Experience Community, Culture and History in the Making

Explore events by and for the SoMa Pilipinas community—
from art shows and food pop-ups to workshops and performances.
This living calendar reflects the culture and soul of the district.

Got something coming up?
Submit your event and be part of the story.

Upcoming Events

Events organized by SOMA Pilipinas

Shared Community Calendar

Events by Our Community Partners

Annual Events

Flores de Mayo

Held every May in the heart of San Francisco’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District, Flores de Mayo is a vibrant tribute to Filipino faith, beauty, and resilience. From the graceful sagalas of Santacruzan to the rhythms of cultural performances, this annual celebration honors tradition while blooming with the energy of our senior residents.

Parol Lantern Festival

Held every December, the Parol Lantern Festival lights up SOMA Pilipinas with the spirit of hope, community, and Filipino pride. Handmade parols—each one a story—illuminate the night as families, artists, and youth come together to carry tradition forward through art, music, and collective joy.

Community Art Celebration

July 2022

SOMA Pilipinas’ 6th Anniversary: ART IS POWER!

In July, we celebrated SOMA Pilipinas 6th Year Anniversary by highlighting our first SOMA Pilipinas District Gateway and other incoming public art projects with special guests, San Francisco Arts Commission’s Director of Cultural Affairs Ralph Remington, California Arts Council Executive Director Jonathan Moscone, newly elected California State Assemblymember Matt Haney, and Rachel Lastimosa.

Photos by Sean Santos.

Parol Workshops

To kick off the holiday festivities, we hosted low-cost, family-friendly workshops at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to teach our community the art of making their own parol lanterns.

The parol lantern is the quintessential Filipino symbol of holiday spirit, bringing hope, peace, blessings, and light to the season. The practice of creating parols brings together intergenerational communities, providing education on traditional cultural artistic practices and opportunities for connection. Elders share their skills and stories of parol making, while younger generations learn more about their community, culture, and power of identity through art-making.

Photos by Rachel Lastimosa

July 2021

Gateway Designs at Moss Street Block Party

In partnership with SF Parks Alliance, we showcased gateway design proposals by Franceska Gamez, Mike Arcega, Macro Waves, and Riz Gache at the Moss Street Block Party. Community members gave us their opinions on the designs while enjoying cultural performances by local artists and performers.

Photos by Nix Guirre

May 2021

Anti-Asian Hate Response

Our Response to Anti-Asian Hate

We held self-defense workshops, panel discussions, and artist circles in response to anti-Asian violence.

April 2021

SOMA Pilipinas Five-Year Anniversary

More Than a Cultural District: SOMA Pilipinas is Community-in-Action and a Cultural Movement

SOMA Pilipinas celebrates five years as San Francisco’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District on Thursday, April 29, 2021, 4-6pm PST at new art and wellness pop-up Kapwa Gardens. The cultural heritage district honors the over 120-year Filipino history and living legacy of making home, celebrating culture, building community and fighting for economic and racial justice. Embodying the spirit of bayanihan, SOMA Pilipinas supports a community-in-action in the highly gentrified South of Market neighborhood — the technology capital of the world for the last decade.

SOMA Pilipinas was officially established as SF’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District in 2016 and was among the first selected for state designation by the California Arts Council in 2017.

In its first five years, SOMA Pilipinas has raised the visibility of the Filipino community, helped increase funding for Filipino artists and established baseline funding for cultural districts to protect vulnerable communities and preserve San Francisco’s cultural diversity.

Working with residents and other community groups, SOMA Pilipinas worked with community groups to block the development of luxury condos that would have shadowed Victoria Manalo Draves Park and preserved the Gran Oriente as a Filipino historic landmark and cultural asset for generations to come.

The cultural district has earned numerous accolades: receiving the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant, being honored for their revitalization work by the Architects International Association SF and being recognized for their work in building sustainable and equitable communities by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

January 2020

SFUFF Culture of Resistance Versus Culture Vultures

SOMA Pilipinas partnered with the SF Urban Film Fest to put together the event "Culture of Resistance Versus Culture Vultures" which presented several film shorts and was followed by a panel discussion. The event sought to explore how arts and culture can be used as both tools of resistance to gentrification and displacement of working-class and BIPOC communities, as well as avenues for commodification, speculation, and the aiding of gentrification.