Myrtle Beach: Festivals and Events

September 2, 2026

Myrtle Beach’s event calendar runs on a few big anchors rather than a packed weekly schedule, and they’re worth planning a trip around rather than assuming you’ll stumble into something. Here’s what’s confirmed for 2026.

Carolina Country Music Fest (CCMF)

June 4-7, 2026. The Strand’s biggest music weekend, with a lineup that’s pulled names like Post Malone, Luke Bryan, and Blake Shelton. If you’re coming for this, book your room well ahead, hotel rates and availability tighten hard the closer you get to early June, and expect the Boardwalk area to be considerably busier than a normal early-summer week.

SOS Spring Safari

April 17-26, 2026. Held in North Myrtle Beach’s Ocean Drive, birthplace of the Shag, South Carolina’s official state dance since 1984. This is the “Society of Stranders” gathering, a shag and beach-music festival that draws a loyal, largely older crowd back year after year. The Shag itself is the dance; beach music is the genre it’s danced to, and this event is built around both.

Blue Crab Festival

May 16-17, 2026. Held up in Little River, at the north end of the Grand Strand near the North Carolina line, this one celebrates the regional seafood industry with food, music, and the kind of small-town festival energy that’s a change of pace from the Boardwalk scene further south.

Myrtle Beach World Amateur

Begins August 31, 2026. Billed as the world’s largest amateur golf tournament, this draws golfers from well outside South Carolina to play the Grand Strand’s 80 to 90 courses over multiple rounds. Even if you’re not playing, it’s worth knowing about, because it fills courses and hotel rooms across “the Golf Coast” for its duration.

Planning around the calendar, not just the events

Outside these four anchors, timing your trip is more about the season than a specific date. Spring (March through May) and fall (September and October) are the sweet spots, warm enough for the beach, cooler for golf, with October often named the single best month, the ocean’s still warm and the summer crowds are gone. Summer is peak season, hot, humid, and busy, with July the busiest month of the year; winter is mild, quiet, and the cheapest time to book, popular with snowbirds who stay for weeks at a time.

One honest caveat regardless of which event or season you pick: Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, peaking mid-August to mid-October, which overlaps with both CCMF and the World Amateur. That’s not a reason to skip a trip in that window, just a reason to keep an eye on the tropical forecast as your dates get close.