Sand Sports Super Show 2026: What to Expect, Tickets, and How to Enjoy It

If you ride the dunes anywhere in Southern California, September means one thing. The Sand Sports Super Show takes over the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa, and for three days you can walk through more sand rails, side-by-sides, and off-road hardware than you will see anywhere else on the planet.

We are about an hour up the freeway in Ontario, and half our customers make the drive down every year. Every October we get machines in the shop with a box of parts in the passenger seat that somebody bought on that floor in September. So we have opinions about how to do this well.

Here is everything you need before you go.

A quick note: Quickstyle Motorsports is not affiliated with the Sand Sports Super Show and we do not have a booth there. We are riders and fans who make the drive down like everyone else. This guide is us sharing what we know.

The basics

Dates: Friday, September 18 through Sunday, September 20, 2026

Hours:

• Friday, 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm
• Saturday, 9:00 am to 7:00 pm
• Sunday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm

Location: OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Enter through Gate 3 off Fairview Drive.

The official name for 2026 is the DRT Motorsports Sand Sports Super Show, presented by RPM. You will also see it called S4, which is what most people in the industry actually say. Polaris is the official side-by-side of the show this year, and Rugged Radios, Havoc, and Lucky Whips all hold official product spots.

The show's floor plan lists 396 exhibitors for 2026.

Tickets, and the deadlines

Buy online. The gap between advance and gate pricing is large enough that it is worth the two minutes.

Online, through September 17, 2026:

• 1-day adult (13+): $17
• 1-day child (6-12): $7
• Weekend pass adult: $36
• Weekend pass child: $12

At the gate, September 18-20:

• 1-day adult (13+): $25
• 1-day child (6-12): $15
• 1-day military with valid ID: $15

Kids 5 and under get in free either way. Note that the show adds processing fees to online orders, so the total at checkout will run slightly above the ticket price. It is still cheaper than the gate.

Now the part that catches people out. Weekend passes are sold online only, and they stop selling on September 11. That is a full week before the show opens. If you want all three days, you cannot decide on the Thursday before and sort it out at the gate. Miss that window and you are buying single-day tickets at $25 a head.

Go through sandsportssupershow.com and buy tickets through their official link.

What you will actually see

The floor breaks down into a few rough zones, though nothing is signposted that cleanly.

Complete vehicles. Sand rails, UTVs and side-by-sides, ATVs, and increasingly electric machines. Manufacturers bring current-year units and builders bring one-off cars that exist to be looked at. This is also where new model releases get shown, so if you are shopping a machine for next season it is worth seeing them in person before you commit.

Parts and fabrication. This is the real reason most riders go. Suspension, cages, wheels and tires, drivetrain, exhaust, radios, lighting, whips. Vendors who normally exist as a website and a phone number are standing right there, and you can put your hands on the product before you commit.

The Proving Grounds. Powered by HammerKing Productions and presented by Keizer Aluminum Wheels, this is a dedicated showcase where performance vehicles get displayed up close rather than roped off across a hall.

Electric UTV test rides. The show runs electric UTV test rides powered by Super Powers Mobility, so if you have been curious about where electric off-road machines actually are right now, this is a rare chance to drive one instead of reading about it. Worth doing early in the day before lines build.

Apparel, gear, and safety equipment. Helmets, goggles, harnesses, comms.

Show specials and giveaways. A lot of exhibitors run discounts that only exist for those three days, and daily giveaways are common. Some of the biggest savings of the year on parts happen on that floor. Seats, cages, doors, roofs, wheels, and tires are the categories where the show pricing tends to be genuinely better than what you will find the rest of the year.

The show publishes an interactive floor plan on its website ahead of the event, searchable by exhibitor category. Pull it up the night before and mark the five or six booths you actually care about. On a floor with 396 exhibitors, wandering is how people run out of time.

Which day should you go?

There is no universally right answer, but the days are genuinely different.

Friday is short. Four hours, 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm. It is usually the calmest of the three, which makes it the best day if you want to actually talk to a vendor for more than ninety seconds. The tradeoff is obvious: you have four hours to cover almost 400 exhibitors.

Saturday is the longest day at ten hours, and it is the busiest by a wide margin. If you want the full experience and you do not mind crowds, this is it. Get there when doors open. The floor gets thick by early afternoon.

Sunday closes at 4:00 pm and tends to be where end-of-show deals surface. Vendors would rather discount a display unit than crate it and ship it home. If you are hunting price rather than selection, Sunday afternoon has a logic to it. You are also picking through what nobody bought on Saturday.

If we had to pick one: Saturday morning, right at 9:00. Full day ahead of you, before the crowd builds.

Going with the family

This is a legitimately kid-friendly event, which is not something you can say about every trade show.

