What permits do you need for an event in Los Angeles? You’re in the right place! We’ll walk through which permits apply to your event, how the rules shift between city parks, county beaches, and the smaller cities inside LA County, and what those locations don’t allow.
We’ll also cover serving alcohol, the seasonal open-flame ban in high fire-hazard areas, naming your rental company on the application, and who to call at LADBS, Recreation and Parks, and Beaches and Harbors. With the right permit in hand, you’ll be ready to plan an amazing LA event!
- Do You Need a Permit in Los Angeles?
- City Parks, County Beaches, and the Cities Inside Los Angeles
- What City Parks and County Beaches Don’t Allow
- Serving Alcohol in Los Angeles
- The Seasonal Open Flame Ban in High Fire Hazard Parks
- Naming Your Rental Company on the Application
- What to Ask Before You Book
- Who to Call at LADBS, Recreation and Parks, and Beaches and Harbors
- Plan Your Los Angeles Event With the Right Permits and Rentals
Do You Need a Permit in Los Angeles?
The City of Los Angeles publishes no guest-count threshold for a private event. Invite eighty people to your yard with a cooler, a folding table, and a 10×10 pop-up, and the Department of Building and Safety has nothing to issue you.
What tips you over is structural: once your setup includes a tent bigger than a 10×10 pop-up, a stage or a raised platform, LADBS has a permit for it, and its page lists what counts.
Other City offices attach to that permit:
- The Fire Department comes first. LAFD wants a safety plan showing your layout, and it signs off before LADBS does, so start with Fire.
- The Police Department issues its own permit for things like dances, live music and alcohol. Their list runs longer than that, so check it before you assume you’re clear.
- City Planning may need to clear the event, decided by a questionnaire every applicant answers.
- Closing a street runs through StreetsLA, and its page says you can’t get permits for personal events like birthdays. That sentence is garbled where it’s published, so ask Street Services how it reads for your event.
Still choosing a site for your event? Our guide to wedding venues in Los Angeles covers the best options in the area.
City Parks, County Beaches, and the Cities Inside Los Angeles
Which office you file with depends on where your event sits, and the city/county line catches more people out here than anything else: a Los Angeles mailing address doesn’t necessarily mean City ground, City rules, or a City office.
On City parkland, you’re with Recreation and Parks. Griffith Park is a City park, not a County one, and Elysian Park and Debs Park are City parks too. Recreation and Parks warns that requesting a date isn’t the same as holding an approved reservation, so don’t book vendors based on a request.
On County beach sand, which covers Venice, Dockweiler, Zuma, and others, the permit comes from the County Department of Beaches and Harbors. Two of its triggers have nothing to do with headcount, and both name what you’re renting: bringing in a caterer or a rental company, and setting out tables or chairs for an organized activity. Either one is enough on its own, before anyone counts a guest.
City rules can still reach County sand, and the fire marshal covering a beach may not be the same government as the permit office. Call Beaches and Harbors first, and ask which marshal covers your area.
In County parks you’re dealing with yet another department: stages and tents route to Public Works, and food handled on site routes to Public Health.
Outside the City altogether, Santa Monica and Pasadena are separate cities that issue their own event permits, and Manhattan Beach adds its own amplified sound permit on top of the County’s. Figure out which city your address is in before you read anyone’s rules.
What City Parks and County Beaches Don’t Allow
These hold whether or not you have a permit.
In City parks:
- Fireworks and firearms, including model rockets.
- Cooking, except on a stove or fire circle the park provides, or an approved portable one where it’s posted.
- Staking and taping. Nothing may be strung across a path, and nothing may be fastened to a tree, bench or fence without permission.
- Animals, with a short list of exceptions, including licensed leashed dogs.
- Smoking, on park grounds and in the parking lots.
- Amplified sound. Recreation and Parks doesn’t allow sound-amplifying systems in its parks, so settle the music before you book a DJ.
