The Killers and Olivia Dean were set to headline the first major festival ever held on Santa Monica beach. Then Hurricane Marie’s swell took the beach itself.
By The Superfan — CelebnMusic247
The Ocean Way Festival will not make its debut this year. The City of Santa Monica has canceled the inaugural edition of Goldenvoice’s beach festival, which was set for September 26–27 on the sand in Santa Monica, after Hurricane Marie’s storm surf and runoff chewed into the beach and left the site too eroded to hold the weekend safely. In the festival’s own official update, “storm surf and runoff has caused significant beach erosion and the festival can no longer be safely held as planned.”
It is a brutal loss for a first-year festival, because the bill was genuinely stacked. The Killers and Jack White were set to top Saturday, with Olivia Dean closing Sunday — joined across two stages framed by the Santa Monica Pier by Khruangbin, Sublime, Durand Jones & The Indications, Alvvays, SG Lewis, Hiatus Kaiyote, Poolside, Hot Chip DJs and more. Billed as the first major music festival ever held on Santa Monica beach, it was supposed to be a homecoming as much as a launch: the festival takes its name from Ocean Way, the Santa Monica street where Allen Sides founded the legendary Ocean Way Recording studios more than 40 years ago.
Marie never even had to make landfall to do the damage. Its swell reached the Southern California coast over Labor Day weekend, and according to Santa Monica Daily Press reporting, city staff spent September 8 and 9 walking the site and weighing the damage: storm surf had stripped sand south of the Pier and pushed the tide line inland across the festival’s planned footprint, while runoff from the Pico-Kenter Storm Drain cut a channel across the southern end of the site. Shrinking the footprint, relocating it, regrading the sand and delaying load-in were all considered — none of them worked — and the city notified Goldenvoice on September 11 that the event could not proceed. One mercy for locals: the Pier itself was not damaged and remains open.
For fans holding tickets, here is the one clean piece of news. Refunds are being processed automatically through the original point of purchase, and no further action is required on your part — the festival asks only that you allow a few business days for the refund to appear in your account. That does not give anybody their weekend back, and it does not un-book the hotel rooms and flights fans lined up for a debut this promising. But a full, automatic refund with nothing to file and nothing to chase is the right call, and it is more than stranded festivalgoers sometimes get.
And this is not goodbye. The festival says plans are already underway to bring Ocean Way to Santa Monica in 2027, and both the city and Goldenvoice have committed to relaunching it next year — the city has already started repairing and rebuilding the damaged stretch of beach. So keep the sunscreen packed away for one more year, Santa Monica. “Thank you for your support,” the festival signed off. “See you soon.” See you in 2027.
Sources: Ocean Way Festival | Santa Monica Daily Press | LA Wire | JamBase
