Monterey Car Week 2026 Is a Wrap — and the 2027 Plan

The tents are down. Monterey Car Week 2026 opened with the kick-off in Monterey on August 7 and closed on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach on August 16, and somewhere in the middle most of us spent a week making decisions about which of two things happening at the same time we wanted more.

This is the part nobody writes down while it's happening: what the week actually looked like, and what that means for booking the next one. The dates for 2027 are already set, and there is a change coming in 2028 that will catch people out if they don't hear about it now.

How the Porsche week actually laid out

Strip away everything that isn't Porsche-relevant and the week has a spine. It ran like this:

• Friday August 7 — the Car Week kick-off in Monterey. The Peninsula is still navigable on this day. It is the last time that's true.
• Saturday August 8 — the Pre-Reunion and Corkscrew Hillclimb at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The cheapest and quietest track day of the week, a full four days before the main event.
• Wednesday August 12 — the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion opens at Laguna Seca. Also the Porsche Pit Stop at Taste Morgan in Carmel, which is the kind of thing that only exists during Car Week.
• Friday August 14 — the collision. Werks Reunion at Monterey Pines Golf Course and The Quail at Quail Lodge, on the same day, eight minutes apart by car and considerably longer than that in Car Week traffic.
• Sunday August 16 — the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, on the 18th fairway, and then it's over.

That Friday is the single most useful thing to know about the week. Two of the three events a Porsche owner most wants to attend land on the same morning, every year, and no amount of planning makes them both comfortable. Werks opens earlier; The Quail runs long. People do both. People also regret doing both.

The 2027 dates, and the one you should write down

The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is Sunday, August 15, 2027. Car Week builds through the preceding week as it always does, so plan on being on the Peninsula from roughly Tuesday the 10th if you want the Reunion, and from the weekend before if you want the Pre-Reunion.

Now the part that matters more. From 2028 the Concours moves a week earlier, to Sunday, August 13. It is shifting from the third Sunday in August to the second. Concours chairman Sandra Button put the reason plainly: schools across the country now start earlier, and that had been keeping entrants, judges, volunteers and spectators away from an event they wanted to bring their families to.

If you book hotels a year or two ahead — and on the Peninsula, plenty of people do — this is the detail that bites. A 2028 booking made on the old pattern lands you there a week after everyone has gone home.

What to book, and when

The honest ranking of what disappears first, based on how this week behaves every year:

• Lodging. Not close. Peninsula rooms for Car Week go long before the event calendars are published, and rates roughly double. If you are going in 2027, this is a right-now decision, not a spring one. Our where to stay guide covers which towns are worth the drive-in trade-off.
• The Quail. Ticket allocation is limited and demand exceeds it every year. Watch for the application window rather than assuming tickets will be on sale when you get round to it.
• Werks Reunion corral spots. Cheaper and friendlier than the above, but the corral fills, and the early registration price always ends well before the event.
• Reunion track access. The most forgiving of the four. Laguna Seca is a big venue and tickets last longer.

If you want a Porsche week sooner than next August

Twelve months is a long wait. Amelia Island Concours Week is the other end of the same calendar — March 4–7, 2027, on the Florida coast, built to the same shape: a Sunday concours, an auction, a cars & coffee, and Werks Reunion Amelia on Friday, March 5, which pulls 500-plus Porsches to the Amelia River Club on its own.

It is smaller than Monterey, warmer in March than the Peninsula is in August, and considerably easier to get a room for. For a lot of owners it is the better week — and it is seven months out, which is exactly when the good decisions get made.

Before the camera roll gets buried

If you were there, your photos are worth more than another week in your phone. The Monterey Car Week 2026 archive is open — it takes a picture and a couple of sentences about what you were looking at, your Instagram handle goes on it, and unlike a story it is still there next August when the next lot are working out whether to make the trip.

Everything from this year, still here

The 2026 guides stay up — the day-by-day schedule, the Reunion at Laguna Seca, and the full Porsche guide to the week. The shape of Car Week barely changes year to year, so they read as planning documents for 2027 with the dates moved forward one day.

And if the drive out is half the point, the NorCoast Rally runs Ashland, Oregon to Monterey down the Northern California coast, timed to land on the Peninsula as Car Week opens.