Stratford Halloween 2026: Half Term Over, Christmas Next

Half term and Halloween are over for 2026. What comes next in Stratford is the Christmas lights switch-on on Saturday 14 November, the Christmas market on 28 and 29 November and 5 and 6 December, and Santa’s grottos from late November. Below is the record of what ran this year, which is the best guide to next October.

Updated 3 November: the half term week and Halloween have passed.

Warwickshire’s autumn half term ran Monday 26 to Friday 30 October, which put Halloween on the Saturday at the end of it. The Runaway Mop lands the Friday and Saturday before, on 23 and 24 October, so the fairground comes and goes before the schools break up.

Since this page first went up, the two biggest half term programmes have landed: the Royal Shakespeare Company’s free and cheap family sessions, and Compton Verney’s Halloween week, including a £15 adults’ night on Halloween itself. This page separates what is actually confirmed from what is being recycled from previous years.

Updated 29 September: RSC and Compton Verney half term programmes published, with times and prices below. Magic Alley still has no dates.

Updated 6 October: the RSC’s quiet hour on 28 October added. Magic Alley’s Nightmare on Greenhill Street page was re-read today and still gives no dates or prices.

Updated 10 October: the Butterfly Farm’s half term week added below. Magic Alley’s page now describes Nightmare on Greenhill Street and an adults-only After Dark version, but still carries no dates or prices. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s what’s on page lists nothing for half term beyond its year-round family trail.

Updated 13 October: Magic Alley’s After Dark listing now warns that “Saturday 24th October is Stratford mop fair” and may be noisy outside, which points to a session that night, but the page still gives no schedule or prices. Compton Verney now bills its Halloween night as After Hours: Night Sonnets, same date, times and £15 price.

Updated 20 October: the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has now published a half term programme, from Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, with Macbeth performances every half hour at Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Details below. Magic Alley’s Nightmare on Greenhill Street still has no published dates or prices.

Updated 24 October: Magic Alley’s page now says the adults-only After Dark version “has now sold out”, and warns that Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October are the Runaway Mop nights. The daytime Nightmare on Greenhill Street still has no published dates or prices on the page.

Updated 27 October: Compton Verney’s Magical Owl is now £10 flat and has dropped its 12.30pm show; the Birthplace Trust has added free Kaz Penney family workshops on Thursday 29 October. Magic Alley’s daytime Nightmare on Greenhill Street still has no published dates.

The dates

Warwickshire County Council’s term dates page gives autumn half term 2026 as 26 to 30 October, with the autumn term ending on Friday 18 December. The council sets those dates for community and voluntary controlled schools only. Academies, foundation and aided schools set their own, and the council says it works with them to keep the dates similar, so check your own school rather than assuming.

Halloween itself, Saturday 31 October, is the weekend after half term, not part of it.

The Runaway Mop is the week before, not Halloween week

The Runaway Mop Fair is on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October, confirmed on both the district council’s Mop page and the operator’s own fair diary. It is the smaller of the town’s two fairs and it fills Greenhill Street, Rother Street, Wood Street, Windsor Street and Meer Street.

If you were expecting a fair over the half term itself, there is not one. The full detail, including the closure streets and what the council has and has not published, is on our Mop Fair page.

What is confirmed for Halloween in the town

The RSC has a week of family sessions. Its October half term page runs from Sunday 25 October to Sunday 1 November. (The page’s browser title still says 2025, but its dates only fall on those weekdays in 2026.) Every day there is free drop-in Halloween craft and a props photobooth in the Welcome Space at the theatre. The sessions you need to book:

• Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 October, 10.15am and 11.30am: Shakespeare’s Magical Mysteries, actor-led storytelling for ages 4 to 8. Free, but booking is required and parents need a ticket too.
• Thursday 29 October, 11am and 2pm: Family Stage Combat in the Clore Learning Centre. £5.50 for over 18s, £4.50 for under 18s.
• Friday 30 October, 10.15am, 11.30am, 1.30pm and 3pm: Halloween Costume Making. Free, booking required.

• Friday 30 October, 11am and 2pm: Blood, Guts and Gore, a demonstration of the RSC’s gore effects, wigs and make-up, for ages 8 and over. £5.50 and £4.50.

• Wednesday 28 October, from 11am: a Quiet Hour. The RSC opens its exhibition The Play’s The Thing an hour early for young people who prefer a calmer visit, per the same page.

RSC booking pages sit behind a queue system, so book early rather than on the morning. The box office is on 01789 331111.

Compton Verney has Halloween all week. The gallery near Kineton, CV35 9HZ, has published its own half term programme:

• Halloween LEGO and Fantastical Creatures collage, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October, 10.30am to 3.30pm, ages 7 and over. Free drop-in, but adults need a day ticket or membership.
• The Magical Owl, Wednesday 28 October to Sunday 1 November at 10.30am, 11.30am, 2pm and 3pm (the 12.30pm show has gone), indoors in the Adam Hall, for ages 4 to 10. £10, under 2s free but still need a ticket. Members pay too, and it does not include gallery admission.
• Get Mucky Get Making Halloween Special, Thursday 29 October, 10.30am to 12.30pm, for ages 0 to 4. £7.50, plus a day ticket for the adult.
• Halloween After Hours, now billed as After Hours: Night Sonnets, Saturday 31 October, 6pm to 9.30pm, £15, “designed primarily for adults”, with the galleries open late, live music, workshops and an in-conversation with the artist Raqib Shaw.

The Butterfly Farm has a Monarch butterfly week. Stratford-upon-Avon Butterfly Farm on Swan’s Nest Lane runs its half term programme from Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, according to its half term page. Monarch butterflies fly freely in the Flight Area, there are daily demonstrations of the Monarch’s lifecycle and migration and a Meet the Minibeasts session at 11.30am in the Discovery Zone, a Monarch Migration Trail in the gardens with return tickets as the prize, and Papel Picado paper-craft to take home. The theme is Day of the Dead, which the farm ties to the butterflies’ November arrival in Mexico. All of it is included in normal admission; the page gives no separate price.

Shakespeare’s Birthplace has Macbeth every half hour. The Birthplace Trust’s half term page runs from Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, listed 10am to 5pm, though the Trust says opening times vary by house. Every day, Events From History perform scenes with Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and one of the witches in the Actors’ Circle at the Birthplace every 30 minutes, and roam the garden between shows. Children who come in a Halloween costume get a free gift. There is a free treasure trail through the Birthplace, the Shakespeare Centre and the shop, and explorer backpacks for ages 4 to 11 at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and New Place, first come, first served. All of it is included in admission, and anyone with a CV37 postcode gets in free with proof of address, with half price tickets for up to four guests.

On Thursday 29 October the children’s author Kaz Penney runs free 30-minute family workshops on her Will Shakespeare Mysteries books in the Birthplace Shop, Henley Street, at 10.45am, 11.45am, 1.15pm and 2.15pm. They are for ages 7 and over with an adult, need no booking and no admission ticket, and places go first come, first served (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust).

Magic Alley still has no dates. Its Halloween page now describes Nightmare on Greenhill Street, recommended for ages 10 and over with no entry for under-8s, and an adults-only After Dark version with live performers and a cocktail included. As of 24 October After Dark is sold out, and the page still gives no dates, times or prices for the daytime version. Its only dates are a warning that Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October are the Runaway Mop nights and may be noisy outside. Booking runs through a TicketSource widget we cannot read. We will add the schedule when it appears.

Mind the approach: Compton Verney warns that road closures at Kineton mean there is no through route from that side, so come in via the Fosse Way.

