If you live here year-round, the shape of an Ocean City summer is usually predictable. You know which block of Asbury fills up first, which stretch of boardwalk your kids will beg to walk twice, and which Wednesday-night fireworks you can watch from your porch. This year the map has shifted in three ways that matter: the tram is gone, two specific stretches of boards have been replaced, and one restaurateur has quietly reoriented the food scene toward the bay. The rest of the summer calendar is doing what it always does.
The Tram Is Gone. Here Is What Took Its Place.
The most visible change on the boardwalk is what is no longer there. Beginning Memorial Day weekend, pedicabs debuted on the boardwalk to replace the discontinued tram service, running from 2 p.m. to midnight daily. The economics are different from the tram in a way that will matter to anyone who used to hop on for a block or two. Pricing ranges from $10 for a half-mile to $30 for the 2.2-mile length of the boardwalk. Twenty-five pedicabs should be operating by July 1, with 20 in operation and five on standby.
Read that against the old tram. The tram was a shuttle. Pedicabs are a taxi. If your household used the tram as a cheap way to get four people from the Music Pier back to a north-end rental at 9 p.m., that specific errand has gotten more expensive and less frequent. If you used it once a season for the novelty of the ride, nothing has really changed except the vehicle. Locals with kids at Playland's Castaway Cove will feel this most on the walk back.
Morning bikers have a separate window that has not changed. In peak summer, bikes are typically allowed on the boardwalk in the morning, with 2026 summer hours generally running from 5 AM to noon from June 19 through September 7. If you have not yet worked a sunrise loop into your July, the new-board stretches are worth the ride for the sound alone.
Two Stretches of New Boards, and Why the Location Matters
Board replacement in Ocean City is routine. What is unusual about 2026 is where it happened. Crews have been working for months replacing boards along several blocks, with the work concentrated on a small section north of 5th Street, and also between 12th and 14th Streets.
Those two zones are not random. North of 5th is the quieter, residential end of the boardwalk that many locals actually prefer for a morning walk. Twelfth to Fourteenth is the busiest commercial spine of the walk, where the block-party crowds concentrate every fall. Together they cover the two use cases most residents have with the boardwalk: the quiet loop and the errand run. If you have been avoiding either stretch, the boards are ready.
The Peter Elias Effect on the Bay Side
The single most consequential change to Ocean City's food scene in 2026 is not a new restaurant. It is a reorientation. One local restaurateur, Peter Elias, has added two anchors that pull the food conversation off the boardwalk and toward the bay and downtown.
Oyster and Scales, which opened in September 2025, will experience its first full Ocean City summer. The seafood-focused restaurant is inspired by the classic elegance of Cape Cod's oyster houses. It was created by celebrated local restaurateur Peter Elias, the founder of Spain Wine Bar. The waterfront restaurant has a raw bar, craft cocktails, small plates, and entrees including steaks and scallops. Elias also opened Bai-Tee Bakery & Cafe, a boardwalk bakery with Middle Eastern and French influences, at the end of last summer.
That is three Elias concepts working in concert now. Spain Wine Bar has been the destination room. Bai-Tee handles morning and mid-day. Oyster and Scales gives the group a bay-front dinner house with a raw bar that Ocean City did not really have at that register. If you have been sending out-of-town family to the same three restaurants for a decade, this is the year to update the list.
Coming into the same conversation is Brasa. Brasa, a restaurant equally inspired by the cuisines and cooking philosophies of Argentina and Italy, is taking shape on 33rd Street to replace Guido's Burritos. That corner has been a casual anchor for a long time. A grill-forward Argentine-Italian concept in that footprint reads as an upgrade in ambition rather than a swap of cuisines.
The Uptown and Midtown Additions Worth the Drive
Two more openings are worth knowing about because they are far from the boardwalk and easy to miss if you never leave the downtown grid.
Fans of Surfin' Betty's Burger Bar now have a third location to enjoy its pasture-raised beef burgers, hand spun milkshakes, and beer with outdoor seating. It's at 127th Street and Coastal Highway in the former Tony Luke's spot. That is a north-end address, and it fills a gap for anyone who lives past the bridges and would rather not drive downtown for a burger on a Tuesday.
Downtown gets its own quieter addition. The Core Club Studio X the Juice Club Cafe, a new wellness concept on 81st Street downtown, combines a heated sculpt and barre studio with a health-conscious cafe and juice bar. Two-in-one concepts like this tend to succeed or fail on the cafe side. Worth a look if the morning studio slot fits your schedule.
Also new this season on the boardwalk itself, for households with kids: the interactive gallery "Waterbird" has opened at Ripley's Believe It or Not! Ocean City with ocean-inspired oddities, a secret room, and photo opps right on the boardwalk.
The Weekly and Weekend Beats Still Holding the Calendar
None of the above changes the underlying rhythm of an Ocean City summer week. If anything, the new openings make the standing calendar easier to build around. Here is what is on the books through August.
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesdays, 8 a.m.–12 p.m. | Farmers Market | Tabernacle Grounds, 6th & Asbury |
| Select Wednesday evenings | Fireworks | Boardwalk |
| Third Saturday of July | Night in Venice | Bay |
| Aug 7–9 | 63rd Annual Boardwalk Art Show | Boardwalk |
| Aug 8, 7 p.m. | Miss Ocean City Pageant | Music Pier |
| Second Thursday of August | Baby Parade | Boardwalk |
A few notes on the calendar that are easy to forget. Night in Venice is Ocean City's most spectacular event, a decorated boat parade through the bay featuring hundreds of illuminated boats, with residents and visitors lining the bay to watch as boats cruise through the channels. If you have friends with bay-front access, this is the invitation to angle for.
The 63rd Annual Boardwalk Art Show runs Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Sunday afternoon slot is the least crowded window if you want to actually talk to the artists.
For families with young kids, the low-stakes anchor of the summer is still the Miss Crustacean pageant. You can find out if summer will arrive early when Ocean City's famous hermit crab weather forecaster emerges from his shell at 11 a.m. at 9th Street Beach.
The pattern to notice this year is not a single new opening or event. It is that the food gravity has moved off the boardwalk and toward the bay and downtown, while the boardwalk itself has been literally rebuilt in the two stretches locals use most.
What This Adds Up To
If you took last summer's routine and just repeated it, you would miss the two board stretches that make the quiet walks quieter, a bay-front dinner house that raises the ceiling on Ocean City seafood, and a set of concepts from one restaurateur that now essentially forms a three-restaurant circuit. The tram-to-pedicab swap is the one change that costs a household something, and it is worth thinking through before the first time you find yourself at 26th Street with tired kids at 10 p.m.
The events calendar is doing what it has always done. The map underneath it is not.
If you are thinking about how any of this affects your own block, a rental you own, or a property you have been quietly watching, Christopher Oliva & Co has spent five decades reading Ocean City the way locals do. Let's Connect.
