LA Fleet Week will sail into the Port of Los Angeles in a few days for its annual celebration of the nation’s seafaring military branches — with this year also honoring the 250th anniversaries of the U.S. Navy and Marines.

LA Fleet Week 2025 will run from Friday to Monday, May 23-26, though there will also be a few related events beginning on Wednesday, May 21.

Hundreds of active-duty Navy and Coast Guard sailors, as well as Marines, will begin arriving midweek for the 10th annual celebration of the nation’s sea services. Last year’s event, which featured a visit from a showstopping aircraft carrier, drew an estimated 100,000 people to San Pedro’s waterfront during the long Memorial Day weekend.

This year’s event won’t include an aircraft carrier, but it will offer three active duty Navy vessels and a training Coast Guard vessel, the latter of which boasts a World War II history. The public can board and tour the vessels — the centerpiece attraction every year.

The first Fleet Week was celebrated in San Diego in 1935 and now, several major U.S. cities, including San Francisco and New York, have their own versions.

LA Fleet Week began in 2016.

Detailed information, including maps and parking information, is available at the Fleet Week 2025 website, lafleetweek.com. Parking is available throughout area as motorists exit the 110 Freeway at Gaffey Street and head south, including parking lots at the far south end of town at 22nd Street and Dave Arian Way, near the Outer Harbor.

Parking, and shuttle schedules and maps are on the Fleet Week website.

Signs will also be posted throughout the area.

Free tours of active duty ships will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily during Fleet Week. All adults must present a valid government-issued ID (state ID card, driver’s license or passport) to take Navy ship tours.

Non-US citizens must show valid passports and will be subject to a brief additional screening before boarding the vessels. Photocopies of IDs will not be accepted.

The “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the website should be reviewed before attending for more details about requirements and restrictions, organizers said.

There will be a new digital queue system for the ship tours this year. You won’t be able to use the website — getinline.lafleetweek.org — until you’re within the Fleet Week perimeter and the tours have begun.

Entering the queue will require attendees to have a smart phone and to enter a geofence — or a virtual perimeter — within the Fleet Week festival areas in San Pedro. Users will then receive a barcode for access to sign up for a ship tour pass. Sign-ups are offered on a first come, first served basis for the same day and will close when the last tour slot has been claimed each day. Those interested in boarding one of the ships are advised to arrive early in the morning — since tour tickets go early.

Several methods have been tried in the past to make queuing easier — with varying levels of success. But organizers said they hope this latest one will help prevent the long waits in lines — and having to turn people away — that have occurred with earlier efforts.

Signups are available for the current day of each tour only and will open at the beginning of each tour day. Further instructions will be provided after the pass is secured online.

The ships will be in the Outer Harbor, with trolly transportation available. The Navy will determine which ships people will be directed to for tours.

The visiting ships are:

• USS Harpers Ferry (LSD-49), the lead ship of its class of landing ship dock of the U.S. Navy. The warship was named for the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and is assigned to the Navy’s “Amphibious Group 1.” Its homeport is San Diego and it was commissioned on Jan. 7, 1995.
• USS Carl M. Levin (DDG-120), an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer named for former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, who served as chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services. The ship was christened on Oct. 2, 2021, at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, and is fitted with the Aegis Combat System baseline 9, which includes integrated air and missile defense capability. The ship was delivered to the U.S. Navy on Jan. 26, 2023, and arrived at its  homeport, Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on Aug. 7, 2021.
• Unmanned Surface Vessel Mariner (OUSV 4) is one of the Navy’s “ghost fleet” surface vessels and is equipped with next-generation capabilities, including an advanced command-and-control system, virtualized Aegis weapon system and autonomous navigation system.
• US Coast Guard Cutter Eagle (WIX-327),  formerly Horst Wessel and also known as Barque Eagle, is a 295-foot barque used as a training cutter for future officers of the U.S. Coast Guard, one of only two active commissioned sailing vessels in the U.S. military today, along with the USS Constitution. Built as a German sail training ship and decommissioned at the start of World War II, the vessel was re-commissioned in 1942 and taken by the U.S. as war reparations at conflict’s end. Its homeport is New London, Connecticut. It was acquired by the Coast Guard in 1946.

The main expo area will be located next to the historic Battleship Iowa Museum, 250 S. Harbor Blvd., just north of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. The expo will be open to the general public from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily and is free to visit.

Activities and exhibits will highlight and celebrate the nation’s military services and the people who serve. Events will include military displays and equipment demonstrations; live entertainment; aircraft flyovers; the annual Galley Wars culinary cook-off competition between culinary specialists from the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air Force and Army (at noon Saturday); and the dodgeball (10:30 a.m. Sunday) and Military Has Talent (finals at 10 a.m. Monday) competitions.

A Memorial Day observance will be at 5:15 p.m. Monday.

Dining options throughout the event will be provided by Vicky’s Doghouse Cafe aboard the Battleship Iowa and a variety of food trucks that will be on site.

A new competition this year — Navy Esports Challenge — will showcase modern gaming on a digital battlefield. It is designed to illustrate the power of modern gaming to foster leadership, unite communities and inspire future careers in tech and service. Esports teams from high schools throughout Los Angeles County will compete against the Navy’s elite esports squad, Goats & Glory, with school teams vying for a grand prize scholarship.

During their L.A. visit, meanwhile, service members will take part in neighborhood “activations” that will introduce them to public organizations throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. Included will be Navy and Marine Corps band performances in Los Angeles, Westchester, Mission Hills and Orange.

Service members will also volunteer with various organizations, including the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Ronald McDonald House of Long Beach, the Boys & Girls Club of Garden Grove, Children’s Hospital of Orange County, the Cabrillo Beach Youth Center, and “Firefighter for a Day” at multiple locations. Service members will also attend L.A. Dodgers and L.A. Angels games, take a Fox Sports Studio tour and go to Disneyland.