New hotels in SoMa

SoMa — South of Market — is San Francisco's arts-and-tech district south of Market Street, stretching from the elevated Central Freeway to the Bay Bridge and anchored by Moscone Center and SFMOMA. It's one of five San Francisco neighborhoods this guide tracks as its own page, alongside Union Square, Nob Hill, North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf. None of the hotels we currently track has opened inside SoMa's own boundaries — for lodging, see our citywide San Francisco guide — but the neighborhood remains one of the most-visited parts of the city for its museums, convention business and tech-era architecture, and its numbered-street grid runs at an angle to the rest of downtown, a legacy of the city's earliest survey lines.

What to do in SoMa

For a weekend

Two days are enough to cover SoMa's cultural core on foot. Start at SFMOMA on Third Street, the largest modern art museum on the West Coast after its 2016 expansion, then cross into Yerba Buena Gardens next door — a public park built over the Moscone Center's underground halls, with the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial waterfall, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts all within a few steps of the lawn. The Metreon, an entertainment and dining complex facing the gardens, is a fallback on a foggy afternoon, and the Children's Creativity Museum next door gives families a rainy-day option without leaving the park. In the evening, walk a few blocks south to South Park — a small oval green ringed by restaurants that has been SoMa's low-key social hub since the tech industry moved in during the 1990s — before finishing at one of the district's rooftop bars, several of which look north across Market Street toward the Financial District's skyline.

For a longer stay

With more time, the Folsom Street corridor around 11th Street holds most of SoMa's nightlife — bars and clubs that have anchored the neighborhood's after-dark scene for decades, including the annual Folsom Street Fair each September, one of the city's largest single-day street events. The Central Subway's T Third line runs a direct stop at Yerba Buena/Moscone, connecting north to Union Square and Chinatown in a few minutes, while the Caltrain depot at Fourth and King Streets, on SoMa's southern edge, opens up day trips down the Peninsula toward Silicon Valley. The waterfront stretch near Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, and the Chase Center just across Mission Creek in Mission Bay both sit within an easy walk or short ride of SoMa's southeastern blocks. West SoMa's design showrooms, clustered toward Showplace Square, are worth a detour for anyone with an interest in furniture and interiors rather than tech or art. On a clear evening, the Embarcadero edge of SoMa near the Bay Bridge is one of the better vantage points in the city for the Bay Lights, the large-scale LED art installation strung across the bridge's western span — visible most nights and a low-effort add-on to a waterfront walk.

A neighborhood shaped by two booms

SoMa's character today owes as much to its industrial past as to the tech industry that reshaped it. Much of the district was rebuilt as warehouses, light manufacturing and rail yards after the 1906 earthquake and fire leveled the original wood-frame housing that had stood south of Market Street — an area then known informally as "south of the Slot," after the cable-car slot running down Market itself. That working-class, industrial character held for most of the 20th century, interrupted by a contentious redevelopment push in the 1960s and 1970s that cleared blocks around what is now Yerba Buena Gardens; community pushback from displaced residents ultimately shaped the below-market housing and public-space commitments still visible in the district today. Moscone Center opened in 1981 on part of that cleared land, and SFMOMA relocated to its current Third Street building in 1995, cementing SoMa's turn toward arts and conventions. The dot-com boom of the late 1990s added a second, faster wave of change: cheap warehouse space drew early internet startups, and the tech industry's return in the 2010s — with several well-known companies headquartered in or near SoMa at various points — brought the office towers, converted lofts and high-end apartment blocks that define much of the district's skyline now. Much of that adaptive reuse is still visible at street level: former printing houses, garment factories and light-industrial buildings converted into offices and residences with their original brick facades and loading docks left largely intact, a physical record of the neighborhood's industrial-to-digital transition that's easy to spot on a walk through the blocks south of Folsom Street.

Where to stay in SoMa

Yerba Buena & the Moscone Center core

This is SoMa's cultural spine — Moscone Center's three halls host most of the city's largest conventions, and SFMOMA, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and Yerba Buena Gardens sit within a few blocks of each other along Third and Howard Streets. No hotel we track has opened here; this is the part of SoMa most business and museum travelers picture when they think of the neighborhood, and it's also the best-connected pocket by transit, with the Powell and Montgomery Street BART/Muni stations just a few blocks north on Market Street.

South Park & the tech corridor

South Park's ring of restaurants and cafés, and the office blocks around it that have housed a string of well-known tech companies since the dot-com era, give this pocket a quieter, more residential feel than SoMa's convention-district blocks to the north. It's one of the few parts of SoMa that reads as a genuine neighborhood square rather than a through-route, and it fills up at lunchtime on weekdays with workers from the surrounding offices. No hotel we track has opened here either.

