L.A. Fleet Week will sail into the Port of Los Angeles in a few days for its annual celebration of the nation’s seafaring military branches, with this year also honoring the 250th anniversaries of the U.S. Navy and Marines.

L.A. Fleet Week will run from Friday to May 26, though there will also be a few related events beginning on Wednesday.

Hundreds of active-duty Navy and Coast Guard sailors, as well as Marines, will begin arriving midweek for the 10th annual celebration of the nation’s sea services. Last year’s event, which featured a visit from a showstopping aircraft carrier, drew an estimated 100,000 people to San Pedro’s waterfront during the long Memorial Day weekend.

This year’s event won’t include an aircraft carrier, but it will offer three active duty Navy vessels and a training Coast Guard vessel, the latter of which boasts a World War II history. The public will be able to board and tour the vessels, the centerpiece attraction every year.

The first Fleet Week was celebrated in San Diego in 1935 and now several major U.S. cities, including San Francisco and New York, have their own versions.

L.A. Fleet Week began in 2016.

Detailed information, including maps and parking information, is available at lafleetweek.com. Parking will be available throughout the area as motorists exit the 110 Freeway at Gaffey Street and head south, including parking lots at the far south end of town at 22nd Street and Dave Arian Way, near the Outer Harbor.

Parking and shuttle schedules and maps are on the Fleet Week website.

Signs will also be posted throughout the area.

Free tours of active duty ships will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily during Fleet Week. All adults will have to present a valid government-issued ID (state ID card, driver’s license or passport) to take Navy ship tours.

Non-U.S. citizens will have to show valid passports and will be subject to a brief additional screening before boarding the vessels. Photocopies of IDs will not be accepted.

The Frequently Asked Questions section on the website should be reviewed before attending for more details about requirements and restrictions, organizers said.

There will be a new digital queue system for the ship tours this year. Visitors won’t be able to use the website, getinline.lafleetweek.org, until they’re within the Fleet Week perimeter and the tours have begun.

Entering the queue will require attendees to have a smartphone and to enter a geofence, a virtual perimeter, within the Fleet Week festival areas in San Pedro. Users will then receive a barcode for access to sign up for a ship tour pass. Sign-ups will be offered on a first come, first served basis for the same day and will close when the last tour slot has been claimed each day. Those interested in boarding one of the ships are advised to arrive early in the morning, since tour tickets go early.

Several methods have been tried in the past to make queuing easier, with varying levels of success. But organizers said they hope this latest one will help prevent the long waits in lines — and having to turn people away — that have occurred with earlier efforts.

Sign-ups will be available for the current day of each tour only and will open at the beginning of each tour day. Further instructions will be provided after the pass is secured online.

The ships will be in the Outer Harbor, with trolly transportation available. The Navy will determine which ships people will be directed to for tours.

The visiting ships are:

The USS Harpers Ferry (LSD-49), the lead ship of its class of landing ship dock of the Navy. The warship was named for the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and is assigned to the Navy’s Amphibious Group 1. Its home port is in San Diego and it was commissioned on Jan. 7, 1995.

The USS Carl M. Levin (DDG-120), an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer named for former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, who chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services. The ship was christened on Oct. 2, 2021, at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, and is fitted with the Aegis Combat System Baseline 9, which includes integrated air and missile defense capability. The ship was delivered to the Navy on Jan. 26, 2023, and arrived at its home port, Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on Aug. 7, 2021.

The Unmanned Surface Vessel Mariner (OUSV 4) is one of the Navy’s ghost fleet surface vessels and is equipped with next-generation capabilities, including an advanced command-and-control system, virtualized Aegis weapon system and autonomous navigation system.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle (WIX-327), formerly the Horst Wessel and also known as the Barque Eagle, is a 295-foot barque used as a training cutter for future officers of the U.S. Coast Guard, one of only two active commissioned sailing vessels in the U.S. military today, along with the USS Constitution. Built as a German sail training ship and decommissioned at the start of World War II, the vessel was recommissioned in 1942 and taken by the U.S. as war reparations at the conflict’s end. Its home port is New London, Connecticut. It was acquired by the Coast Guard in 1946.

The main exposition area will be located next to the historic Battleship USS Iowa Museum, 250 S. Harbor Blvd., just north of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. The expo will be open to the general public from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily and will be free to visit.

Activities and exhibits will highlight and celebrate the nation’s military services and the people who serve. Events will include military displays and equipment demonstrations; live entertainment; aircraft flyovers; the annual Galley Wars culinary cook-off between culinary specialists from the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air Force and Army, at noon Saturday; the dodgeball competition, at 10:30 a.m. May 25; and the Military Has Talent competition, with finals taking place at 10 a.m. May 26.

A Memorial Day observance will be at 5:15 p.m. May 26.

Dining options throughout the event will be provided by Vicky’s Doghouse Cafe, aboard the battleship USS Iowa, and a variety of food trucks that will be on site.

A new competition this year, the Navy Esports Challenge, will showcase modern gaming on a digital battlefield. It is designed to illustrate the power of modern gaming to foster leadership, unite communities and inspire future careers in technology and service. Esports teams from high schools throughout Los Angeles County will compete against the Navy’s elite esports squad, Goats & Glory, with school teams vying for a grand prize scholarship.

During their L.A. visit, meanwhile, service members will take part in neighborhood “activations” that will introduce them to public organizations throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. Included will be Navy and Marine Corps band performances in Los Angeles, including in Westchester and Mission Hills, and Orange.

Service members will also volunteer with various organizations — including the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the Long Beach Ronald McDonald House, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Garden Grove, the Children’s Hospital of Orange County and the Cabrillo Beach Youth Center — and be firefighters for a day at multiple locations.

Service members will also attend Dodgers and Angels games, take a Fox Sports studio tour and go to Disneyland.