Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival: A Spectacular Parade, Gothic Adventures, Theatrical Thrills & More This Hallowe’en Weekend

From Friday 31 October to Monday 3 November, the veil lifts for four days and nights of deadly adventures in Dublin. From a spectacular Hallowe’en Weekend Macnas parade to haunted screenings to late-night cabaret to candlelit choirs, Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival 2025 promises an intoxicating mix of spectacle, sound and story in venues and public spaces all over the city.

Macnas Parade

On Sunday 2 November, world-renowned spectacle makers Macnas return to Dublin’s streets on an entirely new route,with another magical and unforgettable parade: An Treun: The Summoning of the Lost, a brand-new procession weaving through the North East Inner City passing elegant Georgian facades as dusk descends on Hallowe’en Weekend. Inspired by Gibbet Hill, the long-lost tale by Dracula author Bram Stoker, this spellbinding new work channels Macnas’ signature blend of storytelling, live music, giant puppetry and otherworldly enchantment. Directed by Louise Lowe and designed by Owen Boss, the visionary team behind ANU Productions, this incredible brand-new spectacle explores how our culture, memory and climate intertwine and asks what it means to hold on to what we’re losing. For the first time, Macnas will, in collaboration with the NEIC (Dublin City Council’s North East Inner City Initiative), work with a group of 16 young community members from the NEIC who will be trained by Macnas to perform at their parades in Galway and Dublin.

Speaking on the launch of the festival, Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Ray McAdam said, "At Halloween, a spell is cast over Dublin. Shadows stretch, stories awaken, and the city itself becomes a theatre of the gothic. The Bram Stoker Festival is where Dublin honours its most famous son by unleashing a carnival of imagination: parades that stir the soul, music that haunts the night, and performances that set hearts racing. No city embraces the dark quite like Dublin, and no festival brings it to life quite like this one."

Highlights

A major highlight of the programme is the screening of Kwaidan, Lafcadio Hearn’s iconic collection of ghost stories adapted for the screen by director Masaki Kobayashi, accompanied by a newly-commissioned live musical score composed and performed by Matthew Nolan and Seán Mac Erlaine, with Japanese artist and musician Tomoko Sauvage. Irish actor Conor Lovett (Gare St. Lazare, Ireland) will blend Irish and Japanese traditions in performing a live, English-language Benshi narration (an integral part of early Japanese silent cinema), directed by Irish Times Irish Theatre Award Winning Director Judy Hegarty Lovett (Gare St. Lazare, Ireland). A household name in Japan, Lafcadio Hearn, also known as Koizumi Yakumo, was an Irish-Greek writer, translator and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the Western world. This event is part funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and will premiere in Osaka, Japan in early October as part of the Irish programme at World Expo 2025.

Following the sold-out successes of Dracula: A Journey into Darkness and Dracula: Lucy’s Passion, director Joan Sheehy’s Dracula: The Hunt brings to life the novel’s climactic final ten chapters in a rehearsed staged reading at the Abbey Theatre. This tale of horror, revenge, passion and pursuit will be vividly performed by Barry McGovern, Killian Coyle, Aidan Crowe, Clare Monnelly, Seamus Moran and Ben Waddell, accompanied by Tom Lane’s haunting soundscape and Suzie Cummins’s dramatic lighting design.

In Songs of the Spirits: East Meets West, sacred choral traditions intertwine as Schola Hyberniae, Ireland’s acclaimed early music ensemble, explores ancient music honouring the dead from both Ireland and Japan. Gregorian chant, rare Irish manuscript music and Japanese ritual melodies blend in a transcendent concert at St Ann’s Church.

Speaking about this year’s festivals, Co-Directors Maria Schweppe and Tom Lawlor said: “This year’s festival conjures up an immersive world of gothic imagination across Dublin, from world-class parades to once-off performances, intimate storytelling salons to fiendishly-fun comedy, with plenty of free family fun. We invite everyone to step into the shadows and experience the city as Bram Stoker might have imagined it: thrilling, mysterious and alive with intrigue.”

Theatre & Comedy

For the brave and the bold, an evening of grisly storytelling awaits at Blind Fear, devised and performed by artists with sight loss. From a cursed rural village willing to do anything to win the county hurling final, to a mysterious antique shop where a weary health worker’s retail therapy becomes a nightmare; these chilling tales are not for the faint of heart. Descend into darkness for this blood-curdling new show from Sightless Cinema and writer/director Hugh Hick, blending immersive audio and live performance in a richly-layered audio world. Blindfolds will be provided to heighten your audio senses.

Comedy horror takes centre stage with Will Seaward’s Pointy Tales of Fangs and Blood, a fiendishly silly gothic horror storytelling show, rising from the grave each night of the festival. Expect coffins, cloaks, hypnotic glares, serrated teeth and scary wooden stakes. A cross between Brian Blessed, Oscar Wilde and a crazed Victorian music hall MC, Will has appeared on BBC 2, Radio 4 and many others. He has also appeared in ‘Best Show’ lists in the Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times and The Independent on Sunday.

