San Diego, CA
San Diego sports fan? Check out these 12 events (and dozens more) in 2026
The best part about living in San Diego is, well, that we get to live here.
But all too often, those of us in America’s Finest City stay close to home. Life’s easier when you don’t have to fight traffic, find parking or purchase tickets.
That ends today.
Here’s a look at 12 sporting events — one each month, all year long — that will help you become not only a better sports fan in 2026 but a more well-rounded San Diegan, too. The following list of local events is by no means comprehensive given that some teams have yet to announce their schedules and, of course, times and dates are subject to change. But consider it a good start.
So let’s get moving. The first one is Friday!
January: Take in the latest Holiday Bowl in history
This year’s Holiday Bowl will technically be played next year, part of a scheduling quirk that moves San Diego’s annual bowl game to Friday, Jan. 2. The past two Holiday Bowls were marked by opt-outs — USC star Caleb Williams missed in 2024, and Washington State left its quarterback and coach at home in 2025 — but this year’s matchup at Snapdragon Stadium should be a good one. Both No. 21 Arizona (9-3) and SMU (8-4) boast star quarterbacks and pass-happy offensive schemes that fit perfectly with the Holiday Bowl’s reputation as America’s Most Exciting Bowl Game. Just make sure you know the difference between “Pony Up” and “Bear Down” before you go.
Mark your calendars:
Jan. 11: USATF National Marathon Race Walk Championships in Santee
Jan. 16-18: San Diego Rodeo at Petco Park
Jan. 17: Monster Energy AMA Supercross at Snapdragon Stadium
February: Follow the leader at the Farmers Insurance Open
This year’s Farmers Insurance Open wraps on Feb. 1, giving San Diego’s golf fans a chance to take in world-class competition at Torrey Pines Golf Course. The Open returns to a more traditional Thursday-through-Sunday format after being held Wednesday through Saturday in past years. The vibe is coastal cool: even if you don’t know who won in 2025 (Harris English) or 2024 (Matthieu Pavon), you’ll never forget the sweeping views and good-time crowds at Torrey Pines. But bring a quarter-zip: It gets windy (and foggy) out there.
Mark your calendars:
Feb. 1: Final day of the San Diego Open at the Barnes Tennis Center
Feb. 3: San Diego FC vs. Pumas UNAM in Concacaf Champions Cup first-round play at Snapdragon Stadium
Feb. 22: Harlem Globetrotters at Pechanga Arena
Feb. 26: FIBA Men’s World Cup Qualifying game: USA men’s basketball national team vs. Dominican Republic at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside
Feb. 27: “No Boxing, No Life” fight card at SeaWorld’s Nautilus Arena
Feb. 28: UC San Diego men’s basketball “Senior Night” vs. Cal Poly at LionTree Arena
March: Step into the Madness at Viejas Arena
The NCAA Tournament returns to Viejas Arena March 20 and 22 for the first two rounds of regional play. And while San Diego State won’t be there — NCAA rules prohibit teams from playing on their home courts in the tournament – there’s bound to be men’s basketball blue-bloods in the building. The nation’s top-ranked team, Arizona, is a good bet to stay in the West if it continues to win; if not, perennial powerhouses like Gonzaga or UCLA could post up in San Diego for the Friday-Sunday series. Buy your tickets now, but be warned: Watching a full day of NCAA Tournament games in person is intense, exhausting — and exhilarating.
Mark your calendars:
March 1: FIBA Men’s World Cup Qualifying game: USA national basketball team vs. Mexico at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside
March 13-14: National Women’s Soccer League’s opening weekend; San Diego Wave’s schedule/opponent TBA
March 21-22: Savannah Bananas Baseball at Petco Park
March 23: San Diego Strike Force season opener vs. Northern Arizona Wranglers at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside
March 24-25: UC San Diego baseball vs. Oregon at Triton Field
March 26: San Diego Padres’ 2026 season opener vs. Detroit Tigers at Petco Park
March 27-29: San Diego Crew Classic on Mission Bay
March 28: Ironman 70.3 Triathlon in Oceanside
April: Guide the Gulls into the playoffs at Pechanga Arena
The San Diego Gulls last made the American Hockey League playoffs in 2021. They haven’t advanced past the first round since 2019. But hockey hope springs eternal, and there’s reason to believe that San Diego’s struggles won’t last forever. The club wraps the 2025-26 regular season on April 18 with a home game against the Coachella Valley Firebirds, and there could be a playoff spot at stake. This year’s Gulls have enough Anaheim Ducks prospects that they could make a push. And if not? Well, Gulls games are always a good time. The club finished eighth in the 32-team AHL in attendance last season.
Mark your calendars:
April 2: Final day of San Diego Lions Baseball Tournament, various sites
April 12: 40th annual Carlsbad 5000 race, Carlsbad
April 17: San Diego Seals Fan Appreciation Night vs. Las Vegas Desert Dogs at Pechanga Arena
April 23-26: Lakeside Rodeo, Lakeside
April 30: San Diego Mojo regular-season finale vs. Grand Rapids Rise at Viejas Arena
May: Put some heat on the Whitecaps
The last time the Vancouver Whitecaps visited San Diego, they scored two goals in the first 11 minutes and ended San Diego FC’s season in the Major League Soccer Western Conference final. Well, Vancouver is back in town on May 23, and SDFC will be eager to pay back its rival. Wear your tennis shoes, bring cough drops and prepare to stand, chant and sing in SDFC’s final match before its two-month World Cup break.
Mark your calendars:
May 7-15: Etchells World Championship Regatta at San Diego Yacht Club
May 22-27: NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, Carlsbad
May 29-June 3: NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, Carlsbad
May 29-31: Beach Soccer Championships (BeSoCha) in Oceanside
May 31: Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon and Half-Marathon, finishing at Balboa Park
June: Witness San Diego racing history in Coronado
San Diego will host its first-ever NASCAR Cup Series race as part of a three-day celebration of racing and the military at Naval Station Coronado. The June 21 Anduril 250 is named in honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States and the Navy. The Cup Series race caps a weekend that includes the June 19 Craftsman Truck Series race and June 20 Xfinity Series race. El Cajon native Jimmie Johnson, one of the greatest drivers in the history of NASCAR, will attempt to qualify for all three races.
Mark your calendars:
June 13-20: United States Police & Fire Championships, 28 venues throughout San Diego County
June 16: USA Surfing Junior Championships, Oceanside
June 26-28: San Diego Padres vs. Los Angeles Dodgers at Petco Park
July: Watch California’s best
The California State Summer Games return to San Diego in July. From July 17-20, more than 10,000 kids age 18 and under will participate in 29 sports competitions spread throughout San Diego County. (We’re talking everything from archery and artistic swimming to basketball, skateboarding, squash, track and field and wrestling.) The Games begin July 17 with an opening ceremony and Athlete Parade at Pechanga Arena.
Mark your calendars:
July 1: San Diego State moves to the Pac-12 Conference
July 11-12, 18-19: OMBAC Over-the-Line World Championships at Fiesta Island
July 17: Opening day of horse racing at Del Mar
July 26: Solana Beach Triathlon and 5K in Solana Beach
August: Get some sun in Oceanside
The 49th annual World Bodysurfing Championships will be held Aug. 15-16 at the Oceanside Pier. As many as 400 bodysurfers will compete for awards in numerous age divisions, with men’s and women’s grand champions crowned at the end of the second day. Bodysurfing begins at 6:30 a.m. both days.
Mark your calendars:
Aug. 16: CVC San Diego Triathlon in Chula Vista
Aug. 30: Pacific Classic at Del Mar
September: Party like it’s 1998 at Petco Park
It’ll be 1998 all over again on Sept. 4-6, when the New York Yankees visit Petco Park for an interleague series. New York is 21-10 all-time against the Padres, but it’s the Yankees’ first four wins that sting the most. Derek Jeter, Scott Brosius and Co. swept the Padres from the 1998 World Series, four games to none. The Padres haven’t reached the World Series since.
