What is the Tempe 4th of July?
The Tempe 4th of July Celebration is the Valley’s oldest Independence Day fireworks show, started by the Kiwanis Club of Tempe at ASU’s Goodwin Stadium in 1952 and best known for the two decades it was shot from the Mill Avenue bridge over Tempe Town Lake, where more than 100,000 people a year watched from Tempe Beach Park, the bridges and the slopes of Hayden Butte.
The next edition is July 4, 2027, and as of October 2026 the City of Tempe, which took the event over from the Kiwanis in 2025, had not said where it will be. The 2025 and 2026 celebrations were held at Tempe Diablo Stadium, the Angels’ spring-training park off I-10, from 6 to 10 p.m. with fireworks about 9; the 2026 edition charged $2.50 a ticket in honor of the country’s 250th birthday and sold out. A return to the lake was planned for 2026 and collapsed eleven days before the holiday when the contracted producer backed out, so the 2027 venue is an open question the city will answer in the spring.
For a Scottsdale visitor it is the civic alternative to the privately run Scottsdale 4th of July at WestWorld: cheaper, older, and in a lake year the one with free views and a train. Diablo Stadium is 22 minutes from Old Town; the lake is 20. Our July guide covers the rest of the Valley’s fireworks.
How to do it
Watch for the announcement. The city posts the Fourth at tempe.gov/Tempe4th, usually by late spring; the 2026 contract was awarded in November 2025 and the original lineup and ticket tiers were public by June. Both Diablo Stadium years sold out, the second at $2.50, so buy early. A normal-year price, going by the cancelled 2026 lake plan, is about $10 for adults and $5 for children, with VIP lawn and pavilion tiers above.
If it is at Diablo Stadium. Gates at 6, music on a stage, free children’s activities (face painting, bounce houses, water slides, a train ride and a climbing wall in 2025), concessions, fireworks about 9, done by 10. Parking in the lots around the stadium was free in both years; the venue is cashless. The stadium is at 2200 W Alameda Drive at 48th Street: from Old Town, the 101 south to the 60 west and I-10 to the 48th Street exit, 22 minutes without holiday traffic. Bring water; there is no rail, and a rideshare pickup on Alameda avoids the lot.
If it is back on the lake. Tempe Beach Park, 80 W Rio Salado Parkway, is the ticketed ground with the stage, the food trucks, a beer garden and water slides; the fireworks go up from the Mill Avenue bridge. The free seats are the north shore by the Tempe Center for the Arts, the pedestrian bridge west of it, and, if the preserve is open that evening, the lower Hayden Butte trail off 5th Street, all of which put the bridge show at eye level with the water under it. Take the light rail to Mill Avenue and 3rd Street or the streetcar to Tempe Beach Park; from Scottsdale, drive the 202 or McClintock to the Dorsey/Apache park-and-ride. The downtown garages fill by 7 and take an hour to empty.
Do not stack it with Scottsdale. The WestWorld show and Tempe’s go up within minutes of each other on opposite sides of the Valley. Pick one.
Seventy-two years of Kiwanis fireworks
The Kiwanis Club of Tempe was chartered in the spring of 1952 and, four months later, put on a Fourth of July fireworks show at Goodwin Stadium, the college’s old stadium at Lemon Street and College Avenue, now a parking structure. About 2,000 people came and the club cleared $230 for its program for underprivileged children. The show moved with the town’s venues over the next half century, to Sun Devil Stadium, Packard Stadium and, more than once, Tempe Diablo Stadium,; in the early 1970s Kiwanis money helped the city build the 120-acre Kiwanis Park in south Tempe.
Tempe Town Lake changed its scale. The lake filled in 1999, and on July 4, 2000, the 49th Kiwanis show, shot from the Mill Avenue bridge, drew more than 125,000 people to the new shoreline, by the city’s own count. For two decades the Tempe Town Lake Festival was the Valley’s biggest Fourth: 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. in Tempe Beach Park, local bands, a kids’ zone, a barbecue garden, presale tickets at $6 in 2011 with children free, the fireworks at 9:10 off the bridge and televised live, and 100,000-plus a year.
Then it stopped. The pandemic cancelled 2020, and the lake show did not return for five years. The Kiwanis brought the fireworks back at Diablo Stadium in 2023 and returned to Tempe Beach Park in 2024, when about 15,000 paid to enter and, by the city’s account, many more watched from outside the fence. That gap between the crowd and the gate was the problem: the club’s president, Laura Taylor, said the cost of fencing, security and the fireworks had become too much, and in 2025 the City of Tempe took over production. It chose Diablo Stadium, which it had used in 2023, for the free parking, shade, permanent restrooms and a perimeter it could sell tickets at; it sold out, shortened the fireworks to add a drone show, and watched the drones stay on the ground.
The 2026 plan was the comeback: a two-year contract with Allure Event Company, awarded in November 2025 with the city taking up to 20 percent of revenue, for a ticketed festival at Tempe Beach Park with $10 admission, water slides, a beer garden and bridge fireworks for America’s 250th. On June 23, 2026, eleven days out, Allure told the city it could not produce it. Mayor Corey Woods considered cancelling, then called Judi Yates, who had produced the Kiwanis Fourth for 19 years before retiring in 2019, and she rebuilt the event at Diablo Stadium in under two weeks on 12-hour days, with $2.50 tickets, bounce houses and a 9 p.m. show. It sold out. Where the city goes from there, back to the lake with a new producer or to the ballpark for good, is the 2027 question.
The Scottsdale angle
Scottsdale did not have a fireworks show of its own until 2014, and for sixty years before that its residents drove to Tempe. The lake show is the one Scottsdale families of a certain age mean when they say “the fireworks”, which is reason enough to watch the 2027 announcement. If the city puts it back on Tempe Town Lake, ride the rail down, stand on the north shore, and see the best free Fourth in the Valley, 20 minutes from Old Town. If it stays at Diablo Stadium, it is a good, cheap, well-run ballpark Fourth with free parking, and the WestWorld show, 15 minutes from Old Town with air conditioning, is the fairer comparison. Either way, buy the ticket the week it posts.