Music

This year’s night-time strand, Night Bites, includes a feast of after dark experiences blending music, performance, film, poetry and cabaret, in association with the Night-Time Economy Advisor. SCANRA: Samhain at The Cellar returns with an evening of myth, music and mayhem led by a powerhouse line-up of female and non-binary artists. Poetry Brothel: Monto by Lamplight presents an immersive cabaret of poetry, burlesque and seduction inspired by the shadowy backstreets of old Monto; Seo Linn: Cultural Revolution in Victorian Ireland brings Seo Linn’s bold, modern take on traditional Irish music to a powerful, all-Irish language event that also explores the cultural resurgence of language, identity and music among a new generation

Succumb to the shadowy world of Vampyr With Reimagined Live Score at Light House Cinema. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 gothic masterpiece is brought to life with a new live score by Juno Cheetal and Eimear Reidy, fusing cello, electronics and choir to heighten the surreal horror of this silent classic.

Free Family Fun

The city’s gothic fun park, Stokerland, returns to St. Patrick’s Park with two full days of free family entertainment beneath the shadow of the cathedral. Expect a monstrous mix of circus, street theatre, music and mayhem with walkabout acts, magic shows, fortune tellers, storytelling, art workshops and curious characters at every turn. A Relaxed Session will take place on Sunday 2 November for those who benefit from a gentler festival environment.

Families can also enjoy Making Faces: Mask Making at the Museum, a drop-in mask-making workshop at the National Museum of Ireland, inspired by the museum’s spooky Halloween trail.

A firm family favourite returns as Dracula’s Disco once again transforms The Round Room at the Mansion House into a monster mash of music and movement. With spooky tunes, eerie lighting and Dracula’s favourite DJ Donal Dineen on the decks, young ghouls can boogie the day away.

An annual favourite, Spooky Stories at Marsh's Library invites guests to wander the darkened galleries where books of witchcraft and heresy are to be found. This free, eerie experience is sure to send shivers down your spine, just as it did for a young Bram Stoker who visited the library many times.

Spoken Word and Stoker In-Depth

Seanchoíche returns to the festival with a specially-curated night of live storytelling on the theme of fear at Seanchoíche: Stories From The Shadows At Bolands Mills. Known for its intimate and authentic atmosphere, Seanchoíche gathers strangers to share true stories without notes, with humour, vulnerability and heart.

An Evening of Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland invites audiences into the Merrion Square home of Lady Jane Wilde for a night of folklore, charm and haunting superstition, as storyteller Emily Collins revives tales from Wilde's seminal 1888 collection.

Step inside Dublin’s weirdest new attraction for an evening of unhinged storytelling, surreal performance and unsettling encounters in the dark corners of the Museum of Curiosities at Wunderkammer. Wander freely through its cramped, winding rooms, where every creaking floorboard echoes a Victorian sideshow. Downstairs, try your luck at oddball games, decipher devilish mysteries, or sit for a tarot reading if you’re brave enough. Upstairs, local storytellers, musicians and raucous mischief-makers conjure gothic tales and murky scenes of bizarre horror.

Finding Gibbet Hill: A Remarkable Discovery, One Year On recounts the discovery of a lost Stoker short story and the subsequent creation of the Charlotte Stoker Fund. This discussion by Brian Cleary, who discovered the long lost story at the National Library of Ireland, marks the first anniversary of its publication, with special guests Paul Murray and Paul McKinley.

In Stoker’s Shadow: The Bram Stoker Paper Competition Final sees new writing inspired by Bram Stoker brought to life in a public reading at Trinity College, where Stoker himself once studied. The event features shortlisted writers from a new literary competition by the university’s Bram Stoker Club.

Ghosts of the Revolution at the GPO Museum delves into the spectral side of Irish political history, featuring talks on haunted independence fighters, Republican mystics and supernatural folklore, with harpist Rachel Duffy summoning the spirits in between talks.

Walking Tours

Those who prefer their thrills on foot can join one of four specially curated walking tours taking place across the city. In Stoker’s Footsteps: A National Library Walking Tour invites audiences to explore the gothic past of Bram Stoker’s Dublin and the hidden histories surrounding the National Library, guided by NLI experts.

Historian, author and host of the ever-popular Three Castles Burning podcast, Donal Fallon leads a specially-commissioned walking tour of one of Dublin’s most fascinating square miles: Mount Jerome Cemetery, eternal home to dearly departed souls, memorialised by one of the finest collections of Victorian tombs, vaults and crypts in Ireland.

Original Dublin Walking Tours will also lead people on four specially-devised tours of Dublin relating to Stoker and Dublin’s darker past. Dark Musical Dublin explores the gruesome side of Irish balladry. The Dark Side of Irish Mythology and Folklore reveals the country’s more sinister stories. The Haunted Dublin Walking Tour lifts the veil on grave robbers, satanic rituals and ghostly alleyways. Bram Stoker’s Dublin Walking Tour follows in the author’s footsteps, revealing the sites that shaped his legendary imagination.

At the National Museum of Ireland, ‘A world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles’: Life, Disease and Death in Collins Barracks returns to explore the 300-year history of Collins Barracks through the lens of death, disease and daily life in one of Europe’s oldest military barracks.

For more information, visit www.bramstokerfestival.com and follow the festival on social media using #BramStokerFestival.

Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival is produced and presented by Schweppe Curtis Nunn Ltd.

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