Overview Sessions Surf Festival is filmmaker Taylor Steele's week of surf films, live bands, art and a surf contest around Encinitas, and its film nights run at La Paloma Theatre, where the front row of seats got ripped out in a mosh pit at his Momentum 2 premiere in 1993. It began in 2021 as the Solento Surf Festival, a three-day nonprofit run of surf films at La Paloma, and the 2026 edition was its sixth, spread across Solana Beach, Encinitas and Carlsbad. A Gold Coast, Australia edition at Burleigh Heads followed in 2025. On site The week opens with a music day on the Seaside Reef parking lot in Solana Beach, set up as a beachside amphitheater with seating on the sand; in 2026 Osees headlined over Unwritten Law, Bully, Yoke Lore and MT Warning. The next day is a free community surf contest at Seaside Reef, with live music, a beach bar and separate single-fin and twin-fin divisions. The art session takes over Hot Water Gallery in Carlsbad for the rest of the week, with 11 artists in 2026 including Jason Woodside, Andy Davis and Todd Glaser. The last three nights are film at La Paloma, a 1920s theater on Coast Highway 101. Steele runs each night like a playlist: a local band first, then short films, then a feature, with beer and margaritas. Audience The music day is all ages, with children under three free, and there is no parking at the reef, so people arrive by bike, rideshare and shuttle and leave bikes at a valet. The surf contest runs categories for spectators as well as surfers, and the single-fin and twin-fin divisions draw local surfers from several generations. Steele started it, by his own account, to bring back the gatherings of creatives he missed in Encinitas. Talent and Influencers Steele picks every film himself. He shot Momentum in 1992 on punk soundtracks, by his account Pennywise timed its 1990s releases to his films, Blink-182's first tour ran with his film Good Times, and he put Jack Johnson's "Middle Man" at the top of 1999's Loose Change. The 2026 film nights carried a 25th-anniversary reunion screening of Shelter, the 2001 film he made with Chris Malloy starring Kelly Slater, Rob Machado and Shane Dorian, and the world premiere of Jack Coleman's ProCasual, with Caity Simmers and Ryan Burch on the panel afterward. Track record The 2026 Shelter screening sold out before the week began. Before the Gold Coast edition, the festival ran a Fort Lauderdale event in 2024 with world champion Lisa Andersen. The Rob Machado Foundation, Changing Tides Foundation and SurfAid were its charity partners in 2026. Brand presence Partners build activations into the music day at Seaside Reef, beside the art installations on the lot. In 2026 Tylo ran a sauna and cold plunge for VIP ticket holders there, ALSO ran the bike valet, and Solento Tequila was among the partners.