Mark your calendars:
Sept. 5: USD football opener vs. UC Davis at Torero Stadium
Sept. 11-20: World Surf League competition at Lower Trestles
Sept. 19: San Diego State vs. Oregon State football at Snapdragon Stadium
Sept. 27: San Diego Padres’ regular-season finale vs. Arizona Diamondbacks at Petco Park
October: Cross the border
October’s Binational Race might be the only half-marathon that starts in one country and finishes in a different one. The event starts at Las Americas in San Ysidro, takes runners through the San Ysidro-El Chaparral International Checkpoint and ends at Playas de Tijuana in Mexico. Race organizers say the Binational Race is “part of a regional movement promoting cultural, social, academic, sports, political, and family exchanges between San Diego and Tijuana.” Want to run? Be sure to bring your passport, global entry or sentry card.
Mark your calendars:
Oct. 22-25: USA Ultimate Frisbee Championships at Surf Cup Sports Park in Del Mar
Oct. 31-Nov. 8: USA Pickleball National Championships at Barnes Tennis Center
November: Stuff yourself with college hoops
The Rady Children’s Invitational has brought its fair share of basketball blue-bloods to San Diego, but UCLA is special. The Bruins of the (ugh) Big Ten Conference highlight the 2026 Rady’s field at Jenny Craig Pavilion, one that also includes Georgetown, Texas and Saint Mary’s. The two-day event starts with two games on Nov. 26 — Thanksgiving — and wraps the next day with championship and third-place games.
Mark your calendars:
Nov. 7: San Diego FC’s regular-season finale vs. Sporting Kansas City at Snapdragon Stadium
Dates TBA: CIF San Diego Section football championships, various sites
December: See Santa run at the Santa Run
One of San Diego’s enduring holiday traditions, the 14th annual San Diego Santa Run will take place Dec. 12 on Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach. Runners can choose between a traditional 5K, a 1-mile kids run or the very P.B. “dog mile,” a 1-mile race you can run alongside your pooch. The event takes place just before the annual Pacific Beach Christmas Parade. Participants in the 5K receive a “Sunny Santa” suit, sunglasses and a drink ticket, while other racers get Santa hats, shirts and sunglasses.
Mark your calendars:
Dec. 19: San Diego Holiday Half-Marathon and 5K, starting in Rancho Penasquitos
Date TBA: Alex Spanos All-Star Classic at Mira Mesa High School
Dates TBA: Torrey Pines Holiday Classic basketball tournament, various locations throughout San Diego County
By Dave Rice
Is Measure A going to affect a significant number of properties? Is it going to affect affordable housing in any meaningful way? Come now, let’s not be dense – this hits a handful of rich people who can absolutely afford to drop $10K in the city coffers if they’re leaving a vacation home vacant on purpose – let’s say that’s their civic contribution that would be realized in other ways if they actually lived, worked, and shopped here full-time.
Or it hits STVR hosts, who can either factor the cost into their business model or give it up if margins are really that thin (maybe not everyone needs to fancy themselves an amateur hotelier). But let’s not kid ourselves and believe the kind of housing this will free up will be plentiful or affordable.
In the exceedingly rare instances where someone might be eligible for an exemption, will it be too hard to apply for? That’s something we can argue and refine but that’s the bathwater, or just the little bit of it that splashes out of the tub, not the baby. An argument that the whole proposal is DOA because military members are too stupid to file for an exemption is either dismissive of or telling tales out of school about what we really think of military intelligence.
Poor, poor grandma who needs a home near her doctor? If she’s really poor why does she have multiple houses, and if she’s not does this really affect her? I live in a neighborhood where “aren’t you afraid you’re going to get shot?” is the first thing outsiders ask me about where I’m from, and if Grandma has owned her mostly-unoccupied vacation house for any significant time I probably pay a lot more property tax than she does. You couldn’t trip over the limbo bar to gain my sympathy, it’s buried a few feet deep.
This is a tiny nod toward taxing the rich, but that’s all. It’s not significant or meaningful, it won’t do a lot, most of the housing stock in question even if returned to actual residents won’t make a dent in the astronomical cost of living in or anywhere near this city. But it’s a tiny step in the right direction – and watching how hysterical the moneyed class is about the rest of us asking for even the tiniest drop in the goddamned bucket we’re trying to fill without their help is telling.