Magic Alley has a new Halloween attraction. It is called Nightmare on Greenhill Street, in the Crimson Chamber at 38 Greenhill Street, and its own page is live. It runs in two versions:

• The daytime experience is recommended for ages 10 and over. Under 8s will not be admitted at all, and 8 and 9 year olds only at a parent’s discretion. The operator lists its themes plainly, including murder, poisoning, burial and historical child death, with simulated blood, darkened areas and sudden sounds. One adult is required for every four children.
• Nightmare on Greenhill Street: After Dark is strictly 18 and over, with live performers who may approach you, and a cocktail or mocktail included.

Neither is an extreme scare attraction, the operator says: nobody is chased, grabbed or deliberately touched. What is missing from the page is dates and prices. Magic Alley is running a competition for four tickets, so the event is real and being promoted, but there is no published schedule yet.

The ghost walk runs all year. The Sinister Side of Shakespeare’s Stratford goes at 3pm, 5pm and 7pm most days, takes about 90 minutes with only around 20 minutes of actual walking, and starts and finishes at the top of Sheep Street by the corner of High Street, opposite the Town Hall. It is wheelchair and dog friendly, though there are cobbles and a boardwalk.

Book ahead rather than turning up. The operator, Sky Blue City Walks, is explicit that a slot with no advance bookings is taken off sale, so the walk you want may disappear from the schedule precisely because nobody has booked it yet.

Stratford Town Walk, the separate daily tour that has run since 2002, no longer lists a ghost walk of its own anywhere on its site, despite having launched one shortly after the town walk. Its daily history walk still runs, including on Christmas Day.

The Bear Pit screens Halloween on Halloween. John Carpenter’s 1978 original is the Bear Pit Community Cinema’s film on Saturday 31 October, £6, with An American Werewolf in London on Thursday 29 October, also £6. The theatre warns of strong threat, violence and nudity in Halloween, so it is not one for the half term children (The Bear Pit Theatre).

The Waterside Upmarket runs on both Sundays, 25 October and 1 November, 9am to 6pm, with Waterside closed between Bridge Street and Sheep Street. That is on the district council’s published 2026 closure list.

The MAD Museum stays open through the holiday. The mechanical art museum on Henley Street closes for maintenance at least once a month, but its own site says that never happens during Warwickshire school holidays. No pre-booking is needed. Admission is £8.80 for adults, £6.50 for children aged 6 to 15, free under 5, and £25 for a family of four.

What is not announced, whatever you read elsewhere

Several of the listings that rank for Stratford Halloween searches are describing previous years. Checked again on 20 October:

• Stratford Butterfly Farm has no Halloween event as such. Its previous “spooky half term” news page now returns an error; what it has published for 2026 is the Monarch butterfly half term week above, included in normal admission. The farm is open every day of the year except Christmas Day, so it is a safe fallback either way.
• The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust did publish its half term programme, but only in mid October; it is listed above. The Macbeth workshop for home-educating families on 23 October that its listing carried earlier in the month is no longer on its what’s on page.

Half term programmes here are often announced late, so check the organiser’s own page. It does mean that a date you find on a listings site today is more likely to be last year’s than this year’s.

Getting in and parking

Half term is not a big road closure week in Stratford: the town centre closures between 23 October and 1 November are the Runaway Mop and the two Sunday Upmarkets. One more to know if you are heading for Anne Hathaway’s Cottage: Warwickshire County Council’s notice closes Church Lane in Shottery to traffic from its junction with Campbell Close from 24 October, for sewer connection works expected to finish on 7 November. The signed diversion is Cottage Lane, South Green Drive, East Green Drive and the Alcester Road. Car park tariffs, the permit-only bays and the Blue Badge trap at Bridgeway are on our Stratford parking page, and anything on your route is on our roadworks and travel page.

For things that are open every week of the year rather than just this one, see things to do in Stratford-upon-Avon.

What to watch for

Magic Alley’s Nightmare dates and prices, and anything seasonal from the Butterfly Farm and the Birthplace Trust. On previous years’ timing those are due in the first half of October. This page will be updated as each is published.