Topanga Blues Festival: History and Visitor Guide
Facts
- Founded in 1982; held at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon every year since, with no 2020 edition due to the pandemic.
- Historically organized by the Southern California Blues Society.
- Past performers include Etta James, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Big Joe Turner, Lowell Fulson, and Junior Wells.
- 2026 edition: Sunday, May 17, 2026, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., headlined by Bobby Rush and Kirk Fletcher, with Earl Thomas also on the bill.
- Venue address: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, CA 90290.
The Topanga Blues Festival is an outdoor, single-day blues concert held each spring at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, an open-air theater built into a hillside in Topanga Canyon, in the Santa Monica Mountains northwest of Los Angeles. The festival dates back to 1982, making it one of the longer-running blues events in Southern California, and for most of its history it was organized by the Southern California Blues Society (SCBS), a Los Angeles-area nonprofit. This page is an independent visitor and history guide; it is not published by SCBS and does not sell tickets directly.
Over four decades the festival built a lineup history that reads like a survey of postwar blues. Documented past performers include Etta James, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Big Joe Turner, Lowell Fulson, and Junior Wells, alongside West Coast specialists such as Pee Wee Crayton, Paul Butterfield, and William Clarke. More recent editions have featured Eddy Clearwater (2013), guitarist Philip Sayce (2015), Chicago blues veteran Jimmy Johnson (2012), and Texas guitarist Phillip Walker, who headlined in 2009, the year before his death. The event survived a pandemic-era gap — there was no festival in 2020 — and resumed in 2021, with a 37th annual edition held on May 7, 2022, confirming the festival kept running after the break.
The 2026 edition
The festival's most recently announced edition is scheduled for Sunday, May 17, 2026, running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Theatricum Botanicum. Listed headliners are Bobby Rush and Kirk Fletcher, with Earl Thomas also on the bill; ticketing listings placed Kirk Fletcher's set around midday and Bobby Rush's solo guitar-and-harmonica set in the early afternoon. Several ticketing and event-listing sites continued to credit "Southern California Blues Society" as the event's presenter for 2026, though it isn't clear from public listings alone whether that reflects an actively operating organization or branding carried over from past years — we could not independently confirm SCBS's current organizational status. For ticket information and the full day's schedule, see the official event listing.
Getting there takes some planning, since Theatricum Botanicum sits on a two-lane canyon road. From the 10 Freeway, drivers take the Pacific Coast Highway (CA-1) exit, then head north on Topanga Canyon Boulevard for roughly 6.4 miles; from the 101 Freeway, the Topanga Canyon Boulevard exit heads south for about 5.5 miles. The venue's address is 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Topanga, CA 90290. Street parking along Topanga Canyon Boulevard is free, and a small on-site lot charges a fee that's waived for vehicles with disabled-parking placards. Because the festival is outdoors and the canyon can run warm by midday, most listings recommend sun protection, a low lawn chair or blanket, and arriving early for parking.
For background on how this festival connects to the region's other major blues institution — the band-competition circuit that fed into the International Blues Challenge — see our guide to the Battle of the Blues Bands. Coverage of past festival press mentions and reviews going back to the early 2000s is collected on the press page, and any newly announced dates will appear on the site calendar as we confirm them.
