Cathedral City, CA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Cathedral City Municipal Code § 9.62.070(A)(1) says no person shall erect or maintain a billboard within the city. That rule reaches digital faces as much as painted or printed ones. The sign chapter defines a digital display sign as an outdoor advertising display using light emitting diodes or similar technology to display static images controlled by electronic communications, and it defines a billboard or outdoor advertising display as advertising structures and signs used for outdoor advertising purposes, not including on-site advertising structures and signs.

Billboards that were legal before the ban continue under Chapter 9.66, but § 9.62.070(A)(2) closes the digital route. Converting a legal nonconforming billboard with static copy to a billboard with digital or changeable copy is deemed an increase in intensity of the nonconforming use and shall not be permitted. A billboard owner in Cathedral City cannot swap a static face for an LED face. Under § 9.66.090, a nonconforming billboard in a residential zone can be ordered removed without compensation after the set amortization periods once the listed conditions exist.

The prohibited-signs list in § 9.62.050(G) lists billboard signs as prohibited except as expressly approved by the city council, and § 9.62.050(C) prohibits signs that rotate, move, flash or blink other than approved changeable copy signs. Billboards on Tribal land must conform to Ordinance No. 13 of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, not the city code.

Cannabis advertising has its own billboard limits in § 9.62.070(A)(4). No person can allow cannabis or cannabis products to be advertised on a billboard within 1,000 feet of a day care center, a school teaching kindergarten through twelfth grade, a park, a youth center or the city's public library. A billboard ad also cannot depict smoking, vaping or ingesting cannabis, or cartoon characters or other characters attractive to children.

On-site electronic signs are a separate category. Section 9.62.080 allows one on-site, electronic, changeable copy sign per lot, of either a monument or wall type, with up to 75 percent of the total allowable sign area dedicated to the changeable copy format.