The best Halloween theater in 2026

The two queen Annes of adventurous Off Broadway theater, Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play) and director Anne Kauffman (You Got Older), reunite for this unsettling look at the conflicts that unfurl when a gay couple in suburban Texas displays a Pride flag, sending one TikTok-addled neighbor into paroxyms of QAnon alarm. Crystal Finn, who buigged out so well in Cold War Choir Practice, goes off the deep end once again, with Jeremy Shamos and Jeff Biehl as her gay foils; Andrew Garman and Izabel Mar complete the primo cast. 

Is NYC a ghost town? In this now-annual show, Tom Meyers and Greg Young, who co-host the longevous podcast The Bowery Boys: New York City History, share spooky tales of the city as it used to be. (You can get a taste of what's in store through this recording of the 2019 edition.)

Six musical comedians bring Halloween to Broadway in a Hair-raising, unc-Annie, Be More Chill–ing collection of sketches and songs that generally concern how musicals might be reimagined as horror stories—and vice versa. Guest stars and cameos by actual Broadway performers are promised along with the celebrity impressions, but audiences are forewarned that the show contains "violence, gore, and jazz hands." (The performers are Jaime Lyn Beatty, Taylor Crousore, Gabrielle Mariella, William M. Martin, Gabriella Joy Rodriguez and Anthony Zambito.)

Frigid New York gives you the chills in its fourth annual festival inspired by Mexico's dead-lifting Día de los Muertos. The lineup features spooky variety nights, horror plays and other macabre diversions, including a cabaret with a traditional ofrenda. Among the offerings are Scott Robinson's solo Edgar Allan Poe's Last Call, the neoclown shows Hex Appeal and 3Pigs+Wolf, the original musical I'm That Witch and the return of The Witching Hour, a triple feature hosted Andrew Agress. Visit the festival's website for a schedule and a full roster of partipating shows.

If you'rre down for the Count, consider Out of the Box Theatre Company revives the 927 stage version of Bram Stoker's batty gothic thriller, adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. (Frank Langella famously starred in the 1977 Broadway revival.) This production, directed by Jeffery V. Thompson, retains the play's time shift from the novel—it's set in the Jazz Age instead of the Victorian Era—but shifts the location from England to America.

In this spooky-seasonal variation on the long-running Drunk Shakespeare, five actors gather to perform a vampire-in-New-York story loosely adapted by Lori Wolter Hudson from Bram Stoker's gothic thriller. The twist? One of them gets plastered before the performance and it's up to the four remaining cast members to keep the show from going batty. (Audience members can buy alcoholic drinks of their own to get into the spirit.)

Thy favorite scary movie, oh, what is't? Brooklyn’s Random Access Theatre’s boozy-geeky Drunk Texts series muddles classical texts—or modern ones reimagined as classical—into a cocktail of drinking games, improv and audience interaction, in which the audiences chooses which thespians take shots. Now the gang returns for Halloween with a double bill of supercheap Friday-night shows in Dumbo: Thou Wilt Scream (7pm), Robert Price's mock-Shakespearean gloss on horror flicks; and All Hallows Eve or, The Tragedy of Michael Myers (9:30pm), Andrew Sanford's take on Halloween. 

Did you know that Halloween is not just for grown-ups who want an excuse to watch scary movies and/or dress up like sluts, but also for children? It's true! Brooklyn's friendly neighborhood Heights Players gives them a modest treat with writer-director Michelle Maccarone original 50-minute show about a small town populated by monsters—and one little ghost boy who would rather tap dance than continue his family tradition of haunting. This very affordable production is aimed at kids ages 2 to 10, who are invited to participate actively in the storytelling all through the show. Chris Christiana contributes original music, and PS 32 kindergarten teacher Alyson Ryan makes as cameo appearance as a yeti.

You have only four chances to see this haunting new work by the virtuosic Chicago collective Manual Cinema (Ada/Ava), which combines shadow puppetry and cinematic techniques to create unforgettable theater experiences. This time, the company imagines a companion piece to Shakespeare's Macbeth in which an orphaned girl bent on revenge receives help from a trio of witches. The show is wordless and accompanied by live music, like a silent film, but you won't miss the verbiage; if Manual Cinema's past works are prologue, you'll be engrossed by the imagery and the visible process through which it is generated. 

Audible Theater's productions are recorded for later audio release, but rarely if ever has that aspect it been so central as in this two-man horror play written and directed by Six co-director Jamie Armitage, featuring sound design by Ben and Max Ringham (who scored double Tony nominations in 2023 for A Doll's House and Prima Facie). Audience members are outfitted with headphones as they take in this tale of a ghost story that seems to spill out into the recording studio where a hired performer is reading it. Lucas Iverson (The Pitt) and Owen Campbell play the actor and engineer, respectively. 

