Free events in LA: The best free things to do in the city

Riverside’s stunningly beautiful Mission Inn is bathed in 4.5 million twinkly lights during the annual Festival of Lights. The free six-week-long holiday tradition runs from late November to early January and typically features more than 400 animated figures. Having been voted the “Best Public Lights Display” by USA Today, the festival attracts over 500,000 visitors each year.

Marina del Rey rings in the new year with two pyro-filled countdowns. The waterfront city has fireworks at both 9pm and midnight (or a minute before, to be precise). While the fireworks are set off near Burton Chace Park (which hosts a family-friendly “glow party” from 7pm to midnight), all of the restaurants with harbor views should have visibility of the fireworks. Some of the restaurants host ticket dinners for a pricey cost, so we suggest finding a spot along the water and enjoying the fireworks for free.

Holiday light shows are popping up all over the city, but a new, free light installation is a more-than-welcome addition. Grand Illuminations, which consists of a custom 25-foot-tall LED light tree and Electric Dandelions—kicks off December 4 with a lighting ceremony, live music and refreshments from 5–8pm. The 10 dandelions, 28-foot-tall kinetic sculptures that look like fireworks in action, were designed by L.A.-based art collective Liquid PXL and debuted at Burning Man in 2016, popping up in the U.K., East Coast and various festivals before arriving at the Yard at Cal Plaza. The lights will stay on all holiday season, through January 8, till 10pm nightly.    

Getting out for New Year’s Eve can become one of the priciest dates of the year, but thankfully DTLA’s Grand Park continues to offer an affordable and family-friendly option for the holiday. Flanked by the Music Center and City Hall, every inch of this three-block greenspace and three other surrounding blocks will be covered in culture, including City Hall, which will be used as a 22-story canvas for countdown projection. Crowds will rock steady to a soundtrack of DJ-driven tunes and live bands across a pair of stages while hitting up a selection of food trucks (but do note: there’s no alcohol permitted or sold here). If you dare attempt to drive, you’ll find $10 parking at the Music Center, but taking Metro is a much better bet—especially since fares tend to be free for NYE. RECOMMENDED: New Year’s Eve parties in Los Angeles

While Santa may still be working with his elves to load up his sleigh, you can relax and enjoy a Christmas Eve celebration at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Gather up your friends and family and go hear L.A.’s biggest holiday show, now in its 65th year, which features more than 20 choirs, music ensembles and dance troupes from all over the city. This year’s lineup includes the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, Grammy winner Daniel Ho and Urban Voices Project, a choir made up of men and women from Skid Row. New this time around are a circus act and a puppet performance by Bob Baker Marionette Theater. The free three-hour show celebrates L.A.’s multicultural observation of the holidays and has hosted everything from an all-women soul ensemble to Hawaiian music to Indian dance. The performance runs from 3 to 6pm. Note: Advance reservations and (free) tickets are required for this year’s show; parking at the Dorothy Chandler is also free. Those who still have last-minute holiday responsibilities to attend to can listen to a livestream of the concert on pbssocal.org or watch it on PBS SoCal.

After its fall debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of PST ART, artist Doug Aitken’s multimedia collab with the L.A. Phil and L.A. Master Chorale makes the jump to the Marciano Art Foundation. The free museum mounts the multi-channel video piece in its massive theater gallery, which you can see during routine opening hours (Tue–Sat 11am–6pm). But look out for separate reservations for weekly (typically on Saturdays) live performances organized by both musical ensembles.

Stake out a spot in downtown Long Beach to catch this waterfront fireworks show on New Year’s Eve. Though this year’s full details are still to come, past celebrations have included two chances to see fireworks: an early one at a more family-friendly time of 9pm, followed by another at midnight. You can catch the shows from pretty much anywhere near the water, like Shoreline Park and Village, and you can expect dinner specials and parties at plenty of local businesses nearby (including, yes, the Queen Mary, which has again revived its on-board party).

Most New Year’s Eve parties in L.A. celebrate the stroke of midnight on the West Coast, and a bunch mark the ball drop on the East Coast, as well. But Big Bar celebrates the occasion with 10 countdowns. That’s nine themed cocktails (for purchase) and one complimentary champagne toast at midnight. This year’s Lord of the Rings theme takes you to Middle Earth and back again, starting at the Shire (with free Bilbo’s birthday cake shots for those who arrive before 3pm) and ending at Mount Doom, where they’ll literally ring in the new year by dropping the ring into a volcano.

Artists and JPL scientists come together for this collaborative exhibition in Glendale, where 11 artists across a mix of mediums present their take on how nature and the night sky can inspire wonder in us.

