King Tides 2026–27: Three Windows, All of Them on Holidays

What To Know Before You Go

A few times each winter the sun, the moon and the Earth line up, the moon swings closest to us, and the ocean comes up a foot or two higher than it usually does. The California Coastal Commission calls these king tides — and in their words, they're "the highest high tides of the year."

The 2026–27 dates are out, and here's the part nobody's pointing out: all three windows fall on holidays.

• November 24–26, 2026 — Tuesday through Thanksgiving Day
• December 23–25, 2026 — Wednesday through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
• January 21–22, 2027 — Thursday and Friday

If you have family in town and you're running out of things to do with them, the highest tides of the year are happening on three of the days you'll most need an outing. That's an unusually good piece of timing and it's free.

Here's the thing to understand before you go, and it decides whether your trip works at all.

A king tide is a moment, not a day. The tide peaks at a specific time, and that time is different at every stretch of coast. Show up at the wrong hour and you're looking at an ordinary beach. The Commission's own advice is to find the high-tide time for the spot you've picked and be there "ideally within a half hour" of it.

So before you leave: look up the tide time for your specific location. The Commission points people to NOAA's tide predictions for exactly this. It takes a minute and it's the difference between seeing something remarkable and seeing the beach.

And one warning that matters more this season than most. The Commission's own notice says tide heights "may exceed the below predictions, particularly during conditions associated with El Niño or Kelvin waves, which are expected to be significant this winter."

In plain terms: the water may come up higher than the tables say. Plan for more water than predicted, not less.

Quick Facts

• What: King tides — the highest high tides of the year, one to two feet above an average high tide
• When: Nov 24–26, 2026 · Dec 23–25, 2026 · Jan 21–22, 2027
• Cost: Free
• What causes them: The gravitational alignment of sun, moon and Earth, with the moon at its closest. Around the New Year the Earth is also nearest the sun, which adds to the pull — so the winter windows are the strongest of the year.
• Run by: The California King Tides Project, launched by the Coastal Commission and partners in the winter of 2010–11
• San Diego partners include: the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, the UC Scripps Coastal Reserve, the San Diego Natural History Museum, San Diego Bird Alliance, Friends of Rose Creek, Friends of Famosa Slough, Surfrider Foundation and the City of Oceanside
• My pro move: Pick a spot with something man-made in the frame — a sea wall, a staircase, a pier piling, a bridge support. A photo of high water against a flat beach says nothing. The same water halfway up a staircase tells the whole story in one image.

You Can Actually Contribute Something

This is the part that turns a walk into something useful, and it takes about ninety seconds.

The California King Tides Project is a public photo survey. The state collects pictures of these tides from ordinary people up and down the coast, pins them to a map, and uses them to document what the highest water of today actually reaches.

How to submit:

• From a browser: open the King Tides photo upload form, upload your picture, fill in the short form. One submission per photo.
• From your phone: install the free Survey123 app, open the same form, choose "Open in Survey123 field app," allow location access and use "Collect."
• No signal at the beach? The app saves submissions to an outbox. They send when you're back in range.
• Questions: kingtides@coastal.ca.gov

What makes a photo actually useful, per the Commission:

• Turn location services on for your camera before you shoot. This is the one that matters most — a photo without a location is much harder to use. If your camera doesn't record GPS, note where you were so you can place it on the map yourself.
• Shoot within half an hour of peak high tide at your location.
• Include reference points. The Commission is explicit that the most powerful images show water against "cliffs, rocks, roads, buildings, bridge supports, sea walls, staircases, and piers."
• Check the swell forecast too — storm swell on top of a king tide pushes the water higher still.
• Tag it #kingtides if you're posting it anywhere.

The Part That Matters for San Diego

Here's the framing the Coastal Commission itself uses, and it's worth quoting carefully because it's easy to get wrong in both directions.

"King Tides themselves are not related to climate change, but they allow us to experience what higher sea level will be like."

King tides are natural, predictable and have always happened. What's changed is what they represent. The Commission's point is that today's highest tide is "a good approximation of how high we expect everyday tides to be over the next few decades."

Their own guidance puts numbers on it, citing the State of California's 2024 sea-level-rise update: by 2050, a median rise of 0.8 to 1.2 feet on the California coast; by 2100, between 3.1 and 6.6 feet.

So the instruction they give visitors is: "When you observe the King Tides, imagine seeing these tides — and the associated flooded streets, beaches, and wetlands — every day."

If you're looking at coastal property, this is genuinely worth doing. A king tide is the closest thing available to a free preview of what a given stretch of coast, a given low-lying street, a given parking lot will look like at an ordinary high tide a few decades out. It costs you an hour and tells you something no listing will.

