Goldenvoice brings The Killers to Santa Monica’s first major beach festival, Sept. 26-27

The Killers and Olivia Dean will headline Santa Monica’s inaugural Ocean Way Festival on Sept. 26-27, marking the first major music festival on the city’s iconic beach. The event will be produced by Coachella and Stagecoach promoter Goldenvoice, with tickets going on sale to the general public beginning on July 23, following a July 22 presale for Santa Monica residents.

That ticketing timeline is more than a scheduling detail. It is the first clue that Goldenvoice is trying to thread the needle between “welcome the world” and “keep local at the center,” which is exactly how Mayor Caroline Torosis framed the festival. When you stage a big-league festival on a highly visible public shoreline, you are not only selling shows, you are selling legitimacy. Using a resident presale the day before broad public sales signals the city is counting on community buy-in early, before the inevitable questions about traffic, crowd flow, and beach access arrive.

Ocean Way Festival is positioned as a music-meets-city story. According to a release, the festival will take shape with the famed Santa Monica Pier framing the main stage, drawing inspiration from the city’s musical legacy. Goldenvoice VP of regional festivals Nic Adler said Santa Monica has an incredible music history and that Ocean Way Festival is “our opportunity to celebrate that history while building something that feels authentically Santa Monica for years to come.” The lineup is built to make that promise feel real, not performative.

Beyond The Killers and Olivia Dean, the festival will feature sets from Jack White, Khruangbin, Sublime, Durand Jones and the Indicators, plus Alvvays, SG Lewis, 54 Ultra, Hiatus Kaiyote, BLOND:ISH, Poolside, and a Hot Chip DJ set. For a promoter, this matters because it reduces programming risk. Big headliners bring immediate demand, while high-performing mid-tier acts can stabilize attendance across both days, especially for attendees deciding whether to do a full festival weekend or a single night.

The fest takes its name from Ocean Way, the Santa Monica street where musician and audio engineer Allen Sides founded the legendary Ocean Way Recording studio in 1968. That detail matters for second-order effects: it gives the festival a deeper narrative spine than “we rented the beach.” When a brand can link itself to a specific place-based origin story, it helps turn the event into a repeatable platform rather than a one-off headline grab. It also gives sponsors, media partners, and on-site activations a theme they can reuse year after year.

Operationally, the festival plans two stages stretching across the beach between Santa Monica Pier and Bay Street. Five acts will perform on the main stage each day alongside a smaller, more intimate second stage. The grounds will also include areas where fans can stretch out on a blanket on the beach, suggesting the layout aims to balance high energy with a “stay a while” vibe. And from a planning standpoint, the choice to anchor the main stage at the new Sandbox on the Beach, a revived beachfront district that hosts major civic events and gatherings, including activations for the 2028 LA Olympics and Paralympics, hints at the city’s longer-term play: using existing civic infrastructure to support large-scale crowds.

For other executives and boards watching from the sidelines, the strategic stake is clear. This is what happens when a top-tier promoter partners with a city that wants cultural momentum without losing local control. Goldenvoice gets a high-profile test case on a coastline, and Santa Monica gets a first-of-its-kind event on its beach with an internal branding story tied to Ocean Way Recording. The success math will not just be ticket sales. It will also be whether the promenade between Pier and Bay Street can handle day-to-day crowd dynamics, whether the resident presale approach reduces backlash risk, and whether the “authentically Santa Monica” positioning translates into repeat attendance.

In short, Ocean Way Festival is an inaugural moment with real operational and reputational stakes. If the promoter nails the experience and keeps the city’s community at the center, it could set a template for how major touring brands expand into iconic public spaces. If it stumbles, the beach will remember, and so will the next city that thinks it can replicate the trick.