Overview San Pedro's Día de los Muertos Festival takes over the historic downtown of this Port of Los Angeles harbor town for one Sunday each October. It runs from mid-afternoon into the night. Discover San Pedro, the nonprofit behind the local business improvement district, produces it on 6th and Mesa streets, a few blocks up from the LA Waterfront. Admission is free. Much of the crowd shows up dressed as Catrinas and calaveras. On site 6th Street closes to cars and fills with about 100 artisan craft and food vendors under lines of papel picado. The main stage carries the headliners, and a community stage sits next to the Kid Zone. Adults gather in the Cantina beer garden. Ofrendas run through the district: traditional altars, a classic-car ofrenda display, and a community ofrenda where visitors leave photos and keepsakes for their own loved ones. Local artist Rubicelia Prieto has filled the streets with giant papier-mâché Catrinas, one of them 22 feet tall. The free Downtown San Pedro trolley loops through the district all day. Audience More than 20,000 people came to the most recent festival, and organizers project 21,000+ for the next one. Most live in San Pedro and the Harbor Area. Plenty drive in from across Los Angeles and Orange County. It is a family crowd, strollers and grandparents included, with deep roots in Mexican and Latino culture. The festival markets itself in both English and Spanish. Talent and Influencers Grand Vision Foundation books the music and runs the stages, backed by a National Endowment for the Arts grant. The headliner in recent years has been Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea, the two-time Grammy-winning all-women mariachi that is also Disneyland's official mariachi band. Rock, pop and cumbia bands fill out the bill. Danza Azteca Xochipilli and local folklórico groups perform through the afternoon. The Catrina Costume Contest puts elaborate costumes on a runway, and one year the winner took home a Royal Caribbean cruise for ten. Track record Downtown merchants once ran their own small Día celebrations. For more than a decade the festival has been one coordinated event, run by the district with Grand Vision Foundation. ABC7, FOX 11, La Opinión, LA Weekly and the Daily Breeze have covered it. Past editions included an altar for Kobe and Gigi Bryant and a world-record attempt with Prieto's giant Catrina. The last social campaign reached about 1.8 million people in the region. Brand presence Past sponsors include Jose Cuervo, Estrella Jalisco, Jarritos, Red Bull, the LA Kings, the LA Chargers, SoCalGas and APM Terminals. The top tier puts a brand's name on the main stage. Other tiers name the community stage or a cultural area, hang banners in the community altar corridor, and add a 10x20 activation space on 6th Street. Sponsors also get co-branded invite videos on @downtownsanpedro. Sponsorships are tax deductible.