That's not a reason to avoid the coast. It's a reason to go look at a specific place, at a specific hour, with your own eyes — which is better information than most buyers ever get.

Which Window Should You Pick?

Three chances, and they're genuinely different outings.

November 24–26 — the Thanksgiving window.

• The best one for visitors. You'll have people in town with nothing scheduled, and this runs Tuesday through Thanksgiving Day itself.
• Earliest in the season, so the weather is likeliest to be mild and the light is decent.
• The trade-off: the Commission notes that the gravitational pull peaks nearer the New Year, so November is the weakest of the three on paper.

December 23–25 — the Christmas window.

• Likely the biggest water of the three, falling closest to the point where the Earth is nearest the sun.
• Christmas Eve morning is a genuinely good, free, forty-minute outing when everyone's underfoot and the shops are chaos.
• The trade-off: it's Christmas. Anyone you drag out needs to actually want to go.

January 21–22 — the quiet one.

• The best one if you want to photograph it properly. No holiday crowds, no obligations, and by late January the winter swell is often bigger — which stacks on top of the tide.
• The trade-off: it's the most likely of the three to be cold, grey and wet. Which, for dramatic photos, isn't actually a downside.

If you're only going once, go on Christmas Eve morning. Biggest likely water, and it's the day you'll most want a reason to leave the house.

Safety — Read This Part

The Coastal Commission's warnings here are blunt, and they're blunt for a reason. People get hurt watching big water.

Their guidance, close to verbatim:

• "Take care on slippery areas and stay back from big waves."
• "Pay attention to your surroundings and the weather conditions."
• "Don't turn your back on the ocean!"

A few things that follow from that:

• Rocks, jetties and tidepools are where people get caught out. Wet rock at a king tide with winter swell behind it is the single most dangerous place on this list. If you want rocks in the frame, photograph them from somewhere dry and elevated.
• Remember the water may come higher than predicted this winter — the El Niño and Kelvin wave conditions the Commission flagged.
• Watch what's behind you as well as in front. Water that comes up a beach at a king tide can cut off the way you came in.
• Leave the shorebirds alone. The Commission makes a specific point of this: birds and other animals take refuge well above the normal tide line during king tides, sometimes much farther inland than usual. Don't flush them out to get your shot.

A Simple Plan for the Morning

• The night before — look up your tide time. NOAA's tide predictions, for the specific stretch of coast you've picked. Check the swell forecast while you're there.
• Pick a spot with a hard edge. A sea wall, a pier, a staircase, a bridge, a boat ramp. Something with a known height that the water can climb.
• Arrive 30 minutes before peak. You want to watch it come up, not turn up to the aftermath.
• Take two photos from the same position — one at arrival, one at peak. The comparison is far more striking than either alone.
• Check your location services are on before the first shot, not after the last one.
• Submit while you're standing there, or let the app queue it for later.
• Then go get breakfast. You'll have been out for forty-five minutes.

Insider Tips

• The tide time is different everywhere. La Jolla, Mission Bay, Oceanside and the South Bay don't peak together. Look up the spot you're actually going to.
• Bays and estuaries beat open beach for this. Still water against a known edge reads more clearly in a photo than surf does, and it's safer. The Commission's San Diego partners cluster around exactly these places — Rose Creek, Famosa Slough, the Tijuana River estuary.
• Low-lying parking lots and boat ramps are underrated. They flood visibly and they're the easiest thing for a viewer to interpret.
• Go back to the same spot on a normal day and shoot it again. A before-and-after from an identical position is the most useful thing an amateur can contribute to this project.
• Wear boots you don't care about. Obvious, routinely ignored.
• The Commission wants photos from anywhere on the tidal coast, not just the pins already on their map. An unphotographed stretch is more valuable than another shot of a well-covered one.
• Organized events get posted through the season. Nothing for San Diego is listed yet for 2026–27 — last winter there was a guided morning at the Rose Creek salt marsh — so it's worth checking back in November. Groups can also email the Commission to set one up.

Why It's Worth the Trip

San Diego has a lot of free outdoor things to do and most of them are the same every week. This one happens three times a year, it's on the calendar months in advance, it takes under an hour, and you come home with something the state will actually file.

It's also the rare outing that's genuinely interesting to both a seven-year-old and an adult — the kid gets water somewhere it shouldn't be, and the adult gets a fairly sobering look at the next few decades.

For more ways to get outside, browse our article archive — and if you're weighing a move toward the coast, our Mission Beach vs. Pacific Beach comparison is a good place to start.