If you paddle out at Swami's most mornings, you probably didn't notice much different about this September. The parking lot filled the same way it always does when a west swell shows up. The stairs down the bluff were as crowded as ever. But somewhere between the organic tequila brand that built the neighborhood's biggest surf week from scratch and the apparel label that just joined the marquee, the event itself quietly took on a new name. The wider fall surf calendar offers context for that change.
The festival that returned to Seaside Reef for a fourth annual run in September 2024, and again under the same name in September 2025, showed up this year as the Sessions Surf Festival, running September 12 through 19 with Outerknown newly added alongside founding partner Solento Organic Tequila. Trade coverage described the rebrand as an evolution of the beloved Solento Surf Festival, with live music, surf films, art exhibitions and community gatherings inspired by life around the ocean. The founder, filmmaker Taylor Steele, has described bringing the event back each year to his hometown of Encinitas.
Two September Surf Traditions in Encinitas
The Sessions rebrand brings new partners to a hometown event that draws a good crowd to the beach and the theatre each September. The Swamis Surfing Association contest is another part of Encinitas' fall surf calendar.
The Swamis Surfing Association has run a premier surfing contest in Encinitas for the past 21 years, according to the nonprofit's own account of its history. The SSA funds itself year to year through community sponsorships and volunteer hours, and it uses the contest and its other fundraising to support Adopt-a-Beach cleanups, a Blind Surf Program, scholarships for local middle and high school students, and support tied to disabled veterans.
Those community efforts sit alongside the seasonal rhythms that shape Encinitas' fall surf calendar.
Why the Reef Wakes Up in the Fall
None of this matters much if you don't understand why fall is the season Encinitas surf culture organizes itself around in the first place. Swami's is a right point break, the only one of its kind in North County, and its best conditions generally arrive as the calendar turns from late fall into early spring rather than during the summer months when the festival crowds show up. The reef takes its name from the hermitage of the Self-Realization Fellowship, built on the bluff above it in 1937, and the surrounding water is now protected as the Swami's State Marine Conservation Area, the largest marine protected area in San Diego County at nearly 13 square miles of reef, kelp forest and open water managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
So the timing of both the festival and the SSA contest isn't arbitrary. September sits right at the edge of that transition, close enough to catch the first hints of the winter swell window that actually makes the point work. A beach party in August or a film series in the dead of summer wouldn't line up with the same waves. The Sessions rebrand is in the same September period used by the old Solento festival, as Swami's enters the seasonal transition toward the winter swell window.
La Paloma's Place in the Fall Calendar
La Paloma Theatre sits at the corner of Highway 101 and D Street, and its own site describes it as Encinitas' original hometown theatre and San Diego's oldest, dating to 1928. La Paloma hosts festival programming most years, including surf film blocks tied to the September event. Its calendar also runs independently of any single sponsor or brand.
This past August, La Paloma held a community screening of The Last Dive: Encinitas, followed by a Q&A with the film's director, Cody Sheehy, and Serge Dedina of the ocean conservation group WILDCOAST. The screening was part of La Paloma's own calendar, alongside its surf and ocean-conservation programming. The theatre has also carried Jack Johnson's surf documentary SURFILMUSIC this year, and back in January it hosted the fourth annual Atmosphere Film Festival, a separate event blending art, music and film.
Together, these events illustrate Encinitas' fall surf and film calendar. The festival took a new name and a new partner. A volunteer-run contest has run for 21 years, and La Paloma has continued booking surf and conservation films on its own schedule. The reef, protected as a marine conservation area and named for a hermitage built in 1937, follows the seasonal shifts in swell direction.
The Sessions Surf Festival adds a new name and a new partner to a September week that Seaside Reef and La Paloma already knew well. Around it, the Swamis Surfing Association contest, La Paloma's own bookings and the reef below the Second Street hermitage carry on through the winter swell season.
If you're building a fall routine around swell forecasts at Swami's and whatever's actually on the marquee at La Paloma, Debe McInnis keeps an eye on the same stretch of coast and is always glad to compare notes on what's worth catching this season.
