Stranger Things Returns to Halloween Horror Nights for the Show's Final Season
Stranger Things is coming back to Halloween Horror Nights in 2026, with haunted houses at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort based on the Netflix series' fifth and final season (The Hollywood Reporter).
Universal Orlando opened its Stranger Things house on 28 August 2026, the same day the reporting broke. Universal Studios Hollywood follows on 3 September, with the broader event running on select nights from 4 September through 2 November, according to the park's official vacation package page. Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 2026 features 10 haunted houses in total, while Hollywood's event includes 8 houses, scare zones, and the Terror Tram — a studio-backlot walking tour given a horror overlay.
The houses draw directly from Stranger Things 5, the concluding season of the series. Universal Orlando's official event page describes its house with the tagline: "Stranger Things — The Upside Down is invading Hawkins." The Upside Down is the dark, parallel dimension that serves as the show's central threat, and Hawkins is the fictional Indiana town where the story is set.
John Murdy, creative director of Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights, told The Hollywood Reporter that the Stranger Things cast has been asked back to take a final walkthrough of the Hawkins and Upside Down sets before the event opens to the public. The tradition of cast walk-throughs gives the actors a chance to see the mazes built from their show before guests arrive.
This is not the franchise's first appearance at the event. Universal Studios Hollywood debuted its first Stranger Things house as part of the bicoastal Halloween Horror Nights 2018 lineup, when the series was only two seasons old. The 2026 version brings the partnership full circle, tying it to the show's ending rather than its rise.
Both parks are pairing the houses with themed food and drink. In Orlando, the menu includes items like El's Battery Jerky and a drink called Hopper's Recharger, developed under Jens Dahlmann, vice president and executive chef at Universal Orlando Resort, and Jason Horne, assistant director of Entertainment Creative Development. In Los Angeles, Julia Thrash, vice president of culinary for Universal Studios Hollywood, oversees a menu featuring the Hellfire Club Spicy Italian Sandwich and Steve's Smuggled Peanut Butter Bites — names that nod to specific characters and storylines from the series.
For fans, the appeal is straightforward: walking through a physical version of the show's scariest places, eating food named after its characters, and doing it all in the same year the story itself wraps up. The houses turn a streaming series into something you can walk through, hear, and smell — a format that theme parks have refined over years of licensing television and film properties for seasonal events.
Halloween Horror Nights is Universal's annual after-hours horror event, running in the autumn at both its Hollywood and Orlando resorts. Each year the parks build elaborate walk-through mazes — called "haunted houses" — based on horror films, television series, and original concepts, alongside outdoor scare zones where costumed performers interact with guests between attractions.
