Short answer, as of Sunday, September 14: Ohana Festival is still on. The festival returns to Doheny State Beach in Dana Point on September 25 to 27, tickets remain on sale, and no cancellation or postponement has been announced. Dates, stage lineups, tickets and our photography from four editions are on our Ohana Festival page.
The question is fair, though, and a lot of people are asking it. Hurricane Marie hit this stretch of coast hard. The City of Dana Point declared a local emergency after coastal flooding damaged homes, and California State Parks warned that storm debris had washed onto Doheny State Beach itself, the same sand where Ohana’s stages, cabanas and vendor rows go up. With load-in weeks away, the storm and the festival footprint are sharing a beach.
The concern also has a fresh precedent one county up. Santa Monica’s Ocean Way Festival, a debut beach event set for the very same weekend with The Killers, Jack White and Sublime, was canceled outright on September 12 after Marie’s surf stripped the beach it was meant to stand on. One beach festival on this coast has already been lost to this storm, so “is Ohana next” is not an idle question.
The situations are not the same. Ocean Way was a first-year build on an eroded shoreline with no history of hosting anything at this scale. Ohana is entering its tenth year on the same state beach, with a production team (C3 Presents, the operation behind Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits) that has staged this exact footprint at Doheny nine times, and a cleanup window that still runs into late September. Debris on the sand two weeks out is a work order. A missing beach, which is what Santa Monica woke up to, is a cancellation.
What would change the picture: an announcement on Ohana’s official channels, or a State Parks closure of Doheny that reaches into the festival dates. Neither has happened. If either does, we will update this story.
The 10th anniversary lineup is headlined by Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder & Friends, Tyler Childers and Maná, with Billy Idol, Alabama Shakes, Jon Batiste, Pixies and Fontaines D.C. also on the bill. Set times, per-day lineups and the rest of our coverage are on our Ohana Festival page.