Walk Canon Drive on a Thursday evening in August and the sidewalk tells the story before the marquees do. Diners are eating outside places that were construction plywood in January. A brass quintet is warming up in Beverly Cañon Gardens. Two blocks west, a valet stand at the Waldorf is turning over cars for a rooftop that reopened under a new name this spring.
For residents who have watched storefronts sit dark since the pandemic, this is the first summer that reads as fully occupied. The pace is not accidental.
The thesis, for people who already live here
The current wave of openings is not the usual seasonal churn. It is a coordinated re-tenanting timed to two calendar dates: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and the 2028 Summer Olympics. The Beverly Hills Conference and Visitors Bureau has publicly framed 2026 as "a milestone moment to showcase our city's unmatched hospitality," anchored to the World Cup and the 100th anniversary of Route 66. Landlords, hoteliers, and civic programmers have all pulled their launches into a compressed window so that the city hits summer 2026 fully lit.
If you live here, the practical effect is that a walkable radius around Beverly and Canon now contains more first-West-Coast restaurants, first-U.S. flagships, and free civic events than at any point in the last decade. What follows is a resident's read on where the schedule is actually landing this month.
What is open on your block that was not a year ago
The restaurant list is longer than any single roundup has captured, and it skews heavily toward first-West-Coast or first-U.S. debuts rather than local expansions.
| Restaurant | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Marea | Golden Triangle | First West Coast outpost of the acclaimed New York City restaurant |
| 88 Club | Beverly Hills | Supper-club–style room from Top Chef winner Mei Lin |
| Bad Roman | Canon Drive | Debut West Coast restaurant from Quality Branded, in the former Palm space |
| Azur | Canon Drive | French-Mediterranean concept new to Canon Drive in 2026 |
| Avra | Near Rodeo | West Coast outpost of the New York Greek house, an 11,000-square-foot villa-style room |
| Baldi | Waldorf Astoria | Tuscan-inspired steakhouse from Edoardo Baldi in the former Jean-Georges space, opened in February |
| Gemma | Waldorf rooftop | Pan-Asian rooftop restaurant that replaced Rooftop by JG |
| Sushi Nakazawa | 145 S. Robertson | Michelin-starred omakase from Alessandro Borgognone and Daisuke Nakazawa, with a $295 chef's menu and a $190 classic |
| Pura Vida | Beverly Hills | First West Coast location for the healthy café concept |
| Levain Bakery | Beverly Hills | The New York bakery known for six-ounce cookies |
| All'Antico Vinaio | Beverly Hills | The Florence-based sandwich shop |
| Hi Bake | Beverly Hills | First U.S. location for the French and Asian-inspired sweets concept |
| Bacio di Latte | Beverly Hills | The gelateria's newest flagship U.S. location |
Three of those, Bad Roman, Azur, and 88 Club, are within a five-minute walk of one another. The clustering is the story. A resident who has been ordering the same three restaurants on repeat since 2022 now has a genuinely different Friday-night set to rotate through, without moving the car.
Longer-term, the Beverly Hilton is anchoring the forthcoming One Beverly Hills development, which will include the first West Coast Aman Hotel, Residences and Private Club. That project is the horizon line behind everything opening this year.
Thursday nights belong to Cañon Drive
The free programming has quietly become the most reliable weekly event in the city.
Concerts on Cañon runs every Thursday from June 4 through August 20 at Beverly Cañon Gardens, 6 to 8 p.m., with a rotating lineup that includes classic rock, jazz, Caribbean, Brazilian, and Persian music. The garden sits directly adjacent to The Maybourne, which means the practical routine for a lot of residents has become a 5:45 walk over, a set outdoors, and a late dinner at whichever new room has the shortest wait.
Two dates worth planning around before the series ends this month:
- Thursday, August 6 through Thursday, August 20, the final three concerts of the season
- Sunday, July 12 was Festival Beverly Hills at Beverly Gardens Park, an all-day community event that will return in 2027
For anyone hosting out-of-town guests in August, the concerts are the single easiest answer to the "what should we do tonight" question that does not involve booking a table.
Greystone is programming itself like a small repertory house
The 1928 mansion at 905 Loma Vista has been open to the public for decades, but the summer 2026 calendar is unusually dense. The city's Community Services schedule lists Inside the Mansion guided tours on the first Saturday or Sunday of each month, a Theatre 40 play reading of "Dearest Friend: The John and Abigail Adams Letters" on Wednesday, July 8, and Greystone in the Movies on Thursday, July 16 at 6:30 p.m. in the Greystone Theatre. The August tour is Saturday, August 1, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For residents who have taken the standard grounds tour once and moved on, the theatre programming is the reason to come back. The restored screening room and the theatre itself are used sparingly, which means most weekend visitors never see them. A Wednesday-night play reading is a different experience of the property than a Saturday-afternoon walk of the gardens.
The retail rebuild is the part most residents underestimate
Rodeo Drive is doing something more architecturally ambitious than a typical refresh. Cartier is unveiling a three-story boutique, Louis Vuitton will open a 45,000-square-foot architectural landmark envisioned by Frank Gehry, and Bvlgari is debuting an expanded and remodeled space, additions that build on Rodeo Drive's global prestige.
A 45,000-square-foot Gehry building on Rodeo is not a store, it is a civic-scale piece of architecture landing on a street that has not had new construction on that scale in a generation. Whatever it does for LVMH's sales figures, it will change the walking experience of the block permanently.
Beverly Drive is a quieter but arguably more useful story for residents, because Beverly is where locals actually shop. Beverly Drive is now home to flagship investments from L'Agence, Tory Burch, and Veronica Beard, along with the relocation of Zadig & Voltaire and a remodel of Maje, plus G/FORE bringing performance style and Wilson readying its debut, with H&M set to join the lineup. The Wilson store in particular signals something new: a serious tennis and pickleball retail presence on a street that had none.
Hotels have moved in parallel. The Beverly Wilshire has debuted a next-generation spa, The Beverly Hills Hotel is adding a veranda bar, private screening room, meeting venue, lobby café, and an elegant supper club with live entertainment, and L'Ermitage has redesigned its lobby level, restaurant, and rooftop. If you have not been inside any of these lobbies since 2023, none of them look the way you remember.
A resident's August playbook
If you have two weekends left before Labor Day and want to see what is actually new without doing the tourist version of any of it:
- Book Baldi or Sushi Nakazawa for a Tuesday. Both are the kind of rooms that fill on Fridays and open up midweek. Nakazawa is in the former Cuvee space on Robertson, which is a five-minute drive from the Triangle and rarely comes up in local conversation yet.
- Do the Thursday walk. Concerts on Cañon at 6, an early bite at Bad Roman or Azur on Canon after 8. Both took over storefronts that had been dark for years.
- Take the August 1 Greystone tour. Then come back Wednesday, August 12 for a play reading in the theatre. The two visits are different buildings, effectively.
- Walk Beverly Drive between Wilshire and Santa Monica once, slowly. The L'Agence, Tory Burch, and Veronica Beard flagships all sit within a two-block stretch, and the point is not any single store, it is how the street reads now versus twelve months ago.
- Detour past the Louis Vuitton site on Rodeo. Even mid-construction, the Gehry facade is worth a look. You will be answering questions about it at dinner parties for the next two years.
The compressed calendar is real. Most of it is free or close to it. The version of Beverly Hills the world will see during the World Cup next summer is the version residents get to walk through, quietly, this month.
For a private conversation about how these openings and the One Beverly Hills timeline are influencing values on specific blocks, Sandler + Hirsch Group is available for a confidential consultation. Request a private home valuation.
