Irvine won’t have a large-scale Fourth of July celebration in the Great Park for the country’s 250th birthday this year after running out of time to secure necessary vendors for things like street closures.

Council members acknowledged during their meeting on Jan. 13 that there isn’t enough time to finalize a plan and secure sponsors since most vendors are already booked for events on the Fourth of July, which this year marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“We have started reaching out since November, and many are booked,” Director of Communications and Engagement Melissa Haley said at the meeting, “that includes traffic management, entertainment, production.”

Haley said there are several 5k and 10k runs planned for the Fourth of July in the region, creating lots of competition for vendors to provide services.

While there wasn’t a formal vote during the meeting, council members and staff acknowledged that the city won’t be having a large-scale Fourth of July celebration in the Great Park this year due to these challenges.

“It seems to me we should recognize that we’re not really going to have a major Independence Day event apart from the Pacific Symphony scheduled event,” Mayor Larry Agran said during the meeting.

“I just want to make sure that we have a Fourth of July that is appropriately celebratory, that we don’t bend and even break our staff in the process, and that we certainly don’t have anything resembling the kinds of problems that we had on the last Fourth of July when frankly we tried to do too much with too little,” he continued.

In 2025, Irvine held a Fourth of July event in the Great Park for the first time ever.

While city staff expected between 18,000 and 25,000 to attend, approximately 40,000 visitors showed up at the Great Park to celebrate Independence Day last year, more guests than any other city-sponsored event in the park’s history.

That number overwhelmed support services and caused massive traffic jams and shuttle delays as people were trying to get in and out of the area.

[Read: Can Irvine’s Great Park Handle Large-Scale Events?]

The outcome created so many challenges that council members had decided to more than double the budget for this year’s expected event to make sure it would have enough support.

The city had originally budgeted $250,000 for this year’s Fourth of July Celebration, but after seeing how many people showed up to this year’s event, council members voted to increase the budget to $600,000 to accommodate needs for increased staffing, shuttles, vendors and planning.

[Read: Irvine Doubles Fourth of July Budget After Great Park Traffic Nightmare]

But now the city won’t host any kind of formal, large-scale event in the Great Park after leaders said it would be impossible without overburdening staff.

“I don’t want to put the staff through that again,” Councilmember James Mai said at the meeting.

“I had said that we need to get this on the road; if not, it’s not going to happen,” he continued. “And because of the temperature on this dais and political gaming, we cannot execute it, no matter what, because of the time constraints from the vendors and the sponsors.”

Some residents at the meeting said they agreed the city shouldn’t spend over half a million dollars to celebrate Independence Day.

“I’m glad the city is not spending $600,000 on this,” Irvine resident Alan Meyerson said at the meeting. “I think that’s a wise choice.”

City Manager Sean Crumby said the unspent allocated funds for the event — in this case, all of it — will be returned to the city’s general fund.

Mai thanked city staff members for trying to get this event together, even though it didn’t work out.

​​“Thank you for doing your best and trying to work with us and the many personalities up on the dias here,” he said, “and I’m sorry that we couldn’t get our stuff together.”

Angelina Hicks is the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service Editor. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.