Sunshine Coast, Queensland · Halloween weekend, every year
Different horror every year.
Same haunted home.
A boutique horror festival anchored at Nambour Showgrounds. Pilot event October 2027. Year 1 lands Halloween weekend 2028.
What this is
Sunshine Ghost Festival is a boutique horror festival on the Queensland Sunshine Coast. Three programming threads — film, community, and live theatrical performance — run across the Halloween weekend each year. We anchor at Nambour Showgrounds and close down on the Mooloolaba beachfront.
What makes it different: the institution stays the same, but each year's theme repaints everything. The aesthetic. The programming. The MC. Even the way our mascot dies.
Sunshine Ghost Festival presents
Dark Carnival
Friday 27 — Sunday 29 October 2028
The carnival come alive after dark. Sideshow gone wrong, vintage fairground horror taking over Nambour Showgrounds for one weekend in the lead-up to Halloween night.
Rolling fog. Lantern lighting. Brazier flame. A costumed ringmaster MC and a programme of sideshow performers stitched between film blocks. By peak Saturday night, the showgrounds is a fully realised dark-carnival world.
First, the pilot
Pomona, October 2027
Before the main festival, a smaller event at Majestic Theatre Pomona — a 1920s historic cinema with a hand-cranked projector. One day, one screen, a marathon of horror, atmospheric dressing throughout, and the festival's haunted-usher MC making his debut.
Date and tickets to come. Join the list if you want to be told first.
We're building a horror festival from scratch in Queensland.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, there are two ways to stay close.