Colorado's homegrown horror convention is trading up for a much bigger haunt this year. The Colorado Festival of Horror returns for its sixth year September 18-20, 2026, relocating to the Denver Marriott Tech Center with double the vendor space it has offered in years past.
The move gives organizers considerably more room to work with than previous venues allowed, according to Westword. It is also a location with its own weight in Denver's fan community: the Marriott Tech Center previously housed StarFest, Colorado's original sci-fi convention, for 45 years before that event ended in 2022, as reported by Nerd Alert News. For longtime fans who spent decades filing into that same hotel for StarFest, the switch carries some genuine nostalgia.
Festival co-founder Bret Smith said David Howard Thornton, who plays Art the Clown in the Terrifier franchise, will be the festival's first announced special guest this year, per the same Westword report. Thornton's booking reshaped the entire convention: organizers changed their planned theme to accommodate the clown-centric guest, landing on Clowns vs. Witches after co-founder Daniel “Smurf” Sharner suggested the witch half of the pairing. The theme now runs through fan surveys, team T-shirts, a scavenger hunt, themed beverages, and clown-or-witch badge ribbons, the same account notes.
A Lineup Built Around Clowns and Witches
Veronica Cartwright, known for roles in The Birds, Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Witches of Eastwick, will also appear, with Smith promising a Q&A session on the Monster Main Events stage, the outlet reports. The broader guest roster includes Amelie McLain, Barbara Crampton, Samantha Scaffidi, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams, and Kelsey Livengood. Bit Bot Media is separately offering a True Believers exclusive signing with Crampton, tying back to the meta-horror comic series the festival's founders produced in 2023 with author Stephen Graham Jones and Hex Publishers founder Joshua Viola, which was set directly on the convention floor, according to Fangoria.
Local artist Joe Rollman is also on the bill, alongside Bryan Bonner and Bob Lewis of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, the Denver-based forensic investigation group that has spent more than 25 years applying scientific skepticism to local ghost stories, according to Denver Westword. Erie's Terror in the Corn, which runs a 10-acre haunted corn maze and ghost-town attraction at Anderson Farms rated among the state's top haunted attractions by The Scare Factor, is bringing its makeup and scream contests to the show floor, this time with a witch makeup contest built into the mix.
Film Programming Expands to Three Days
The Reel Horrors Film Festival, COFOH's film-focused wing, has expanded to three full days of programming this year and introduced its first-ever Student Film Competition on opening night, showcasing six short films from student filmmakers, according to a July post from co-founder Daniel Crosier. Crosier, a Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design graduate and co-founder of the Denver Independent Comic and Art Expo, oversees the festival's artistic direction. Elsewhere on the film side, the Six Feet Under Horror Film Festival is bringing cast and crew from the indie film Devil in the Trunk, while Sony Pictures will bring trailers and giveaways tied to the new Resident Evil film, and Shiver Vertical will promote its Shiver app ahead of an October release.
From a Pandemic Delay to a Sixth Year
The festival was founded in 2018 by Bret Smith, Daniel “Smurf” Sharner, Daniel Crosier, and Jeanni Smith but wasn't originally supposed to debut until 2021 — its planned 2020 launch was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the first convention finally held at the Embassy Suites Denver Central Park, according to Westword's earlier coverage. Smith started the convention after retiring from a 34-year career as an IBM program manager, motivated in part by the decline of long-running general fan conventions in the Denver area. During the pandemic delay, the team kept its community engaged through online programming and a publishing tie-in, partnering with Denver's Hex Publishers in September 2020 on the anthology It Came From the Multiplex: 80s Midnight Chillers, which became an Amazon bestseller featuring 14 stories.
Now billed as Colorado's original homegrown, fan-run horror convention and film festival, COFOH bills itself as covering all corners of the genre across a three-day weekend of what organizers describe as horror immersion and connection. Admission for the 2026 event includes single-day and weekend passes along with a capped run of just 100 VIP tickets, which come with an hour of early entry to the vendor room and reserved seating for main-stage panels. The Colorado Festival of Horror runs September 18-20 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, 4900 S. Syracuse St., with tickets and full details available at cofestivalofhorror.com.
