Something changed on the pier courts this year. The AVP's 2026 tour schedule lists Manhattan Beach as the August heritage stop, not Hermosa, and the pro-level Hermosa tournament has been rebuilt as the Wedbush Hermosa Beach Open, landing September 10 through 13. The Hermosa Beach Concert Series, meanwhile, has always run on the two Sundays after Labor Day, meaning the 2026 shows fall on September 13 and September 20. Add those two facts together and August is doing something it hasn't in years: it's ceding the calendar to September, and the weekend action has quietly climbed one block uphill.
The pro-volleyball vacuum, and what filled it
For a decade the AVP's Hermosa stop was the anchor of the August weekend. Losing it would have looked like a loss five years ago. In 2026 it barely registers, because the sand is still busy, just with different bodies. The city staff scheduled beach volleyball tournaments on 27 consecutive days in July, and August continues the churn with junior brackets, club events, and the Hermosa Beach Open qualifying weekends that feed into the Wedbush event next month. If you live on 8th or 14th and you're tired of finding parking near the pier courts, that reality did not go away.
What did go away is the Sunday-afternoon reason to walk down. No stadium court, no announcers over the loudspeakers, no crowd spilling into Pier Plaza after the finals. That gap is the story of August 2026, because a different Hermosa filled it.
The mornings still belong to the ocean
The one thing August did not lose is race day. The Dwight Crum Pier to Pier Swim ran August 2 for its 63rd year, sending three heats from the south side of the Hermosa Pier to the north side of the Manhattan Pier under a two-hour cap. If you missed it, the Hermosa Beach Triathlon on Sunday, August 9 is the follow-up: a quarter-mile ocean swim, a ten-mile bike along the coast, and a three-mile run finishing on the sand at Pier Avenue.
The pattern for locals has become predictable enough that it's worth naming:
- Race Sundays end by 11 a.m., which means the Strand reopens for regular use just as the marine layer burns off.
- Non-race Sundays default to the junior volleyball brackets north of the pier, quieter than the pro years but louder than an average summer weekend.
- Both cases funnel the same crowd into Pier Plaza for lunch and again after sunset, which is where the second story of August starts.
Pier Avenue is where the month has gone
If you have lived here more than a few years, you already know Playa Hermosa Fish & Oyster's spot on Pier Avenue. As of this month it's changing hands. What Now Los Angeles reported that Kasamar, a coastal tavern concept from co-founder Stephanie De Los Santos, is expected to open in August 2026 in the Playa Hermosa space, replacing the old fish-and-oyster identity with an approachable seafood-and-drinks setup on one of the busiest blocks in town. It's the second material Pier Avenue debut in less than a year.
The first was Tiki Kai at 73 Pier Ave, which LA Magazine covered when it opened from the hospitality group behind The Hula Hula Room, Eat at Joe's, Paddy O'Brien's, and The Bounty Room. It runs 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 10 p.m. Sunday. The lava-island lounge and hand-carved 14-foot mask by Peter Asmar of Asmar Studios are the flourishes, but the operational fact that matters is the schedule: it is deliberately built to catch the after-sand crowd, not the lunch traffic.
Then there is Vin Folk, which earned a spot in the 2026 Michelin Guide as a Bib Gourmand, the guide's designation for good-value cooking. Chefs Kevin De Los Santos and Katya Shastova are running a globally minded shareable menu with dishes like the mussels tart and chili crab risotto. The Bib matters because it's the first meaningful national recognition for a Hermosa restaurant in years, and it lands during a summer when the pro-volleyball headline no longer belongs to the town. The pier gave up a marquee event; a Pier Avenue kitchen picked one up.
If you were building an argument that Hermosa is becoming a dining town rather than an events town, August 2026 is the month you would point to. The concert series and pro tournament both moved to September. Kasamar opens. Tiki Kai is in its first full summer. Vin Folk sits on the Michelin list. None of those facts are coincidences of timing.
The anchors that make the shift legible
New openings only read as a shift if the base layer is still holding. It is. Martha's, at the corner of 22nd and Hermosa, has been serving breakfast and lunch since 1984 and now runs a Redondo Beach location in Riviera Village as well. AttaGirl, at 1238 Hermosa Ave, is holding its coastal-Mediterranean menu with the wood-grilled skewers and spiced lamb bolognese that put it on the local best-of lists this year. Baran's 2239, tucked into the small center a few blocks off the water, is still doing over 100 wines by the bottle under executive chef Tyler Gugliotta. RYLA, on Hermosa Ave, remains the Japanese-Asian option with the black truffle fried rice and the lotus-leaf sea bass.
The lineup reads like a dining district rather than a beach-town food scene. That is the actual argument August is making, more clearly than any July would have.
What August is setting up
The reason the current month feels like a bridge is that the September calendar in Hermosa is unusually loaded. If you are pacing yourself, three dates matter:
- Fiesta Hermosa, September 5 through 7. Four music stages, the Garden, the Carnival Stage, the Javaman Stage, and the Acoustic Stage, run across the Labor Day weekend with the South Bay Music Connection, School of Rock South Bay LA, and Coast Music feeding the youth and teen rock and jazz slots.
- Wedbush Hermosa Beach Open, September 10 through 13. Free admission, 32 women's and 32 men's teams in double-elimination format at the pier courts. It is the Hermosa pro-volleyball tradition rebuilt under new sponsorship, and it lands on the second weekend of September rather than the second weekend of July.
- Hermosa Beach Concert Series, September 13 and 20 at 3 p.m., south of the pier. Two free Sunday shows that the city has run for years, with the South Bay Music Connection opening each date.
Between those three, September is doing the work August used to do. Which is why the current month reads the way it does: quieter on the sand than long-term residents remember, busier on Pier Avenue than at any point in the last decade, and better suited to the walk-up-the-street kind of Sunday than the pack-a-chair-for-the-nets kind.
The takeaway for people who live here
If your instinct in August has always been to plant a chair at the pier courts on a Sunday, this is the year to reset that instinct. The professional tournament is a September event now. The concert series is a September event. What August offers instead is the first full summer of a Pier Avenue lineup that has quietly become the town's stronger cultural asset, with Kasamar opening this month, Tiki Kai in its first full high season, and Vin Folk carrying a Michelin Bib. The through line from ocean swim to lunch at Martha's to dinner at Vin Folk or drinks at Tiki Kai is the routine most residents have already found. The rest of the month is worth spending on it.
If you're weighing what to do with a home in Hermosa this fall, or you're curious what these Pier Avenue shifts mean for the blocks around them, Theresa Bruno has been working these streets since 2001. Get Your Free Home Valuation to see where your block sits as September's calendar takes over.