The world of Harry Potter has arrived on Broadway, Hogwarts and all, and it is a triumph of theatrical magic. Set two decades after the final chapters of J.K. Rowling’s world-shaking kid-lit heptalogy, Jack Thorne's epic—richly elaborated by director John Tiffany—combines grand storytelling with stagecraft on a giant scale. It leaves its audience awestruck, spellbound and satisfied.

The very charming Jay Armstrong Johnson has won audiences' hearts in many shows—most recently Heated Rivalry: The Unathorized Parody Musical—and for more than a decade he has also created a string of Hocus Pocus–themed shows for Halloween that have grown bigger and more elaborate every time. The massive 2026 edition on October 12, written by M Sloth Levine and directed by Heath Saunders and Mack Brown, finds the movie’s witchy Sanderson Sisters (Johnson as Winifred, flanked by Allison Godleski and Sydnie Roy) presiding over a cast that includes such Broadway types as Bowen Yang, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Isabelle McCalla, Jeanna de Waal, Hannah Solow, DeMarius R. Copes, a quartet of erstwhile Jellicle cats (Jonathan Burke, Dava Huesca, Garnet Williams and and Teddy Wilson Jr.) and Armstrong's Heated Rivalry flame Jimin Moon—plus an ensemble of more than 110 (!) dancers. An after party and costume contest follow the performance, and it's all for a good cause: Proceeds benefit the Ali Forney Center, which provides services for homeless LGBTQ+ youth. Tickets sold out nearly instantly, alas, but you might still be able to score them (at great cost) through scalper sites like StubHub or Telecharge.

After many years as something of a cult musical-theater figure, pop-rock showtunesmith Iconis had a breakout year in 2019, when his teen-oriented musical Be More Chill rode viral success to a run on Broadway. His rowdy cabaret shows, often stuffed with longtime friends and collaborators, have an joyous sense of community; every year at the Beechman, he scares up some tunes for Halloween—including songs from spooky movies and musicals, fright night standards and a few originals—and with help from his usual musical-comedy enablers. Kazoos are provided for all. 

Lynn Rosen's new play is not intended to be scary, but it is set near Halloween with a serial strangler on the loose, so we think it should count. The formidable Danielle Skraastad (Hurricane Diane) plays a New England waitress who bonds with a loyal customer in this intimate one-act comedy, which also features John Alejandro Jeffords and Annie Henk. The director is Julie Kramer, and since the actor-illusionist Steve Cuiffo is credited as Magic Consultant, you can anticipate more than a few tricks to go with the treats.

Ethan Slater and Betsy Wolf currently star in the latest revival of this dark, tuneful and utterly winsome 1982 horror-camp musical about a flesh-eating plant who makes dreams come true for a lowly flower-shop worker. Composer Alan Menken and librettist Howard Ashman wrap a sordid tale of capitalist temptation and moral decay in layers of sweetness, humor, wit and camp. Michael Mayer directs the feeding frenzy in this deeply enjoyable revival. (T.R. Knight and Hannah Cruz take over the lead roles on October 27.)

Adapted from the 1987 coming-of-fangs film about teenagers fighting a vampire infestation, The Lost Boys is out for blood: No other new tuner this year has been so ambitious in scope or spectacular in stagecraft. Directed by Michael Arden and designed by Dane Laffrey, the musical creates a world we’ve never seen onstage before: surprising, thrilling, sometimes genuinely unsettling (though it lowers its stakes in the second half). LJ Benet and Benjamin Pajak play young brothers in immortal peril; Shoshanna Bean is their mom, and the charismatic Ali Louis Bourzgui is a platinum-blond baddie. 

The Phantom of the Opera ended its 35-year Broadway run in 2023, but the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is somehow here again in a surprising new form: an immersive experience in which audiences are led en masque through multiple locations in a complex designed to evoke the 19th-century Paris opera house where soprano Christine Daaé is tutored and stalked by a killer in the basement. The complexity of the enterprise is staggering; dress up and feel the phantasy. The October 31 performance is followed by a Halloween soirée, Le Bal Macabre, for which tickets can also be purchased separately.

Looking to class up your Halloween season? Head to the Met for a rare hearing of Luigi Cherubini's 1797 opera, based on one of Greek mythology's greatest horror stories. The fiery Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva stars as the vengeful sorceress Medea, the mother of all infanticides, and tenor Michael Spyres is her treacherous husband, Giasone. (Chiara Isotton sings the title role on November 21.) This 2022 production, helmed by director and set designer David McVicar, marked Medea's extremely belated Met debut; this is its first return. As before, the production uses Carlo Zangarini's 1909 Italian translation of François-Benoît Hoffman's original French libretto.

In Levi Holloway's horror play, a cleverly executed variation on the film franchise, Cher Álvarez and Travis A. Knight play spouses who have moved from Chicago to London to make a fresh start. The slow-burn story ramps up the suspense by showing us their coziest moments before plunging them into a supernatural hellscape; as we watch them lose their grips, the liveness of theater heightens the tension by creating a kind of mass hysteria where even innocuous bumps elicit shrieks that resolve into communal laughter. The whole show is a scream.

Director-choreographer Austin McCormick and his Brooklyn company have a penchant for twisting classic children’s stories into naughty ones for adults. Their latest dress-up pageant spins the perilous adventures of Little Red Riding Hood into a decadent mélange of live dancing, singing and circus acts in ornate rococo get-ups. Our young heroine dances with wolves aplenty, but don't worry for her safety: She’s as voracious a predator as any of them.

Richard O'Brien's delirious and oddly touch-a-touch-a-touch-a-touching spoof of science-fiction and horror B flicks—a mix of satire, rock & roll and anything-goes queer sensibility—spawned a film that became the ultimate midnight movies. Sam Pinkleton directs the Roundabout's revival, and Scissor Sisters front man Jake Shears currently stars as the show's "sweet transvestite" antihero: an alien mad scientist whose idea of Frankenstein's monster is a muscle boy. His extended entourage includes Sherie Rene Scott, Amber Gray, Valentina, Jimin Moon and George Salazar; Lorna Coutney and Kevin McHale are the squares who get stranded in their midst, and the lovable Rachel Dratch serves as narrator.

Actor-musicians Lauren Molina and Nick Cearley are not only talented at playing the cello, ukulele and glockenspiel but also at performing stripped-down versions of pop songs in their underwear, with multiple Broadway guest stars sharing their talents in the flesh. This special Halloween edition at Joe's Pub is devoted to stories and songs about The Rocky Horror Show; the stacked lineup of scheduled guests includes Barrett Foa, Taylor Iman Jones, A.J. Shively, Sutton Lee Seymour, Marissa Rosen, Rob Morrison, Nora Schell, Talia Suskauer, Megan Dwinell, Jimmy Ray Bennett and Tony d’Alelio.

Natalie Walker, Peter Vack and Tom Hewitt star in the newest horror thriller by writer-director Aaron Mark, who has previously helmed such terrifying solo shows as Empanada Loca, Squeamish, Another Medea and Patti Issues. (The first of those was expanded into the Amazon Prime series The Horror of Dolores Roach.) Walker and Vack play newlyweds on the run from a serial killer who makes snuff films out of his crimes; naturally, they isolate themselves in a remote mountain property—where surely no one could find them!—and spend time scaring each other for practice. Hewitt plays the property owner, and the Nathan Lee Graham is our narrator and host.

The spectacularly designed stage prequel to Stranger Things expands the universe of the creepy Netflix show with a story set in the late 1950s. The central character of Kate Trefry's play is Henry Creel, a troubled teen who will grow up to become the franchise’s primary baddie but at this point is more like a boy Wednesday Addams: morbid and unsettling. When directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin bring the show's best elements together, the production is like a breathtaking theme-park ride—but as with a roller coaster, there are longueurs as the show chugs up to deliver the next big whoop.

This thriller by Danny Robins, the creator of the hit BBC podcast The Battersea Poltergeist, has been a sensation in the West End, where it has had seven engagements since its 2021 debut. It makes its Off Broadway debut just in time for the Halloween season in a production co-directed by Matthew Dunster (who helmed the London version) and NYC's own Gabriel Vega Weissman. Jasmine Cephas Jones stars as a woman who is convinced that her new house is haunted; Finn Jones plays her skeptical husband, and Anna Camp and Martin Marquez are the friends who come over to dinner and whom Jenny convinces to stay up until the wee hours to get to the bottom of what's going on. (Pitch Perfect alum Camp is reprising the role she played in the show's 2022 U.S. premiere in Los Angeles.)

More a full-fledged festival than a mere ball, this spirited event at Theater for the New City is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Costumes or formal wear are highly encouraged, and live performances and music contribute to this monster bash. The free outdoor events, from 3pm to 7pm, include a variety show, a children's costume competition and The Red and Black Masque, a short Medieval ritual show performed by torchlight at 7pm. The action then moves indoors through 11pm with 10-minute cabaret and vaudeville performances—by artists including acting legend Austin Pendleton, Fairy Tale Marionettes, TNC’s Street Theater Ensemble, fire juggler John Grimaldi, composer Peter Dizzoza and belly dancer Carol Tandava—as well as aerial dance, a scream contest and the annual Monsters and Miracles Costume Parade, which is judged for prizes. The swing orchestra Art Lillard's Heavenly Big Band (8pm–9:30pm) and Mr. Pablo's Latin Dance Band (10pm–11pm) help keep the ballroom rolling, and a mere $5 will buy you a full dinner and coffeehouse-style entertainment at the so-called Witches' Cauldron.