation more plausible than it initially sounded to some fans.
A Reddit commenter who visited the site pointed out that the planned festival entrance was near the Pico-Kenter storm drain, a huge runoff channel south of the Pier where sand regularly has to be replaced after heavy water flow. Since the festival grounds were supposed to extend south toward Bay Street, damage around that particular section of beach could create a serious crowd-control problem even if other parts of Santa Monica Beach looked relatively normal.
That did not stop another theory from spreading almost immediately: Ocean Way simply was not selling enough tickets. In the Coachella subreddit, several commenters said passes appeared to remain at the original first-tier pricing late into the sales period, while others claimed discounted tickets had begun appearing.
One of the thread’s most upvoted comments argued that weak sales made the storm damage a convenient reason to pull the plug. Others pointed to the cost, with two-day general admission initially starting around $399 and Reddit users complaining that single-day tickets were more than $200. Those ticket-sales theories remain speculation, not a confirmed explanation for the cancellation.
For Santa Monica, the loss is bigger than one weekend of concerts. The city had positioned Ocean Way as part of a broader attempt to turn its coastline into a destination for events like the forthcoming Super Bowl and upcoming Olympics.
Goldenvoice had already talked publicly about returning with the festival in future years, and the cancellation statement says plans are underway for 2027. So Santa Monica may still get its beachfront fiesta… unless Mother Nature chooses to wreak havoc again.
