Every Laguna Beach summer includes a mental checkbox: go to Sawdust, walk the sawdust paths, maybe buy a piece of glasswork, leave by sunset. That checkbox version of the festival still works fine. But this year, the thing worth paying attention to isn't the art, which has followed the same artist-made-artist-sold rule since the beginning. It's the food line forming behind it, and what that line says about how fast Laguna's restaurant scene is moving right now.
Sawdust Art Festival opened its 60th season on June 26 and runs through September 6 at its usual home, 935 Laguna Canyon Road. The festival began in 1965 as a gathering of artists who wanted an alternative to the town's juried shows, and it has kept that structure ever since. More than 180 artists exhibit each summer, every one of them a Laguna Beach resident, selling work they made themselves along paths that are still, literally, covered in sawdust and wood chips. That part of the story has not changed in six decades and does not need to.
What has changed is the food program, and it is worth noticing because it lines up almost exactly with what has been happening on Laguna's actual streets this summer.
The Concessions Got a Real Upgrade This Year
For its 60th anniversary, Sawdust expanded its culinary lineup with returning favorite The Cove by Starfish, which is bringing back its coastal menu of bowls, sushi rolls, banh mi, and dim sum alongside a new addition, the churro bao bun. Taco Loco, led by longtime local favorite Gonzo Rebollar, is back with the same bold, laid-back menu that has made it a festival staple for years.
The addition getting the most attention is AhbA, making its debut as the festival's newest concession. Built around a 1960s Americana theme, AhbA is serving Wagyu burgers with a homemade sauce, sandwiches, and its first-ever soft serve. That debut was announced as part of the festival's official 60th anniversary programming, alongside a new windmill installation on the grounds, its iridescent plexiglass blades enclosing a small archive of historical photographs and old Sawdust posters, plus a partnership with footwear brand Earth Shoes built around the same craftsmanship theme the festival has always leaned on.
None of that is small. A festival built on the premise that everything on display is handmade by the person standing next to it just handed a debut slot to a burger concept in its milestone year. That decision reflects something bigger happening around it.
The Same Momentum Is Showing Up Off Canyon Road
This has been an unusually active summer for Laguna Beach restaurants, and the timing overlaps with Sawdust's anniversary season almost too neatly to ignore.
In June, El Matatan opened in town after relocating from the City of Orange, bringing owner Oscar Garcia's blend of Cuban, Dominican, and Mexico City cooking to Laguna. Garcia brought on Omar, previously the general manager at Carmelita's, to run the floor. That same month, Small's Smashburger opened in the former Dizz's As Is space, the second location for pro snowboarder Jordan Small, whose smashburger concept started as a backyard experiment during the pandemic before becoming a hit in San Clemente. The build-out leans retro diner with a speakeasy edge, and its opening weekend line stretched well past the door.
A third opening is on the way. Bar ízi, a small plates concept from owner Sam Rabon, is targeting an end-of-August or early-September debut in the former Evan's Gourmet space at Glenneyre and Thalia, a location locals will also remember as Cafe Zoolu and ROUX Creole in earlier years. Rabon has reportedly built the new interior around a tribute to a specific, well-loved figure in Laguna's culinary history.
Three new restaurants, one debut concession at the town's most established festival, all inside the same ten-week stretch. That's not a coincidence worth overselling into a trend piece, but it does mean the wall between "what Sawdust serves" and "what Laguna eats" is thinner this year than it has been in a while. If you're the kind of resident who tracks new openings around town, you already have a reason to walk the canyon this year beyond the art.
How to Actually Use the Locals' Window
Sawdust draws more than 200,000 visitors over its run, and most of them show up on weekends, when the canyon paths get tight and parking runs short. There's a better way to do it if you live here.
The festival offers free admission for Laguna Beach residents on Monday and Thursday after 3 p.m. with valid ID, according to the official festival calendar. A few visitor guides list the local window as Thursday after 4 p.m. instead, so it's worth confirming the exact cutoff at the gate before you plan around it. Either way, the pattern holds: showing up on a weekday evening gets you a quieter version of the same festival, with better odds of catching an artist mid-demonstration and an actual table at one of the concession stands.
For everyone else, the standard pricing for 2026 looks like this:
| Ticket Type | Price |
|---|---|
| Adult | $12.50 |
| Senior (65+) | $10.50 |
| Youth (6-12) | $5.50 |
| Child under 5 | Free |
Hours run Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Friday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. If you're planning to hit more than one of Laguna's summer arts institutions this season, a $29 Passport to the Arts covers one-time entry to Sawdust, the Festival of Arts, and Laguna Art-A-Fair, plus a parking pass at the Act V lot. Given that all three sit within the same stretch of Laguna Canyon, that pass is one of the more useful $29 purchases a resident can make this summer.
What the Anniversary Details Are Actually For
It would be easy to treat the 60th anniversary framing as marketing dressing, but a couple of the details point to something real. Jay Grant, the festival's board president and a member for 53 years, remains closely involved alongside his wife Nikki Grant, a founding artist. In the festival's own anniversary announcement, Grant described the early days as uncertain, recalling that "we didn't know if Sawdust would last." That uncertainty is easy to forget standing in a canyon that now hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors a summer, but it's the reason the resident-artist rule has never been relaxed. The festival's general manager, Thomas Hartmann, framed this year's milestone around the same idea, describing Sawdust as a place built to let "guests connect directly with artists" rather than a commercial market dressed up as one.
That founding logic is also why the food expansion matters more than it would at a generic street fair. Sawdust has spent sixty years protecting a very narrow definition of authenticity for its art. Extending that same instinct toward local food, by bringing in a debut concession from a concept with real Laguna roots rather than a franchise, keeps the festival's identity intact while giving it something new to offer people who have already seen every booth twice.
The Wider Summer, Briefly
Sawdust isn't running in isolation this month. Pageant of the Masters continues its nightly run at the Irvine Bowl through the rest of August, staged just up the same canyon road. Between the two, it's a stretch where a resident could reasonably spend several nights a week somewhere in town without repeating an experience, which is a fairly specific kind of summer even by Laguna's standards.
The headline version of this story is "Sawdust turns 60." The version that actually matters if you live here is that the festival's food program and the town's restaurant scene are having the same moment at the same time, and the smartest way to experience either one this year is on a quiet Thursday evening, not a crowded Saturday afternoon.
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