The 31st Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival Arts Pavilion

The Avenue Turns It Up

For one Saturday each September, Central Avenue remembers out loud. The Central Avenue Jazz Festival — Los Angeles’ longest-running free jazz festival — returns for its 31st edition on Saturday, September 19, 2026, filling the historic corridor with the bebop, blues, and Latin jazz that made the Avenue famous. And for the twelfth edition under its stewardship, dating back to 2014, La Mancha Gallery returns to curate the festival’s Arts Pavilion — a 120-foot gallery without walls between Central Avenue and 41st Street, steps from the Historic Dunbar Hotel.

About the Arts Pavilion

The Arts Pavilion is one of the festival’s essential destinations: a curated exhibition where the Avenue’s visual legacy stands shoulder to shoulder with its musical one. This year, La Mancha brings together approximately seventeen artists — painters, photographers, printmakers, and mixed-media artists, several of them Pavilion regulars since its earliest years. Some are elders whose work documents the Avenue’s golden era firsthand; others are inheritors actively remaking its visual language today. Not an exhibition about the community — an exhibition of it, by it, and for it. Artwork throughout the Pavilion is available for purchase, with all inquiries handled directly by La Mancha Gallery.

A Milestone Edition

The 2026 festival carries special significance: it marks the final Central Avenue Jazz Festival with Ninth District Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr. as its central figure, closing a tenure in which his office elevated the festival into the signature cultural event of the NEW 9th. The Arts Pavilion honors the vision La Mancha has long shared with the Councilmember — that culture is not a decoration on community life but its foundation.

Event Details

Event: Arts Pavilion at the 31st Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival
Curated by: La Mancha Gallery · 12th Edition
Date: Saturday, September 19, 2026
Hours: 11 AM – 7 PM
Location: 120-foot tent, Central Avenue at 41st Street, Los Angeles, CA
Admission: Free and family friendly
Contact: (626) 425-8300 · staff@lamanchagallery.com

The festival unfolds along Central Avenue between Vernon Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, with live performances on multiple stages and at the Historic Dunbar Hotel. Learn more at centralavejazzfest.com.

About La Mancha Gallery

La Mancha Gallery is an independent curatorial practice founded in 2006 by Omar Holguin on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. Operating under the Alternative Venue Exhibition Model, La Mancha has presented over 200 curated exhibitions across more than 100 non-traditional venue partners in two decades of continuous operation — documenting, celebrating, and advancing the arts of Los Angeles, from Central Avenue jazz to AfroLatinx fine art.

Seventeen artists. Thirty-one years of festival history. One Avenue that never stopped. The Arts Pavilion returns September 19.

Curated by Omar Holguin · Founder & Curator, La Mancha Gallery