Okay, L.A., we can all collectively exhale. 2025 is (almost) over—and what a year it’s been. Between the wildfires and ICE raids, Downtown curfews and downpours, everyone in Los Angeles deserves an award just for making it through the year. But that being said, it certainly wasn’t all bad. There were many moments of heartwarming solidarity, rallying around community, hard-won victories and even some lighthearted fun this year that reminded us just how much we love Los Angeles.
As your tireless Time Out editors, we spent countless hours in 2025 scoping out excellent art exhibitions at the city’s best museums, tracking the best events to share in our calendars, making sense of the ever-changing Metro and LAX expansion plans and keeping an eye on the most anticipated openings on the horizon, from the upcoming Lucas Museum to LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries. Amid all of that and then some—trying out immersive dinners and a controversial diner, sniffing corpse flowers, laughing with the city’s up-and-coming comedians, finding joy with local luminaries and keeping you up to date on Olympics news—these are the 11 events, artworks and timely oddities that have stuck in our minds all year long.
On the dining front, though the year was marked by a number of notable closures, it did boast quite a few standout new restaurants and bars, including a select few that our former food and drink editor Patricia Kelly Yeo awarded five stars: Restaurant Ki, Somni, Broken Spanish Comedor and Kojima among the restaurants, and Bar Benjamin and Night on Earth in the bar scene.
Some of our Best of the City choices are one-time events or ephemeral exhibitions that we thought deserved some recognition, but several of these picks are things that you can get out and experience this very second—and absolutely should. And there’s even more to look forward to next year, so stay tuned—L.A. loves a good comeback story.