Hermosa Beach's Two Volleyball Events, Four Months Apart

As Easy Reader News reported, "The public can't get to the beach without walking around the courts."

That was Hermosa Beach Mayor Justin Massey, speaking at a city council meeting about beach access during July. He was describing tournament nets, sponsor banners, and seating on the sand for much of the month, in front of homes in the Sand Section.

If you live along the Strand or within a few blocks of it, you may recognize the July schedule being discussed. The city council debated the schedule, and a separate volleyball event is on the calendar this month.

How July got to 27 days

Hermosa Beach's relationship with beach volleyball goes back to the 1960s and 70s, when tournaments here helped turn a backyard beach sport into the professional circuit it is today. The city takes real pride in that history. But pride and scheduling logistics don't always cooperate.

By late 2023, city staff had built out a beach volleyball calendar for 2024, 2025, and 2026 that stacked the AVP's amateur bracket, the AVP pro series, and AAU national championships back to back. The result: 24 consecutive days of courts on the sand in July 2024, and 27 consecutive days in both July 2025 and July 2026.

Council members pushed back in the same meeting where that schedule was approved. Councilmember Mike Detoy called it unfair to the public to lock up the whole month. Massey went further, saying flatly that the plan shoved too many events into too little time. Councilmember Dean Francois raised a separate problem: the 2024 slate couldn't include the AVP's Hermosa stop at all, because the tour needed an early July date to avoid colliding with the Paris Olympics, which opened July 26 that year.

The counterargument came from the people who run the tournaments. AAU National Beach Volleyball Director Denny Lennon told the council his event needs a fixed July date every year, because high school volleyball wraps up in June and picks back up in August. July is the only open window that works for junior athletes nationwide. Councilman Raymond Jackson landed somewhere in the middle, telling both sides that Hermosa had earned its reputation as the epicenter of the sport, even if the schedule wasn't perfect yet.

The 2026 version of that schedule played out as written. The AVP's amateur bracket ran July 5 through July 11, with the pro series slotted inside it from July 7 through July 9, per the city's own event calendar. Add the AAU nationals on either side, and you get the same 27-day footprint the council had already flagged as too much.

A second tournament with the same name

Here's the part that doesn't show up if you only follow the AVP's official calendar. A separate event, independently organized and presented by Wedbush Securities, also carries the name Hermosa Beach Open, and it returns this year on September 10 through 13.

This isn't a rebranded version of the July stop. It's a different organization entirely, built around a different premise. The event's own materials frame it as a return to the sport's roots in Hermosa, name-checking beach volleyball pioneer Sinjin Smith as a symbol of what the tournament is trying to recover. Admission is free. The event benefits Dig 4 Kids, a nonprofit founded by Olympian Eric Fonoimoana. Organizers said they needed to raise $300,000 for the 2026 edition to cover prize money, a live global stream, and operations, funded by sponsors and donors rather than ticketed gates.

Set the two events side by side and the contrast is the whole story:

The difference in duration is the one residents are most likely to notice on the beach.

What four days feels like after twenty-seven

If you're on the Strand or within walking distance this month, here's what that history actually means for your week.

The July stretch this year already happened. If you were here for it, you felt the difference between a single pro weekend and a full month of build-out, competition, and teardown stacked with junior and amateur brackets on either side. That's the 27-day version the council argued about.

September 10 through 13 is a four-day event, compared with the 27-day July schedule. Admission is free. The event's materials describe it as a tribute to Hermosa's volleyball history; the July calendar includes AVP and AAU competitions.

Practically, that means less disruption to the parts of daily life that get hardest to plan around in July. Court setup and breakdown compress into a shorter window. If you walk dogs on the sand or run the Strand path in the early morning, plan around the Pier area specifically during those four days rather than the whole month, since that's historically where this event has staged its courts. And because admission is free, it's genuinely one of the easier volleyball weekends to actually attend rather than watch from a distance.

What this says about the neighborhood

Hermosa has a long history with beach volleyball, and the city council's discussion of the July calendar put questions about scheduling on the public record.

For Sand Section residents, the beach volleyball calendar is one detail of day-to-day life. In 2026, July's scheduled tournaments spanned 27 consecutive days, while the September event is scheduled for four days. Knowing the difference can help put each event in context; it comes from following what the city council said about the beach calendar.

If you're weighing what it's like to own on the Strand day to day, not just in the brochure months, this is the texture that matters. Jen Caskey Group spends its time in these neighborhoods for exactly this reason, and we're always glad to talk through what a specific block or season actually looks like before you make any decision about it.