September in Encinitas Just Outgrew the Weekend

"Sessions has always been about surfing," says Taylor Steele, the filmmaker who founded Sessions Surf Festival and is bringing it back to Encinitas this September.

That line sounds like a throwaway quote until you look at what the festival actually is this year. For most of its life, the event known locally as the Solento Surf Festival was a single day at the beach. This year, under its new name, it runs for a full week. Three separate venues. Four kinds of programming. One town.

If you have lived here a while, you already have a mental model for September: the tourists thin out, the farmers markets keep their same rhythm, and the free Moonlight Beach concerts wind down. This year that model breaks. The festival's new shape, stacked against a hometown brewery aiming to open the same month, means Encinitas is about to run two "firsts" through the same 30 days. Here is what that actually looks like on the calendar, and what stays put underneath it.

From One Beach Day to Seven

Sessions Surf Festival runs September 12 through 19, and organizers describe this year's format as an expansion of the event's legacy rather than a one-off. The festival spreads across Seaside Reef, on the stretch of coastline where Encinitas meets Solana Beach, the historic La Paloma Theatre on South Coast Highway 101, and a week-long art pop-up along the 101 corridor itself. That is a different logistical animal than a single Saturday at the sand.

Here is how the week actually breaks down:

That is four distinct events layered across eight days, not one festival day you can circle and forget about. If you live within walking distance of the 101 or downtown, this is worth building into your week rather than discovering on the 12th.

The Music Stops at Moonlight Before It Starts at Seaside Reef

Here is the part that changes how you should think about the whole month. Every summer, the city runs free concerts at Moonlight Beach twice a month through July and August, toes in the sand, no ticket required. By the time September rolls around, that series has already wrapped for the season. It always has.

What is different this year is what fills the gap it leaves behind. Instead of tapering into a quiet September, the town's last big outdoor show of the year has effectively moved from a casual, free, twice-monthly beach concert to a single ticketed, multi-night festival with a national lineup. If you are used to catching a Moonlight show and calling it a summer, Sessions is not an addition to that habit. It is what replaced it.

First Brewery, Same Month

The other September first belongs to four Encinitas residents, all described as parents in the community, who decided their town needed its own brewery and went ahead and filed the permits nobody else apparently had. On March 8, 2026, the Encinitas Planning Commission unanimously approved Encinitas Brewing Company's plans to operate a brewery, distillery, and restaurant at 1588 Leucadia Boulevard, the former Islands Restaurant space inside Encinitas Ranch Town Center.

Co-owner Brian McBride told the commission the shopping center is "a bit quiet, but it works great for what we're trying to do," a bet that residents will drive to a brewery they think of as their own even when a Leucadia bar sits closer. Co-owner Ryan Van Biene has said construction runs about five months once it starts, which points toward a September 2026 opening, though construction timelines shift and the exact date has not been locked. The build includes roughly 5,500 square feet inside the existing building plus a patio expansion to about 1,565 square feet, and the ownership group has applied for licenses covering small-batch beer manufacturing, a still, and craft distilling, so the plan is beer and spirits under one roof.

Read that against the festival calendar and the coincidence is hard to miss. The same month a national surf-culture event takes over three venues, the city's first hometown brewery is aiming to pour its first pint. Neither one was planned around the other. They just landed in the same 30 days.

The Markets Don't Care What Week It Is

With all of that layered on top of a normal month, it helps to know what does not change. Encinitas runs three weekly farmers markets, and none of them pause for festival week.

• Wednesday evenings, downtown near the Coaster station, more than 40 vendors set up for the Encinitas Station Certified Farmers Market.
• Saturdays, the Cardiff 101 Mainstreet Association hosts a certified farmers market at MiraCosta College's San Elijo campus, with local produce alongside prepared food and craft vendors.
• Sundays, the Leucadia Certified Farmers Market runs at Paul Ecke Central School, with a food court, playground, and live entertainment that make it as much a gathering spot as a produce run.

If your week gets swallowed by Music Session tickets or a Film Sessions night at La Paloma, these three days are still your anchor points. They run on the same schedule they always have, festival or no festival.

What This Means If You Live Here

None of this requires a plan more complicated than knowing which nights matter to you. If you are downtown or along the 101, expect tighter parking and foot traffic during the Music Session and the Film Sessions nights at La Paloma, both concentrated in a small stretch of highway. If you are near Seaside Reef, September 12 and 13 will feel busier than a typical weekend, closer to what the coastline sees during a summer holiday than a normal fall Saturday. If you are inland in Olivenhain or up in New Encinitas, the disruption barely reaches you at all, and your bigger news is whether Encinitas Brewing Company actually opens its doors before the month is out.

The official Sessions Surf Festival schedule is the place to check exact set times and ticket details before you commit an evening to it, since a week-long, multi-venue format has more moving pieces than the single beach day this festival used to be. For details on the brewery's licensing and buildout, coverage from local food outlets tracking North County openings is worth a look as the September target approaches.

What is actually true about this month, more than any single date on it, is that Encinitas rearranged its own calendar without asking anyone's permission. A festival that used to fit in an afternoon now needs a week. A town that has never had its own brewery is about to get one in the same stretch. And the markets you have shopped at for years will still be running on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, exactly like they always have, right through all of it.

If you are watching what a town like this does with its own growth, on the calendar or on the block, that is worth paying attention to. For a closer look at what is happening with homes in Encinitas alongside everything else changing here, Michelle Warner can walk you through it.