Park hours are your real end time. City parks close well before midnight, some of them earlier than others, and a supervising employee can sometimes extend closing for an approved event. Ask what time your site shuts and whether it can be pushed. There’s also a night-time limit on playing musical instruments near homes, drums included.
On County beaches:
- Fireworks, and animals on the sand or in the parking lot.
- Fires and cooking on the sand, tiki torches included, with cooking banned outright at a good many beaches.
- Live amplified bands. Several beaches ban DJs and amplified music entirely, and where sound is allowed there’s an evening cut-off. Ask about yours.
- Electrical hook-ups. Power is yours to supply.
Tents on the sand carry their own shape and material rules, and they come down off the sand at the end of each day. Ask what they’ll accept before you reserve one.
Serving Alcohol in Los Angeles
A City park settles the question quickly: Recreation and Parks doesn’t permit alcohol to be sold, served or consumed in its parks, and a State daily license does not unlock a City park. If the toast matters, pick a different site.
On County beaches, alcohol is catered-only, and it carries an insurance requirement plus a set of conditions on how the bar is run. Some beaches issue no alcohol permit at all, so ask Beaches and Harbors what applies at yours before you plan a bar.
The Seasonal Open Flame Ban in High Fire Hazard Parks
For a long stretch of the year, spring through fall, no open flame of any kind is allowed in the parks the City classes as high fire hazard zones. That covers cooking and barbecuing, unless the area is posted to allow it. Griffith Park and Elysian Park are both on that list in full, along with a good many others.
The ban reaches past the barbecue: the Sterno under a chafing dish is an open flame too. Confirm whether your park is listed, when the window runs and how it’s posted on your date, then ask your caterer about flameless hot-holding.
Naming Your Rental Company on the Application
Los Angeles wants your suppliers named before it approves anything, so expect the form to ask, by name, which company is supplying your inflatables and which is supplying your tables and chairs. County Parks may want proof of insurance from your vendors on top of your own, and inflatables tend to carry an extra requirement on the vendor.
Ask your supplier early whether they can provide proof of insurance in the form the City or County requires, because that requirement stalls more bookings than any other.
If you need help budgeting, the Los Angeles rental pricing guide breaks down pricing by rental type in this area!
What to Ask Before You Book
- Is this park on the high fire hazard list, and how is it posted on my date?
- Whose sand is this, and which fire marshal covers it?
- Is amplified sound allowed at this specific site, and who puts that in writing?
- What time does this site close, and can the supervisor extend it for my event?
- Can my rental company produce proof of insurance in the form the City or the County wants?
- Does my tent cross the LADBS trigger, and does LAFD need the safety plan first?
Push for written answers on the last two. Beaches and Harbors and LADBS publish different building-permit triggers for the same tent, and County Parks says amplified sound “may not be permitted” at any County park on one page and “is not permitted” on another. Plan on the stricter.
Who to Call at LADBS, Recreation and Parks, and Beaches and Harbors
- LA Department of Building and Safety. Tents, stages, and bleachers, on its Temporary Special Event page.
- Los Angeles Fire Department. The safety plan and tent approval, at Fire Prevention.
- LA Recreation and Parks. Griffith, Elysian, Debs and every other City park, via reservations.
- StreetsLA. Street closures, at its Special Events Portal.
- LA County Beaches and Harbors. The Special Event Use Permit for County beaches and Marina del Rey.
- LA County Parks and Recreation. County parks, and the routes to Public Works and Public Health, on its special events FAQs.
- California ABC. Daily licences and the caterer’s route, under licence types.
Plan Your Los Angeles Event With the Right Permits and Rentals
Site first, then rules, then rentals. Once you know whose ground you are standing on in Los Angeles, every other question has an office behind it, and the answers come faster than most people expect.
Reventals makes finding event rentals simple, with quality tents and canopies, tables and chairs, and generators across Los Angeles for events of every size. You can browse what is available and submit a rental request in one place, and our team keeps things moving behind the scenes.
