If you've walked the boardwalk near Leo J. Ryan Park on a Wednesday evening around 6:30 and heard drumming carry across the water, you've already met one of Foster City's two dragon boat organizations without knowing it. Long, narrow boats with twenty paddlers apiece move down a straight lane at a pace that has nothing to do with the kayaks and paddleboards you're used to seeing out there. Most residents who've noticed this assume it's one club rehearsing for one event. It isn't.
The lagoon is home to two separate dragon boat organizations, and this September they'll each stage their own race weekend at Leo J. Ryan Park, back to back. One traces to 1996 and pulls competitive crews from around the world. The other also traces to 1996, but under a different name and a different mission, and the version of it you'll see this fall didn't even exist until two years ago. If you've lived here long enough to hear the drums without ever learning what they were for, this is the year to sort it out.
Two Organizations, Same Founding Year
The California Dragon Boat Association, known as CDBA, has hosted its Northern California International Dragon Boat Festival on the Foster City lagoon since 1996. Since its inception in 1996, the event was hosted by the California Dragon Boat Association, gathering local teams and away teams from diverse backgrounds competing on the water. This is the festival with the biggest field and the longest institutional memory on your lagoon.
Separately, the Bay Area Dragon Boat Foundation, whose racing team goes by Bay Area Dragons or BAD, was also established in 1996. The Bay Area Dragon Boat Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1996, with some of the most experienced dragon boat paddlers in Northern California. But BAD's public race weekend has a more winding history. The Bay Area Dragons founded "Paddle For Life," a charity race that began in 2000 to introduce dragon boat racing to the local community while giving back to cancer charities, and it ran successfully for ten years until 2010, when it moved to other states for expansion. In 2014, BAD revived the race in Foster City as a summer race festival for corporate teams in the Bay Area.
That means the calendar you'll see in September is younger than it feels. Starting in 2024, BAD added a second Competitive Fall Sprints race event to give recreational and competitive teams an exciting sprints regatta to close out the racing season. The international festival has been drawing crowds to this lagoon since before most of your neighbors owned their homes. The second weekend you'll see this fall is only in its third year.
The Weekend That's Actually a Festival
The Northern California International Dragon Boat Festival runs September 12 and 13, 2026, at Leo J. Ryan Park. The Northern California International Dragon Boat Festival is scheduled for the weekend of September 12-13, 2026, at Leo Ryan Park in Foster City. The California Dragon Boat Association hosts this two-day event on the Foster City lagoon next to Leo Ryan Park, with races primarily 200 and 500 meters in distance. That distance range is the tell that this is the competitive weekend. Teams train year-round for it, and the festival includes mixed crew races and specialty divisions for open, women's, masters, college, and youth paddlers, alongside a 250-meter sprint race.
If you're curious how a lagoon designed for a planned residential community ended up hosting a sport with roots stretching back over two thousand years, part of the answer is simply that it works as a racecourse. Emmie Yang, president of the Bay Area Dragon Boat Foundation, has described the setup at Leo J. Ryan Park as "viewer-friendly for racers and spectators alike" because the park's open boardwalk lets you watch a race from start to finish without anything blocking the view. That's not marketing language. It's a description of the same stretch of water you can see from your own kitchen window if you live on the east side of the lagoon.
Team registration for the international festival runs on a set window. Registration for the Northern California International Dragon Boat Festival is available from July 13 through August 23. If you're not racing, none of that matters to your Saturday plans. If someone in your household has been eyeing a team, the window closes soon.
The Weekend That's Actually a Sprint
Two weeks later, on September 26 and 27, 2026, the same lagoon hosts a very different kind of race. The San Francisco Bay Area Dragon Boat Fall Sprints run the weekend of September 26-27, 2026, also at Leo Ryan Park in Foster City. Where the international festival is about competitive divisions and 500-meter distance, the fall sprints are built for speed and turnover. The course length is 250 meters at the fall race, and each heat is typically completed in under two minutes.
This is also the weekend closer in spirit to what you might hear practicing on Wednesday nights. Emmie Yang describes the novice festival's special nature by noting that most other cities and states don't have such a large, dedicated novice race and focus mainly on competitive events. The format leans toward company teams, first-timers, and neighbors who signed up on a dare. Race day typically starts at 8 a.m., with races running from 9 a.m. to approximately 4 p.m. and an awards ceremony around 4:30 p.m. More than 1,000 people, including race participants, friends, family members, and spectators, typically attend BAD race events.
If you're hungry, don't expect a curated food hall. Organizers plan to have food trucks during lunch, and there's a Safeway and a few restaurants across the street. It's a practical, low-frills setup, which tracks with an event that started as a corporate team-building race rather than a tourism draw.
Why Neither One Closes Your Street
If Foster City Summer Days taught you to expect road closures and shuttle lots whenever something happens at Leo J. Ryan Park, recalibrate for these two weekends. Both dragon boat events are explicit about their relationship to the city government. The international festival is not a City-sponsored program and is hosted independently by CDBA. The Bay Area Dragons' races are likewise organized and hosted by Bay Area Dragons and are not City-sponsored events. That distinction matters practically. Neither race weekend triggers the kind of Shell Boulevard closure you'd see for a large city-run festival. Parking follows the normal weekend pattern for Leo J. Ryan Park, and free parking is available at the designated lots within walking distance of the park.
A few notes if you want to actually watch instead of just hearing the drums from your yard:
- Arrive by mid-morning on race day. Both events run their qualifying heats early and save finals for the afternoon, so the busiest viewing windows cluster around lunchtime and the last hour before awards.
- Walk the boardwalk rather than staking out one spot. The open sightline that makes this course spectator-friendly works in both directions, so you can follow a single team from the start line to the finish without losing them behind a building.
- If you only have one weekend in you, the September 12-13 festival has the bigger field and more of the ceremony that comes with an international event. The September 26-27 sprints are shorter, faster, and closer to the community feel of a company picnic.
The Practice You've Been Hearing Has a Season
Bay Area Dragons trains out of Foster City Boat Park at 899 Bounty Drive, and if you've caught the drumming on a weeknight, you were probably hearing their scheduled sessions. Member and advanced practices typically run Saturdays at 9 a.m. and Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. That's a fixed, recurring rhythm on this specific stretch of water, not a one-off rehearsal. The Bay Area Dragon Boat Foundation is a Foster City-based, community-focused volunteer-run nonprofit, and its Bay Area Dragons team is the oldest dragon boat club in the region. The organization has also competed well beyond the lagoon. BAD is a member of the Pacific Dragon Boat Association and has competed internationally representing the United States.
None of this changes anything about your property or your street. What it changes is a small piece of how you understand a sound you've probably already filed away as background noise. The next time you hear drums on a Wednesday evening, you'll know it's not a rehearsal for some vague future event. It's a fixed weekly practice, feeding into a race season that runs two distinct weekends this September, hosted by two different organizations that happen to share a founding year and a body of water.
If you're weighing a move onto the lagoon, wondering what a waterfront address actually means for your weekends, or just want a neighbor's read on Foster City rather than a listing sheet's, Julie Flouty is easy to reach. Let's Connect.
