The Wildwoods Air Show returns to the Jersey Shore on Sept. 12-13, 2026, and for its second year it has landed the kind of headliner every air show dreams of: the U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team. Over two days, the world's premier fifth-generation fighter will tear through the skies above the beaches of Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and North Wildwood, free for anyone willing to stake out a spot on the sand or the famous boardwalk.
The F-22 Raptor is the top air-superiority fighter in the American inventory, a twin-engine jet that combines stealth, supercruise and thrust-vectoring into a machine that seems to defy physics. Its twin engines each produce more than 35,000 pounds of thrust, allowing the aircraft to exceed Mach 2 and to supercruise at 1.5 times the speed of sound without burning fuel in its afterburners. In the demo routine, the Raptor climbs straight up, stops in mid-air, reverses toward the ground and flips its nose around in a somersault at near-zero forward speed. It makes sharp, sudden turns that displace and compress air into vapor, and spectators often see the jet creating its own weather system with massive clouds that engulf the aircraft, as organizers describe it. The demo team was in New Jersey in May for the Atlantic City air show, and its appearance in the Wildwoods marks a major coup for the young event.
This is a big deal, air show spokesman Chris Dirato told the Cherry Hill Courier-Post. And they put on quite the show.
The Raptor headlines a lineup that spans the full arc of aviation history. The 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard, based in Atlantic City, will perform an F-16 flyby over the show line. Randy Ball's beautifully restored MiG-17F, the legendary Cold War-era Soviet fighter that saw combat in the Vietnam War, will bring the sights and sounds of a historic adversary back to life. A P-51 Mustang named Jacqueline, flown by Thom Richard on behalf of the American Airpower Museum and honoring famed aviator Jacqueline Cochran, will show off the iconic World War II warbird. The Jersey Jerks will fly the North American SNJ/T-6 Texan, the World War II trainer known as the Pilot Maker, in a precision formation routine. Aerobatic pilots Patrick McAlee in his custom Pitts S1S Blue Demon, David Windmiller in his Edge 540, RJ Gritter in his patriotic Decathlon, and Kevin Russo in his restored 1944 SNJ-6 Texan round out a roster that also includes the RE/MAX Skydiving Team. Organizers said more acts would be announced throughout the summer.
The show is the centerpiece of a remarkable turnaround for the Wildwoods, which created the event from scratch after the Atlantic City Air Show was canceled in 2024 and again in 2025. Those cancellations hit the region's tourism economy hard, and hotels in the Wildwoods complained that they lost business when visitors who would normally stay on the island and travel up to Atlantic City for the air show simply stayed home. The Greater Wildwoods Tourism Improvement and Development Authority (GWTIDA) decided to bring the spectacle to its own beaches, and in February 2025 the board gave final approval to a new event initially called the Wildwoods Thunder Over the Ocean Airshow, produced by Dave Schultz AirShows, the veteran producer of the Atlantic City show.
The inaugural edition, rebranded as Thunder Over the Waves, took flight Sept. 5-6, 2025, and exceeded every expectation. It drew more than 133,000 visitors to the three resort communities and generated an estimated $33.2 million in economic impact, rivaling the attendance and excitement of the Wildwoods' largest midsummer weekends. The debut featured 15 headline acts, including the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team, the Full Throttle formation team, a Boeing KC-46A Pegasus flyover from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a Coast Guard search-and-rescue demonstration, and two MiG-17s. Our goal was to present a family-friendly event that would entice visitors to return to our island the weekend after Labor Day, GWTIDA executive director Louis Belasco said at the time. The Airshow rivaled the attendance and excitement of our largest midsummer weekends.
That success cemented the air show's role as the opening act for the Wildwoods' Second Season, the fall tourism calendar that keeps the island busy after the summer crowds thin out and hotel rates drop. For 2026, the event was rebranded as The Wildwoods Air Show and expanded to two full days of flying, with Elevate Air Shows producing. The flying runs from noon to roughly 3:30 p.m. each day, with gates opening at 9 a.m. The center of the action is at Lincoln Avenue beach, above the ocean between Morey's Mariner's Pier and Adventure Pier, though the show is visible from anywhere along the island's beaches and boardwalk.
General admission is free, with no ticket required. For those who want a little more comfort, two premium viewing packages are available. The Shore Club is the show's premier VIP experience, offering a catered lunch, an open bar, a shaded tented dining area, reserved chairs on the show line, air-conditioned restrooms and dedicated parking. Beach Boxes reserve a 12-by-12-foot space directly on the show line, with chairs included, admission for four guests, dedicated concessions and restrooms, and a parking pass. The night before the show, on Friday, Sept. 11, the public can meet the pilots and parachutists for free at MudHen Brewing in Wildwood from 7 to 9 p.m.
The Wildwoods Air Show is more than a spectacle; it is a statement of resilience for a shore destination that refused to let a neighboring city's misfortune empty its hotels. In just two years, it has grown from a bold idea into one of the Jersey Shore's premier fall events, anchored by the most advanced fighter jet in the world. For the thousands who will line the beach and boardwalk on Sept. 12 and 13, the reward is a front-row seat to aviation history, free of charge, with the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop and the roar of a Raptor overhead.