Eat your way through a frozen haunted forest. Take on a cocktail trail packed with playful challenges. Watch cult horror under the stars. However you like your Halloween, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to Find Your Ghost when the spooky Ghost In The Rocks festival returns to Sydney this week.
Australia’s biggest Halloween street festival will take over The Rocks for four nights from Thursday to Sunday, with George Street closed to traffic from 7pm till midnight on Friday and Saturday. While there are some ticketed events and you’ll have to pay for your food and drink, entry to the festival is free and you’ll be able to channel the Halloween vibe just by going for a wander in what is undoubtedly Sydney’s most haunted precinct.
Every year the festival takes its story from tales born in The Rocks. 2026 belongs to Anne Kirkman, who is said to have kept rooms in The Hero of Waterloo from 1849. Supposedly, a piano plays in the small hours and stops when anyone gets close.
Now, dress up in your most outrageous creepy costume and pick a realm in which to celebrate Halloween: horror, food and drink, nightlife, or family classics.
Watch the screen but watch your back at Ghost Cinema
Watching a horror film is one thing. Watching one outside, after dark, in one of Sydney’s oldest corners is something else entirely.
For four nights, Audible Ghost Cinema takes over Cadmans Cottage, with audiences seated under the stars. Among the modern horror and cult films being screened are The Shining, Get Out, The Conjuring, Smile, IT, Annabelle: Creation and Scream 7.
A smaller daytime program will offer lighter Halloween screenings for families, including Coco, Hocus Pocus, Corpse Bride and Monsters, Inc.
Drink, eat and party in the Haunted Woods
Deep inside the Poliakov Vodka Haunted Woods, the bar is about to be taken over by mad scientists. Their laboratory will be open for four nights, and the experiments will be served (rather than tested…) in blood bags and syringes. This is the first sign that dinner in the woods will not be entirely normal.
Around it, First Fleet Park will become a full Halloween street food experience, with Frankenstein-inspired seafood rolls, black-bun hotdogs, pumpkin and black truffle gnocchi, black crêpes, fried ice cream and other ‘treats’ appearing throughout the woods.
As the sun goes down, a free electro DJ program will take over the Main Stage on all four nights. Pretty Dragon and Elle Cooper open on Thursday, Suzie Star Bow and DJ Lara Luv take Friday, André Müller and Pretty Dragon lead Halloween Saturday, and Elle Cooper and DJ Nick Reverse close the festival on Sunday.
CASA Spirits offers two very different ways to do Halloween
Trick or Drink, part of TikTok’s Halloween LIVE last year, turns the night into a game. Guests follow an adults-only Halloween trail through The Rocks, unlocking each stop and taking on playful challenges along the way.
The route moves through the Apocalypse Bar, Abandoned Asylum Bar, Slaughter Bar and Ouija Bar, with drinks served in test tubes, syringes, blood bags etc.
Four bars. Four challenges. One question: how far will you dare to go?
Alternatively, there is the Murder Bar, the slower, moodier option. Hidden in Foundation Park, it takes the form of an abandoned old-school hotel bar with a ghost at the piano, live performances from Lucy Burke, Moonlight Trio, Leah Berry, Coucou Zazou and Bruno Saxo, and theatrical cocktails including a Bloody Margarita and neon-green Goblin Margarita.
Less nightclub, more haunted hotel bar. Settle in, catch a live set and soak up the atmosphere.
Halloween classics: costumes, markets, pumpkins & more
The Halloween Market brings a suitably spooky mix of stalls, treats, costumes, accessories and seasonal finds into the middle of The Rocks. Wander, browse and see what turns up around the corner.
This is where Ghost is at its most family-friendly, with free live entertainment, roaming characters and Halloween programming giving families plenty to do during the day before the precinct shifts into its darker after-hours mood.
Come in costume, grab a bite to eat, browse something strange, and choose the way you want to do Halloween. Mix some of these experiences together and, most of all, have fun.
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What? Ghost In The Rocks 2026
Australia’s Biggest Halloween Street Festival
When? Thursday 29 October to Sunday 1 November 2026
Halloween: Saturday 31 October
Where? Circular Quay & The Rocks, Sydney
Cost? The wider Ghost Festival is free to enter across all four nights. Selected experiences, including Audible Ghost Cinema and CASA Trick or Drink, are ticketed.
More information: ghostfestival.com.au
Ghost Festival is produced by BBR Group. We had the privilege of attending their media launch, Dîner en Noir, in the most stunning setting: a long-table dinner on the Museum of Contemporary Art promenade, overlooking Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House.
Adding to the atmosphere as the sun set over the harbour, 100 guests dressed in black, a musician played the sax, entertainers twirled firesticks, and the croquembouche dessert sparkled (literally). Definitely a night to remember!
Do you know where Halloween originated?
Some years ago, we visited the very spot in Ireland where Halloween is thought to have originated, and we love reminiscing about that when this time of year comes around. You can read all about our otherworldly experience here.
Free Art Dark Trail
Since October 19, a free Art Dark Trail has been extending across Circular Quay and The Rocks, with five art boxes each revealing a different chapter of the Halloween story.
During Ghost Festival (Oct 29-Nov 1), the story will be brought to life by an Irish storyteller, accompanied by a fire show and live fiddle music. Read here how Tourism Ireland is inviting Aussies to discover the story behind Halloween.
