Rams Preseason Starts Saturday in Kansas City, With the First Inglewood Kickoff on August 22

Los Angeles opens the 2026 preseason on the road at Arrowhead, then comes home to SoFi on August 22 against New Orleans. Three games, two of them in Inglewood, and a Crenshaw-to-Hollywood Park map for the ones that count.

The Rams open the 2026 preseason on Saturday, August 15, at the Kansas City Chiefs, kickoff 1:00 PM Pacific from Arrowhead Stadium. It is a road game, so the first weekend is a television weekend. The lots in Inglewood stay quiet for another week.

SoFi Stadium gets its first Rams afternoon on Saturday, August 22, against the New Orleans Saints, also 1:00 PM. The preseason closes Thursday, August 27, across the hallway against the Los Angeles Chargers, 7:00 PM, in the building both teams share. Full schedule and tickets at https://www.therams.com.

Preseason is the cheapest football on the calendar and the concourse never fills, which makes August the easiest month to learn the building. What follows is the Inglewood and Crenshaw map for the two home dates.

Eat before, land after

Everything worth planning around is inside about fifteen minutes of the SoFi lots. There is no reason to detour downtown, and Century Boulevard is not the route you want at kickoff.

Dulan's Soul Food Kitchen in Crenshaw serves smothered chicken and greens without ceremony, and the line stacks up in the early afternoon, so go well before the gates. Three Weavers Brewing in Inglewood pours at taproom prices and sits walkable to the shuttle, though the lot fills fast enough that a rideshare is the smarter arrival. Randy's Donuts is the giant donut on Manchester, it absolutely counts as a landmark, and it works better as a postgame stop than a pregame one.

For the road games, Tom's Watch Bar downtown runs every screen with the sound on the one that matters, and The Greyhound Bar & Grill in Highland Park has the patio room and a neighborhood crowd for the early kicks.

The block is older than the stadium

Inglewood was a shopping district long before it was a stadium district, and most of it closes before a fourth quarter would end. Market Street is six blocks of records, resale and murals with no chains and no parking structure, so circle once and take the first spot you see. Slauson Super Mall runs a swap-meet floor plan where jerseys and chains fill every aisle and cash moves faster than card. Leimert Park Village is the Saturday move, with an art walk, a drum circle and the best small-press bookshelf in the city.

On the campus itself, Hollywood Park Lake is six acres of water and lawn that costs nothing, which is tailgate energy without a lot fee. The Kia Forum runs a fall concert calendar straight through football season on the same off-ramp, and the Intuit Dome next door opens for Clippers basketball in October. Doubleheader days are a real thing in Inglewood now.

The practical version: check all three venue calendars before you buy parking, because one off-ramp serves the whole campus.

The useful detail is that both Rams home preseason games are afternoon starts, which is a different day than a night game. You get Leimert Park and Market Street open on the way in, and Randy's still going on the way out. Plan the block first and the football second. August is the only month where that order actually works.

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