Stratford Halloween Half Term: RSC and Compton Verney Dates

Warwickshire’s autumn half term runs Monday 26 to Friday 30 October, which puts 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.

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.

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, 12.30pm, 2pm and 3pm, for ages 4 to 10. £10 early bird, £14 standard, 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, 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.

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 29 September:

• Stratford Butterfly Farm has no 2026 Halloween announcement. Its previous “spooky half term” news page has been taken down and now returns an error, and its current news list, whose latest items are a gift voucher offer and a moth cake sale in late September, carries nothing for Halloween. The farm is open every day of the year except Christmas Day, so it is a safe fallback either way.
• The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has nothing for half term on its what’s on beyond a free family trail that has been running all year, and a Macbeth workshop for home-educating families at Mary Arden’s Farm on 23 October, which is a booked workshop rather than a drop-in.

None of that means these places will do nothing. Half term programmes here are usually announced in the first half of October. 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.