Extra!

We team up with eateries all over Santa Barbara County to bring you 7 days of $10 burgers. Vegans, meat lovers, and everyone in between can find something delicious and up their alley. Stay Tuned for Burger Week 2025.

The Indy is the Santa Barbara Independent’s podcast, hosted by Alexandra Goldberg. Wanna listen to The Indy on your favorite streaming platform? You can find our podcasts on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Annual stroll down State Street on March 17. Join us in 2025 for our annual stroll.

Mingle and boogie with with some of the finest folks in town as we celebrate the winners of our annual Best of Santa Barbara® Readers’ Poll.

Every October, we publish our Best of Santa Barbara® issue with over 200 categories voted on by readers. Nominations for 2024 will open in June and final ballot voting will open in August.

Santa Barbara Gives! is a year-end giving campaign for Santa Barbara nonprofits born from a partnership between the Santa Barbara Independent and The Fund for Santa Barbara. The goal is to create a new network of donors for participating nonprofits, make it easy for people to donate via SBGives.org, and inspire first-time donors to support a wide variety of causes in Santa Barbara. A project-based program, Santa Barbara Gives! donors are motivated by both the overall mission of an organization and a specific social change project.

Listen and learn from our editorial staff as they go “behind the pages” of our cover stories. Events will be held regularly. Proceeds from the event will go towards supporting journalism.

Local Heroes is our annual celebration of our fantastic neighbors. In 1986, the first-ever issue of the Santa Barbara Independent was dedicated to showcasing the amazingly selfless people who call Santa Barbara home. We christened those honorees as our “Local Heroes,” and a Thanksgiving week tradition was born.

In celebration of this burrito bounty, the Santa Barbara Independent launched our first-ever Burrito Week in 2021. Stay tuned for 2024 Burrito Week beginning Sept 19, 2024. Are you a restaurant interested in participating, contact advertising@independent.com.

Santa Barbara's month-long beer crawl hosted by the Santa Barbara Independent. Next event: July 2024

Test your Fiesta Trivia or win a pair of tickets to see the Santa Barbara Foresters! We host a variety of fun quizzes and contests throughout the year. Click here to explore our most recent line up. Stay up to date on all quizzes and contests we are running by signing up for our Extra! newsletter. Interested in partnering with us on a quiz or contest? Email us at contest@independent.com

The Indy Awards is our annual celebration of Santa Barbara’s fantastic theater and dance community. This event will return May 2024

Eat and drink from over 30 of Santa Barbara’s hotspots as they dish out brunch under the trees. Proceeds from the event go towards supporting the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund.