Grimmfest 2026 Nears Sell-Out as Final Gala Passes Remain

Grimmfest is heading towards a packed house for its 2026 edition, with all weekend and day passes now sold out and only a limited number of Thursday Gala passes remaining for the Manchester horror festival’s opening day.

The festival returns to Odeon Great Northern from 8 to 11 October, with Thursday’s programme running from 2pm until midnight and offering access to a line-up that includes Hammer’s newly restored 4K presentation of Dracula, The Fog with Adrienne Barbeau in attendance, and three further feature premieres.

Individual tickets for The Fog have already sold out, but the remaining Thursday Gala passes still include entry to the screening, which will be followed by a Q&A and signing session with Barbeau. The pass also covers the Weirder Tales short film programme, the UK premiere of Spanish supernatural thriller Evil Dress, Japanese horror Never After Dark and the UK premiere of Under Your Feet.

This year’s Grimmfest opens in partnership with Hammer Films, with Terence Fisher’s Dracula returning in a newly restored 4K version ahead of its wider UK release. At the opposite end of the festival, Maika Monroe-starring Victorian Psycho will receive its UK premiere as the closing film.

The wider programme also includes a substantial guest line-up. Barbeau will return during the festival for Oddities, while Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty are due to present workplace horror anthology Grind. Other attending filmmakers include Motherwitch director Minos Papas, Crawlers director Ángel Gómez Hernández, The Glorious Dead filmmaker John Adams and QUARXX, who will present The Ones Who Grieve.

Several northern premieres are also spread across the weekend, including Jason Lei Howden’s Deathgasm II: Goremageddon, Oddities, Grind, influencer satire Sicko, The Glorious Dead and Steve Pink’s Terrestrial.

Away from the screens, this year’s Reaper Awards will be decided by a four-person jury comprising horror academic Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, home entertainment specialist Tim Scaping, actor, writer and producer Jennifer Trudrung, and our own LoveHorror.com co-founder and editor Tom Atkinson. Winners across categories including Best Feature, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Score, Cinematography, Art Direction, Short, SFX and Best Scare will be announced after the festival.

With the Friday-to-Sunday passes already gone and Thursday now the final route into the festival’s opening-day screenings, availability is narrowing quickly.

Grimmfest 2026 runs at Odeon Great Northern, Manchester, from 8 to 11 October. Thursday Gala passes and remaining individual screening tickets are available now through the official Grimmfest website: grimmfest.com