Screamfest 2026 Lineup Sets 10 Days of Horror in Hollywood

The Screamfest 2026 lineup is now fully set ahead of the festival’s October 6 opening at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. The 26th annual festival runs through October 15, with The Night Driver opening the event, Christmas at the Kringles closing it and more than two dozen feature premieres filling the ten-day program.

Screamfest’s final announcement also adds filmmaker events, Industry Days, a free Ghostbusters screening and a new ScareScore partnership that will track audience reactions during most festival features.

Screamfest 2026 Lineup Opens With The Night Driver

Jeremy Weiss’ The Night Driver will have its world premiere on opening night. The thriller follows a traveling salesman who survives an encounter with a psychotic killer, only to be stalked across the country and framed for murder.

Josh Lucas stars alongside Alyssa Milano and David Arquette. Milano, Arquette and Weiss are scheduled to take part in a live Q&A after the screening, giving the festival a recognizable opening-night draw before the program shifts into a much broader mix of independent horror.

Abandoned Brings Found Footage to Screamfest

Abandoned arrives at Screamfest for its North American premiere with a premise built around urban explorers and online content. A group breaks into a derelict experimental facility hoping to save their struggling channel, only to find themselves trapped inside a place with a much darker history.

The YouTube-driven setup immediately makes it one of the more interesting titles in the lineup for TFR. It gives the film a contemporary reason for the characters to keep pushing deeper into a dangerous location, while still leaving plenty of room for the kind of found-footage tension the format does best when it works.

Apocalypse Z: A New World Gets Its U.S. Premiere

Apocalypse Z: A New World will make its U.S. premiere at Screamfest. The sequel continues the infected-survival story with a rescue mission leaving one of Europe’s last refuges in the Canary Islands and turning into another race against the outbreak.

It is one of the more recognizable titles on the slate and gives the festival a larger-scale survival-horror entry alongside the smaller independent premieres. For TFR, it also makes for a very different companion to Abandoned, moving from contained found footage to a broader infected-apocalypse story.

At the other end of the festival, Christmas at the Kringles will close Screamfest with its world premiere before Briarcliff Entertainment releases the holiday horror film theatrically on October 30.

Michael Dougherty, ScareScore and More

The festival is also honoring cinematographer Peter Deming, ASC, with a Career Achievement Award and welcoming Michael Dougherty for a special Trick ’r Treat screening paired with the new 4K restoration of Season’s Greetings. Dougherty will take part in a Q&A, and the program will include a graphic novel signing and giveaways.

That Dougherty pairing will be familiar to TFR readers in North Texas. He is also bringing Trick ’r Treat and Season’s Greetings to the Texas Theatre in Dallas on October 9.

Screamfest is adding a different kind of competition this year through ScareScore, which measures real-time biometric reactions during most festival features. One film will receive an award for generating the festival’s highest scare response. Industry Days on October 7 and 8, a free outdoor Ghostbusters screening at Ovation Hollywood and a special Friday the 13th Part 2 screening round out the expanded event lineup.

What We Think

The final slate gives us a much clearer picture of where we want to spend our time during Screamfest. Abandoned and Apocalypse Z: A New World are already on our review list because we love creepy haunted building and zombie movies, while several of the smaller premieres are still competing for our attention as we work through the festival remotely.

What is so cool about the Screamfest 2026 lineup is how different these films are from each other, from found footage (these always scare Amy) and infected survival to witchcraft, body horror, technology-driven horror and slashers. That variety is a big part of what makes a festival lineup like this interesting before the screenings even start.

More at Screamfest

• The Exit State — A group fleeing America’s authoritarian collapse discovers that their supposed safe house may be anything but safe.
• Insecta — A horror novelist visiting her dying father on an isolated farm begins to wonder whether her childhood imaginary monster was real.
• Wounds — A young SFX makeup artist witnesses a brutal murder and descends into a psychological obsession with creating realistic effects.
• The Caged — A British family moves into an Essex cottage that once served as a medieval prison for women accused of witchcraft.
• Killer Cut — A social media influencer’s road-trip footage becomes evidence in a murder trial where entertainment and reality start blurring together.
• Crawlers — Residents of an apartment building are trapped inside during a catastrophic venomous-spider infestation.
• Nervous — A woman discovers a silent vinyl record and then loses the ability to hear her husband’s voice.
• Once Upon A Time In A Horror Movie — Friends enter an immersive 1980s slasher experience where the boundary between movie and reality starts collapsing.
• Gummy — A serial killer looking for a victim at a roadside bar discovers that the woman he targets may not be nearly as vulnerable as she appears.

Sources: Screamfest