If you've circled the Civic Center on your calendar out of habit, expecting the same juried art fair that has set up on the lawn most Augusts for years, it isn't coming back this year. The Newport Beach Arts Foundation confirmed that its long-running Art in the Park fair will not be offered in 2026. In its place, the city is trying something it has never done before: a full week.
Newport Beach Art Week runs Sunday, August 9 through Saturday, August 15, and it's the city's first attempt at bundling its scattered arts programming into a single, named event. A Pacific Symphony concert opens the week at the Civic Center on Sunday, and the week closes on Saturday with the 59th Annual Newport Beach Art Exhibition, also at the Civic Center at 100 Civic Center Drive. That much is centralized and predictable. What happens between those two bookends is not, and that's the part worth understanding before you plan your week around it.
A Week Built Out Of Whoever Shows Up
The city has described the Monday-through-Friday stretch as open to any local business, gallery, or cultural organization willing to host something under the Art Week banner. That's a meaningfully different model than a single fair with one location and one schedule. It means the texture of your Art Week experience depends on which businesses in your part of town decided to participate this year. A resident near Lido Marina Village might find gallery walks and pop-up demonstrations on their block. Someone in West Newport might see nothing at all beyond the Civic Center bookends. Neither experience is wrong. They're just different versions of an event the city hasn't run before, which makes this year more of an experiment than a tradition.
One dated event worth putting on the calendar directly: on Friday, August 14 from 5 to 7 p.m., Marina Park hosts a free community art session called Wildlife Jewels, where residents of all ages help finish two collaborative canvases inspired by the city's marine and coastal wildlife. It's family-friendly, no art experience required, and registration is requested in advance.
There's also a physical change in Civic Center Park itself that predates Art Week but times out with it. The park's outdoor sculpture collection just cycled into what the city is calling Phase X, with ten new works selected through a national call for entries installed this past July. If you walk to the library, you're walking past a different set of sculptures than you were a year ago. That's routine maintenance dressed up as an art event, which is a fair way to describe the whole week: the city has quietly programmed art at the Civic Center for a long time. What's new in 2026 is that it finally has a name.
The Peninsula Isn't Waiting Around Either
While the Civic Center reinvents its own calendar, the other end of the city has been busy in a different way. Newport Beach's restaurant scene has spent the past several months clustering a run of openings along a narrow stretch of West Coast Highway and Lido Marina Village, close enough together that a resident could walk most of it in an afternoon.
Kaiya, a 12-seat omakase counter, opened inside the Lido House hotel at 3300 Newport Boulevard in July, with executive chef partner Riley Huddleston, known for his work at the hotel's Mayor's Table restaurant, working alongside chef Brian Kim. A few blocks down West Coast Highway, Nēsos moved into the former Pizzeria Mozza space at 800 West Coast Highway with a menu built around southern Greek village cooking, owned and operated by Vasileos Kotsiovos of the Kotsiovos Hospitality Group. Uchi, the Austin-founded sushi restaurant from chef Tyson Cole, has announced its eighth location and first Orange County restaurant at 2510 West Coast Highway on Mariners' Mile, inside a mixed-use building going up near Newport Bay and Lido Isle.
Cross the bridge to Balboa Island and the pace slows but the pattern holds. Jasper Coffee is in its soft opening phase on Marine Avenue, a street that rarely gets a new coffee tenant. Back at Lido Marina Village, La La Land Kind Cafe has recently opened as well.
Here's the corridor laid out by address, since the geography is most of the story:
| Where | What's new | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Lido House, 3300 Newport Blvd | Kaiya, a 12-seat omakase counter | Opened in July |
| 2510 West Coast Highway, Mariners' Mile | Uchi's first Orange County location | Announced |
| 800 West Coast Highway | Nēsos, a Greek restaurant in the former Pizzeria Mozza space | Recently opened |
| Marine Avenue, Balboa Island | Jasper Coffee | Soft opening |
| Lido Marina Village | La La Land Kind Cafe | Recently opened |
| Fashion Island | Telefèric Barcelona, Levain Bakery, and Amalfi | Expected later in 2026 |
Fashion Island is taking a different approach than the peninsula. Rather than chasing chef-driven debuts, the center is bringing in established, family-run names: the Padrosa family's Telefèric Barcelona Restaurant Group, the cult-favorite Levain Bakery known for its oversized cookies, and Amalfi, an Italian concept joining the center's growing dining lineup. Where the peninsula is betting on new chef pedigree, Fashion Island is betting on brands people already know.
What Hasn't Changed, And Why That Matters
None of this is replacing the routines that already anchor the week. The Newport Beach Farmers' Market still runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the base of the pier in McFadden Square, and the Surfrider Foundation Newport Beach still hosts its weekly beach cleanup alongside it. The Corona del Mar Certified Farmers Market still sets up every Saturday from 9 to 1 at Marguerite Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway, a market that's been running since May 1996. And Corona del Mar's 3rd Thursdays tradition, which brings residents out to shop, dine, and catch live music along CdM Village once a month, is still on the calendar.
That stability is worth naming specifically, because it's easy to read a summer full of new restaurant names and a first-ever Art Week and assume the whole city is in flux. It isn't. The parts of Newport Beach that run on weekly repetition, a Sunday market at the pier, a Saturday market in Corona del Mar, are holding their shape. What's changing sits on top of that foundation, not underneath it.
What's Next On The Calendar
Two dates worth marking before the summer closes out. The Pacific Wine & Food Classic returns to Newport Dunes on Saturday, September 12, running from 1 to 5 p.m. And the 64th Annual Sandcastle Contest takes over Corona del Mar State Beach on Sunday, September 27, a tradition old enough that this year's edition is entering its seventh decade.
Between now and then sits a week that asks something unusual of Newport Beach residents: pay attention to two different parts of the city at once. One is inland, civic, and untested, a Civic Center event trying its first version of itself. The other is coastal, culinary, and already in motion, a corridor of new openings that residents have been watching fill in in real time since early summer. Neither side needs the other to make sense, but together they're a fuller picture of what August actually looks like here than either one alone.
Kott & Co. keeps a close eye on the neighborhoods we work in, not just the transactions. If you're thinking about your next move in Newport Beach, whether that's this year or down the road, Kott & Co. is glad to talk through what the local market actually looks like right now. Request a Local Market Consultation whenever you're ready.