Hatched during the pandemic and 2020’s social justice demonstrations, this exhibition—guest curated by Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake—examines how environmental art intersects with equity. In practice, that means you’ll find pieces that contemplate the power dynamics of our changing natural world, like Tiffany Chung’s floating model of a flooded Southeast Asian village or LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photos of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The large-scale installations perched above the museum’s courtyard are most likely to grab your attention, though: Lan Tuazon’s plastic recycling station, a green oasis from South L.A.’s self-described “gangsta gardener” Ron Finley and a literal hive of activity around Garnett Puett’s Untitled (Paradoxical Garden Downstream), a trio of wax figures buzzing with honeybees (they’re behind glass and a few curtains but you may still find some nearby wild bees attracted to it).

Swimmers across the city will take to the not-so-icy waters to welcome the new year with the annual Polar Bear Plunge. Water and air temperatures on New Year’s Day typically hover around 60 degrees, which is Arctic enough if you ask us. You can spectate or dive in during at meet-ups in Huntington Beach (dubbed Surf City Splash) and San Pedro, whose plunge at Cabrillo Beach tends to be the most consistent one.

The first Rose Parade in 1890 was staged to show off California’s sun-kissed climate. The tradition is still going strong, complete with elaborate floral floats, musical performances and marching troupes (not to mention the crowning of the fresh-faced Rose Queen and her court), but the celebration now draws more than a million spectators who line the streets of Pasadena. The big Rose Bowl football game follows the parade. Later in the year, the event is spoofed with a day of costumed mayhem at the Doo Dah Parade. The parade—held on New Year’s Day—kicks off at 8am at the corner of Green Street and Orange Grove Boulevard before making its way east onto Colorado Boulevard. Near the end of the route, the parade turns north onto Sierra Madre Boulevard and concludes at Villa Street, where you can see the floats showcased.  Bleacher seats are available—about $120 in the TV zone and closer to $75 farther east—but you can grab a spot on the sidewalk for free. People traditionally camp out overnight, but if you’d rather show up the morning of, head east of Lake Avenue and you’ll have an easier time.

This first-floor exhibition at the Broad features hundreds of German artist Joseph Beuys’s “multiples,” editioned objects (with a focus here on environmentalism) that stretched the meaning of sculpture. But the most notable aspect of this show extends beyond the gallery walls: Inspired by Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks), the concurrent Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar will plant 100 native trees (primarily coast live oaks) in Elysian Park and at Kuruvungna Village Springs.

Inspired by Steve Martin’s satirical City of Angels comedy—and blessed by the legend himself—“L.A. Story” will bring a group show about L.A.’s enchantments to Hauser & Wirth’s West Hollywood gallery. Though not a one-to-one response to the surreal 1991 film, the exhibition will have plenty of after-the-fact homages to key locations and scenes, including swimming pools (David Hockney, Eric Fischl and Calida Rawles), the coastline (Florian Maier-Aichen), the cityscape (Mark Bradford), major streets (Ed Ruscha) and Hollywood shootouts (Vija Celmin). “I’m thrilled that L.A. Story is the focus of so many wonderful artists and a wonderful gallery, Hauser & Wirth, which is just across the street from the Troubadour, where I first stepped foot on Santa Monica Boulevard, which began my L.A. sojourn,” said Martin in a statement. This actually isn’t his first crossover with the L.A. art world: In 2015, he curated a show of landscape paintings by Lawren Harris at the Hammer.

Party like it’s 1999 at Angel City Brewery’s Y2K Edition of its annual New Year’s bash, where the soundtrack will range from Britney to Blink-182. Bust out your old butterfly clips and velour tracksuits, snap some shots at Myspace-worthy retro photo ops, then ring in the new year with a “midnight meltdown” countdown. Grab dinner from ACB’s House Made food truck to pair with some of the city’s best beer. As the name implies, there’s no cover to attend—just make sure to secure a spot early.

A true multi-hyphenate, Carver was a painter in addition to a pioneering agricultural scientist. CAAM will display seldom seen paintings as well as his lab equipment alongside contemporary works that were inspired by his foundational work in modern conservation—ideas that started to spread with his “Jesup Wagon,” an early 1900s moveable school.

The Freehand hotel will bring the house down New Year’s Eve at its rooftop oasis, Broken Shaker. Organizers Made to Move’s resident DJs, Akumen, Andy Oro and No Pressure, will be spinning bouncy, infectious house music all night long. Grab a tropical cocktail and dance with the DTLA skyline as your backdrop. Entry is free, and there will be a complimentary champagne toast at midnight.  

Move through a suite of sci-fi installations that depict a world overcome by rising seas and unchecked capitalism in this exhibition from Josh Kline. The MOCA Grand Avenue show includes a mix of sculpture, photography, moving images and ephemeral materials.

The desert-spanning biennial is back, with premieres of site-specific works from about a dozen artists. For its fifth iteration, Desert X will once again stage outdoor installations across about 40 miles of the Coachella Valley from March 8 to May 11, 2025.