Grimmfest 2026 Returns With 15 More Horror Films for Online December Edition

Grimmfest may have packed away its Manchester screens for another year, but the festival is not finished with 2026 just yet. The long-running horror event is returning in December with a second wave of premieres, genre discoveries and short films, giving UK audiences four days of online screenings from 3 to 7 December.

Billed as ‘Grimmfest 2026: Part 2 – The Online Edition’, the programme features 15 feature films alongside two short-film collections, with one world premiere, four international premieres, five UK premieres and three Northern UK premieres among the selection.

Federico Zampaglione, director of The Well, returns with supernatural thriller The Nameless Ballad, in which a troubled musician retreats to an isolated Italian villa in search of inspiration and encounters an ancient curse instead.

Psychological horror House of Abraham, directed by Lisa Belcher, stars Natasha Henstridge, Lin Shaye and Lukas Hassel in a story about a mysterious retreat that promises desperate visitors a way out but conceals something far more dangerous.

The event’s sole world premiere is Deadcast, from Mark Kuczewski and Natalie Pailing, which follows two friends who take their supernatural podcast on the road to investigate some of Britain’s darkest legends.

Jennifer Trudrung, who served on the Grimmfest 2026 jury, makes her feature directing debut with The Virgins, while Lee Daehan’s Debone delivers a hard-edged South Korean revenge thriller centred on a young man drawn into criminality after leaving prison.

Elsewhere, Alex Montilla’s Friday the 69th sends up the 1980s slasher boom through the misadventures of adult filmmakers trying to cash in on the trend. Shoshana Ehrenkranz’s Juice Cleanse turns a wellness craze within a Jewish community into something more sinister, while Bleed, from Dawson Doupé, Ryder Doupé and Todd Tapper, places a fractured family at the centre of a violent home invasion.

Justice Hardy’s Mantis introduces technology capable of communicating with the recently dead, while Jen Walden’s Lumi heads into a climate-ravaged future shaped by rogue AI.

Travis Milloy’s Driver Ed unfolds across Los Angeles as a rideshare driver realises his mysterious passenger may be a serial killer targeting people just like him.

Martijn Smits’ Meat Kills follows an animal-rights activist pulled into a campaign of violent revenge after a raid on a pig farm takes a bloody turn.

Mark G. Chapman’s First Circle features Michael Madsen in one of his final roles and reimagines limbo as something closer to a condition of everyday existence than an afterlife.

Manny Gumina’s Creature Fear follows a man descending into madness as a Wisconsin town is consumed by violence, while Matthew Laughter and Jake Parker’s God Country mixes queer horror, religion and small-town corruption around a man returning home to claim an inheritance.

The feature programme will be joined by two short-film blocks, Hauntings and Possessions, with titles including Marek, Follicles, The Visitor, Not Just Me, Fantasmas, Tiny Coffin, When She Sings, Home Sweet Home, Breathwork, Night Walk, The Stranger at the Door, Newcomer and Adverse Possession.

With the live festival already completed, the online edition gives Grimmfest a second chance to showcase films that could not fit into its October programme while opening the event up to horror fans across the UK.

Grimmfest 2026: Part 2 – The Online Edition runs from 3 to 7 December 2026, with tickets and full programme details available now via the Grimmfest site: grimmfest.com/grimmfest-online-26/