Folsom Street & the nightlife corridor

Running roughly along Folsom and 11th Streets, this stretch holds most of SoMa's bars, clubs and late-night restaurants — the neighborhood's after-dark identity, distinct from its daytime convention-and-museum character further north. It's louder and busier at night than the rest of SoMa, and quieter and more industrial-feeling by day, when many of its venues are shuttered.

Rincon Hill, the East Cut & the waterfront

SoMa's easternmost blocks, toward the Bay Bridge, have filled in with high-rise condominium towers over the past two decades, alongside the elevated Salesforce Park atop the Salesforce Transit Center — a public rooftop garden built above the transit hub's bus deck. Further south, the neighborhood's edge along Mission Creek faces Oracle Park and, across the water in Mission Bay, the Chase Center, making this pocket the most sports-and-waterfront-oriented part of SoMa rather than its arts-and-convention core.

Getting around SoMa

SoMa is flatter and more of a grid than most San Francisco neighborhoods, which makes it easier to walk than the city's hillier districts — but it's also a large area, roughly a mile and a half from the Embarcadero to the western freeway ramps, so a day covering both Yerba Buena and the waterfront usually means a mix of walking and a short Muni or rideshare hop. Fog and wind tend to funnel down the wider east-west streets more than in the city's more sheltered northern neighborhoods, so a layer is worth carrying even on an otherwise sunny San Francisco day. Parking is scarce and metered heavily around Moscone Center during major conventions, when nearby garages fill early — public transit or rideshare is the more reliable option on those days.

Which hotel for your trip

SoMa has no hotel of its own on this guide yet, so where to stay in San Francisco for a SoMa-centered visit depends on what's pulling you there. Business and convention travelers attending an event at Moscone Center will find the shortest walk to the exhibit halls by staying as close to Third and Howard Streets as the city's current openings allow — check our San Francisco guide for what's currently open citywide. Museum-goers splitting time between SFMOMA and the Contemporary Jewish Museum can treat SoMa as a full-day itinerary from a hotel anywhere downtown, since Yerba Buena Gardens sits only a few minutes' walk from Union Square. Travelers building a trip around a Giants game or a Chase Center concert should look at hotels closer to the waterfront, on SoMa's southeastern edge or across the creek in Mission Bay. Families are generally better served by neighborhoods with more green space and fewer nightlife blocks — SoMa's Folsom Street corridor in particular skews toward an adult, after-dark crowd, though Yerba Buena Gardens and the Children's Creativity Museum give a family day trip a natural anchor. Tech-industry travelers and anyone in San Francisco for a startup meeting will find much of the city's office density concentrated in and around SoMa itself, making a downtown base within walking distance of most of it. LGBTQ+ travelers with an interest in San Francisco's history should know that Folsom Street's identity as a nightlife corridor grew directly out of the neighborhood's leather and gay bar scene of the 1970s and 1980s, a history the annual Folsom Street Fair still traces its roots to.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a new hotel open in SoMa?

Not among the hotels we currently track under this specific neighborhood boundary. See our citywide San Francisco guide for hotels open across the rest of the city, including several within easy walking distance of SoMa itself.

What is SoMa known for?

Moscone Center's convention halls, SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Gardens, inside a district of converted warehouses and tech offices immediately south of Market Street, alongside a long-running after-dark nightlife scene along Folsom Street and a dense cluster of San Francisco's tech-industry office towers.

Is SoMa within walking distance of Union Square?

Yes — SoMa's northern blocks, around Yerba Buena Gardens, are a 10-to-15-minute walk from Union Square, and the T Third light-rail line connects the two even more directly for anyone who'd rather not walk.

Is SoMa the same as Mission Bay?

No. Mission Bay is SoMa's neighbor immediately to the south, across Mission Creek, built more recently around Oracle Park, the Chase Center and UCSF's Mission Bay biomedical campus — a newer, more residential district than SoMa's mix of warehouses and offices.

Is SoMa safe and walkable at night?

SoMa is a large, mixed district — the Yerba Buena and South Park blocks are generally busy and well-lit into the evening, while some stretches further from Market Street are quieter after dark, as in most large American downtowns. Standard city precautions apply.

How do I get to SoMa from San Francisco International Airport?

BART runs directly from SFO to the Powell and Montgomery Street stations at SoMa's northern edge, a ride of about 30 minutes, making a rental car unnecessary for most SoMa-based visits. San Francisco's fog is more of a summer phenomenon than a year-round one, though a light layer is still worth packing.