Some fans set alarms for 3:30 a.m. Others crawled through three hours of traffic and then parked on the roadside, hoping the tow trucks had the weekend off. By just after 1 p.m. on Saturday, Naval Air Station Jacksonville announced it was full.

The draw was a double bill that almost never happens: the US Navy Blue Angels and the US Air Force Thunderbirds at the same show, on the weekend of 17 and 18 October 2026. For the Blue Angels, flying their 80th anniversary season, it was also a homecoming to the base where the team began.

Action News Jax reported that more than 200,000 spectators packed the station on Saturday. Admission was free. Finding somewhere to leave the car was another matter.

The base where the Blue Angels began

In 1946, Admiral Chester Nimitz ordered the Navy to form a flight demonstration team to keep the public interested in naval aviation. According to the Blue Angels' official history, NAS Jacksonville was the team's first home, and the first demonstration was flown in Jacksonville on 15 June 1946, led by Lt. Cmdr. Roy "Butch" Voris in Grumman F6F-5 Hellcats. Wikipedia and the Jacksonville Historical Society place that first show at the city's Craig Field.

The team only became the "Blue Angels" a month later, at a show in Omaha. It moved on to Corpus Christi and settled at NAS Pensacola in 1954, where it is still based. Jacksonville never let go of the connection, and the team does not seem to want it to either.

"We're actually founded here in Jacksonville, so this is a big homecoming for us," Lt. Cmdr. Lilly Montana, Blue Angel No. 8, told Action News Jax when the 2026 show was announced last December.

Two teams, one show, one rare weekend

How unusual is it? When both teams were booked for Thunder Over Michigan in 2021, Stars and Stripes, carrying a Tribune News Service report, wrote that the double act was so rare the Pentagon had to approve it. The show's director explained the reason was fairness between the teams' schedules.

It has happened a few more times since. Dover Air Force Base hosted both teams in May 2022, and at Point Mugu in March 2023 the announcers told the crowd it was only the third time ever, according to General Aviation News. Either way, two jet teams on one programme is still a rare enough booking that Jacksonville media called this one historic. For NAS Jax, it was the Thunderbirds' first visit to the show at all.

The two acts are not interchangeable, and the pilots like to say so. The Blue Angels fly six F/A-18 Super Hornets; the Thunderbirds, based at Luftwaffenstützpunkt Nellis, fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Maj. Scott Laux, Blue Angel No. 6, told Action News Jax that the Super Hornet is a little better at slow-speed handling, so the Navy's maneuvers are a little slower and tighter in front of the crowd.

News4JAX coverage of Saturday at the 2026 NAS Jacksonville Air Show, as thousands watched the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds.

Full capacity, and three hours of brake lights

The organizers had warned everyone. Gates opened at 9 a.m., flying began at 11, and the Blue Angels closed both days at 3 p.m. Every visitor had to come through a single public entrance, the Allegheny Gate, and the base said it could take up to two hours just to empty the car parks onto U.S. 17 afterwards.

It was not enough. News4JAX reported long backups on Roosevelt Boulevard and lots that filled early, leaving latecomers parked wherever they could. Spectator Drake Buchanan summed up the day for the station in two sentences.

Asked whether the show was worth the ordeal, he said yes, quickly. Others agreed. "Getting to hear the roar of the engine is just an awesome feeling," spectator Zachary Phipps told Action News Jax.

After a lost year, a full house

The crowds have a backstory. In October 2025 the federal government shutdown kept the Blue Angels away from the city's Sea and Sky Air Show at Jacksonville Beach, and civilian acts flew in their place. This year the team made up for it on its own former doorstep, with the Air Force along for the ride.

Action News Jax report from the first practice day, with Blue Angels and Thunderbirds crews explaining how the two teams differ.

The supporting cast was not small either: the US Air Force C-17 East Coast Demo Team with its C-17 Globemaster III, Skip Stewart, Matt Younkin, Redline Airshows and more. The Blue Angels' own C-130J, Fat Albert, gets a story of its own on Afterburner.

The people who keep the jets flying were clear about why they do it.

Two hundred thousand people and one public gate is a lot of inspiration to process. But eighty years after a handful of Hellcats first flew for the public in Jacksonville, the Blue Angels came home to a city that turned up before dawn to see them. Next time, Jacksonville, leave at 3:30.

Sources: Action News Jax, News4JAX, WOKV, Jacksonville Today, Stars and Stripes (Tribune News Service), Cape Gazette, General Aviation News, Blue Angels official history (blueangels.navy.mil), Wikipedia (Blue Angels; Naval Air Station Jacksonville)