What Airshows Still Feature the Blue Angels in 2025

Blue Angels scheduling has gotten complicated with all the conflicting information flying around. As someone who has spent the last three seasons tracking their calendar obsessively — attending shows from the California coast to the Gulf of Mexico — I learned everything there is to know about where and when the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron actually shows up. Today, I will share it all with you.

How the Blue Angels Schedule Works Each Year

But what is a Blue Angels season, exactly? In essence, it’s 35 to 40 carefully selected airshow appearances spread across roughly eight months. But it’s much more than that — the team filters every request through a lens of crowd capacity, logistical infrastructure, maintenance windows, and pilot rotation cycles. Small regional shows get turned down constantly, even when organizers genuinely want them there.

2025 runs fuller than recent years. Fewer overseas deployment commitments freed up the calendar, and post-pandemic demand finally hit a stable floor. The season opens in March, closes around November, with May through September carrying the heaviest load. Weather cancellations happen. Aircraft go down unexpectedly. Check official sources before you drive anywhere — that’s non-negotiable.

Every Confirmed Blue Angels Show in 2025

Spring Season

• Joint Base Andrews Air Show (Maryland) — May 17–18. Free admission, open gate, roughly 200,000 spectators crammed into a single venue near Washington D.C. Arrive by 7 a.m. — at least if you want any decent viewing real estate. I showed up at 9 once. Never again. The crowd swallows you whole.
• Naval Air Station Pensacola Air Show (Florida) — July 12–13. This is their home base. Tickets run $10–15 for general admission, which is honestly nothing for what you get. Static displays here include aircraft you won’t find at traveling shows. Parking fills up faster than you’d expect, so grab official lot reservations the moment they open.
• Great Lakes Air Show (Illinois) — August 2–3. Naval Station Great Lakes, free admission, Lake Michigan sitting right behind the whole thing. The water backdrop does something interesting for photography — angles you simply can’t replicate at an inland venue. Plan for 150,000-plus attendees and budget serious time for the post-show traffic crawl.

Summer into Fall

• San Francisco Fleet Week Blue Angels Show (California) — October 3–5. The only major urban airshow where the Blues execute low passes over a genuinely dense city. Free viewing across the waterfront. The Golden Gate Bridge frames maneuvers in a way that makes the whole thing feel slightly unreal. Parking is a nightmare — BART or rideshare, full stop.
• Miramar Air Show (California) — October 4–5. Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. General admission lands at $20–30. October air is typically clear, the Blues run an expanded performance here compared to smaller venues, and the flightline positioning is excellent. Bring sunscreen and a full water bottle — shade on the tarmac is essentially a myth.
• Wings Over Houston (Texas) — October 11–12. Ellington Airport. Free admission with off-site parking, or a modest lot fee if you want closer. Viewing areas are genuinely well-organized, the overall show quality is high, and by October the Texas heat is at least manageable. You’ll catch other military demo teams and vintage aircraft between Blue Angels sets.

Probably should have opened with this section, honestly. The confirmed dates are what most people actually came here for. Several other shows are in preliminary discussions with the Navy — including potential Pacific Northwest and Northeast additions — but these six are locked as of February 2025.

Which 2025 Blue Angels Shows Are Worth Traveling To

One show only? Make it San Francisco Fleet Week. That urban waterfront setting doesn’t exist anywhere else on the schedule. Watching the Blues pull low-altitude maneuvers over actual city neighborhoods changes how the whole thing registers — the scale becomes real in a way a traditional airfield can’t produce. No ticket required; just show up to the Embarcadero or Marina Green. I made the mistake of driving to Crissy Field in 2023 and lost 90 minutes to parking. Don’t make my mistake. I’m apparently a slow learner, and public transit works for me now while driving never does.

Second pick: Miramar Air Show. The venue is superior on almost every metric. Flightline positioning lets you see the full performance envelope — not just the dramatic high-speed passes, but tight formations and vertical climbs that disappear into nothing at other shows. Crowd management is professional. The Blues fly later in Miramar’s program, so you build anticipation watching other acts instead of burning out early.

Third: Pensacola — but only if you’re staying overnight or live within two hours. That’s what makes Pensacola endearing to us dedicated fans. The home-base connection is tangible. Supporting acts lean hard into training command demonstrations you won’t see elsewhere, and the overall atmosphere is smaller, quieter, more intimate than the massive-venue chaos of Andrews or San Francisco.

What to Know Before You Go to a Blue Angels Show

The Blues perform last. Always. That’s the design — they close the show, not open it. But it means arriving an hour before their slot puts you standing in the heat alongside 100,000 other people who made the same miscalculation. Get there early. Watch the full sequence. The context makes their performance land harder, and you won’t feel like you survived a forced march.

Side selection matters more than most people realize. The Blues fly a fixed path at each venue, approaching from predictable directions. Ask volunteers on-site — they usually know. Or dig into unofficial airshow forums the day before. I stood on the wrong side at Houston in 2024 and watched the Blues fly parallel to my position the entire time instead of toward me. That was a bad afternoon. Avoidable, in retrospect.

Bring more water than seems reasonable. One liter won’t cover a 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. show — at least not comfortably. Most venues allow sealed bottles through security. Sunscreen needs reapplication; tarmac reflects heat in ways grass doesn’t. Earplugs are optional for adults, smart for kids — the F/A-18 Super Hornets hit 140-plus decibels on high-speed passes, which is genuinely jarring the first time you experience it up close.

Static displays open early and stay uncrowded before 10 a.m. If you care about walking under the aircraft, photographing panel details, or getting pilot autographs, that’s your window. The Blues allow ground-level jet access at most shows. Use it before the crowds discover it exists.

Are the Blue Angels Performing Any International Shows in 2025

No. The team has zero confirmed Canadian appearances or overseas demonstrations this year. The Navy rotates international tour years, and 2025 isn’t one of them. Every confirmed Blue Angels performance runs domestic — spread across the continental U.S., weighted toward California, Texas, and the Southeast.

For Canadian fans, the last confirmed cross-border appearance was the 2023 Canadian International Air Show in Toronto. International tours tend to fall on odd years or during specific Navy partnership events. So, without further ado, let’s be honest about the math: 2026 or 2027 is the realistic window to watch for any cross-border announcement worth getting excited about.