Festival
Published dates for 2026 are 4 to 11 October. Rooms across the whole coast sell out months in advance and rates roughly double.
Dates –
Cruisin' the Coast is published for 4 to 11 October 2026, marking its thirtieth year. For that week the Mississippi coast belongs to classic cars.
The event is spread along the whole coast rather than held in one place, with venues from Bay St Louis in the west through Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, D'Iberville and Ocean Springs to Pascagoula in the east. Thousands of registered vehicles cruise US 90 between them, and the beach road becomes the event.
It means book early or book another week, and there is no third option.
Accommodation across the entire coast sells out months ahead, rates roughly double, and restaurants, car parks and the beach road itself are all at capacity. Ordinary journeys along US 90 take considerably longer than usual, and the alternative is Interstate 10 rather than patience.
If you are here anyway, the practical advice is to give up on the beach road for the week, use the interstate for anything with a schedule attached, and treat the cruising itself as the attraction, because it is genuinely something to see. The evening light along thirty miles of water with a few thousand restored cars moving through it is not a small thing.
Book accommodation as far ahead as you can and confirm the registration and venue details with the organisers directly, because the programme, the venue list and the entry arrangements are revised each year.
Check the published dates for your own year as well. This is an annual event held in early October, and the exact dates move.
SourcingDates and the thirtieth-anniversary framing are taken from the event organiser's own published 2026 announcement. Venue lists, registration arrangements and the daily programme change each year and are not reproduced here; confirm directly with the organisers. No accommodation rate is asserted.
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