Kids 5 and under are free, so a young family can do this for the cost of the adult tickets. Kids 6 to 12 are cheap. There is a lot of visual spectacle for a kid who likes machines, and youth models are on display alongside the adult stuff.

Be realistic about stamina. The venue is large, the floor is loud, and a full ten-hour Saturday is more than most kids under ten will tolerate. Friday evening's four-hour window suits younger families well. Plan a break, know where you are going to eat, and do not treat covering the whole show as the goal.

Is there food at the show?

Yes. The fairgrounds run their usual concession operation for this event, so expect standard county-fair food: burgers, hot dogs, tacos, fries, and the sweet stuff. It is fine, it is convenient, and it is priced like event food.

If that is not your thing, the fairgrounds sit in a dense part of Costa Mesa with a lot of restaurants inside a mile. Plenty of people do the show and then eat properly on the way out. If you are coming with kids, decide which of these you are doing before you walk in rather than negotiating it at hour four.

What to bring

Boring advice, but this is where people get it wrong.

Comfortable shoes. You will walk for hours on hard surfaces. Every year somebody learns this in the wrong footwear.

A tape measure. If you are shopping for anything that has to fit a specific machine, bring measurements. Better yet, bring photos of your mounting points and your current setup. Vendors can tell you whether a part fits in thirty seconds if you have the information, and cannot help you at all if you do not.

Cash. Larger exhibitors take cards. Smaller vendors and swap-style sellers are less predictable. You will also want it for parking.

A plan for hauling. If you buy a set of wheels or a cage, you have to get it to your vehicle and home. Think about this before you buy, not after.

A charged phone and a battery pack. You will be photographing part numbers and booth signs all day.

Your machine's specs. Year, model, trim, current tire size, current suspension. Write it down. You will be asked.

Bought something at the show? Read this first

Here is where we come in, and here is the honest version of it.

Buying the part is the easy half. Every year we see machines come through the shop with show-floor purchases that were installed wrong, installed by someone in a hurry, or never installed at all because the box turned out to be more complicated than it looked.

A few things that trip people up:

Tire size changes clutch behavior. Put bigger, heavier tires on a side-by-side without touching the clutch and you will lose bottom-end response and put heat into the belt. That is one of the most common reasons a fresh belt fails early. If you buy wheels and tires at the show, budget for a clutch tune too.

Lighting and audio need real wiring. Light bars, pods, whips, and sound systems draw meaningful current. They need fused circuits and weather-sealed connections, because these machines live in dust and water. Splices wrapped in electrical tape do not survive a season at Glamis.

Cages and structural parts have torque specs for a reason. Protective equipment that is not fastened correctly is decoration. Get it right.

Fitment claims are not always right. "Fits 2019 and up" is a broad statement. Model-year revisions happen. Check before you cut, drill, or throw away packaging.

The show's floor plan sorts exhibitors by category. Here are the ones where whatever you buy is going to need installing, and where we can help once you are back home:

• Engine and Performance Parts and Exhaust — tuning, fitment, and making sure the rest of the machine can handle the change
• Lighting and Whips — fused circuits and sealed connections, not spliced taps
• Navigation, Audio, and Electronics — clean power, proper grounds, and mounting that survives washboard
• Interior and Seats — harness mounting points and bracket fitment
• Gauges — sensor wiring and calibration
• Batteries and Filters, Lubricants and Protection — straightforward, but worth having checked against your actual service intervals
• Accessories and Fabricator work — bumpers, doors, roofs, and one-off pieces that need to line up

We install aftermarket parts on UTVs, side-by-sides, ATVs, and dirt bikes at our shop in Ontario, and we work on Polaris, Can-Am, Honda, Yamaha, and Denago machines. If you come back from Costa Mesa with a box and a plan, contact us and we will let you know if we can get it mounted on your machine for you.

You can book a service appointment or come see us at 1170 W Holt Blvd, Ontario.

Getting there, parking, and the drive from the Inland Empire

From Ontario, you are looking at roughly an hour to Costa Mesa in normal conditions. Riders coming from Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Riverside, Corona, and Chino Hills are all in the same range. Most people take either the 91 west or the 57 south and finish on the 55 south, which drops you right at the fairgrounds.

September Saturday morning traffic on the 55 is not normal conditions. Leave earlier than you think, especially if you are trying to be there for the 9:00 am open.

Entry is through Gate 3 off Fairview Drive. Follow the signs rather than your GPS pin, which will often route you to the main Fair Drive entrance instead.

Parking is $12 per vehicle and is paid separately from your ticket. It is charged on the day, on site. Worth knowing: if you leave the fairgrounds in your vehicle and come back, you pay for parking again, so plan your lunch break accordingly. If you are rolling down with friends, carpooling saves more than you would expect once you count three or four vehicles.

It is an easy day trip, and there is no reason to make it an overnight unless you want the full three days.