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This is the first installment in a series of stories on the history of dining out in La Jolla, how it’s changed and how it continues to evolve.
It’s hard to imagine La Jolla without its restaurants, from the lines stretching down the block at The Taco Stand to the iconic views at George’s at the Cove.
But the way La Jollans eat and where has changed dramatically since the area’s founding in the 1800s.
In this first part of the new month-long series “Dining Out,” the La Jolla Light looks at local restaurants from the 1880s (when La Jolla was first developed and settled) to the early 1920s.
“La Jolla had very few people at that time,” according to local historian Carol Olten. “There weren’t a lot of restaurants, as far as we know.”
Olten said she gets information about La Jolla’s earliest days from the diaries of local pioneer Anson Mills.
“He kept track of where he went and what he did … but he did a lot of home cooking,” she said. “So when they went to a restaurant for dinner, it was a big occasion. It was something people mainly did on holidays or … a social occasion.”
One restaurant Mills would go to — believed to be one of the first in La Jolla — was Montezuma Cottage. Olten said it is believed to have opened in 1895 near the intersection of Prospect and Jenner streets.
Mills described the restaurant as a popular eating and gathering spot for locals and tourists, Olten said. He wrote an entry about a Thanksgiving dinner there with about 60 people.
Montezuma Cottage later became known as the Seaside Inn and Ocean View restaurant. It was torn down in 1931.
Culturally, eating at a restaurant was a more formal occasion at the time, Olten said.
“You didn’t go to a restaurant just to hang out with friends like you would today. It was purposeful then,” she said.
Around 1900, a restaurant known as the White Rabbit opened near the corner of Girard Avenue and Prospect Street. In addition to a rooftop garden, it featured a tea room, joining a national trend.
“Tea rooms went with the suffragette movement because in those days, [women] didn’t have a place to gather without an escort, so tea rooms started opening in hotels and women could go there and sit down and have a social tea or lunch,” Olten said. “La Jolla got in on the tail end of that thanks to [Green Dragon Colony founder] Anna Held and [La Jolla philanthropist] Ellen Browning Scripps.”
One of them, called The Cricket, opened in the early 1900s with white tablecloths. Olten said it was near what it is now Eddie V’s restaurant.
“It was originally part of the Green Dragon Colony … and was sold to a British woman named Daisy Mitchell,” she said. “It stayed a tea room for many years, and she kept a guest book that was decorated with reds and greens and had a medieval theme. So it was very British.”
Joining a trend toward more upscale dining, one of La Jolla’s “most well-established and well-known restaurants” opened in 1912 at 1227 Prospect St. The Brown Bear had “stylish, fashionable service and a menu to please the gods,” Olten said.
A house specialty was Welsh rabbit served in a silver chafing dish. The restaurant was in operation until 1941.
Several restaurants opened around 1915, about the same time as the Panama-California Exposition, a world’s fair-type event held in 1915-16 that brought 3.7 million people to San Diego.
One of La Jolla’s new restaurants, the Spindrift Inn, opened in 1916 and was considered a “last stop” out of town.
“Most restaurants at that time were located in the immediate Village area,” Olten said. “The one that was astray would have been the Spindrift Inn [in La Jolla Shores]. This was in the very early days of automobiles, so not very many people had cars, but those that did would … drive their cars and the last stop before you got out of town was Spindrift Inn.”
The Spindrift Inn later became The Marine Room, which still stands.
Olten said the restaurant was operated by the Hannay family for about 20 years. Their “rambunctious” fox terrier, Jiggs, would roam the dining room.
Another Expo-era restaurant was the Dining Car, which operated in an old trolley car parked near Goldfish Point. Dinner was $2 per person. It burned down on Halloween night in 1923.
Next installment: With new hotels being built in La Jolla in the 1920s came new hotel restaurants. But later, World War II would have an impact on La Jollans and San Diegans in general and on where and how they ate. ♦
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