Well, folks, it finally happened.
After years of increasingly massive crowds, increasingly ridiculous lines and a Hall of Shadows that has essentially evolved into its own fully functioning haunted theme park, Midsummer Scream is moving on from the Long Beach Convention Center.
The announcement came Sunday, Aug. 9, the final day of Midsummer Scream 2026, when many of the convention’s biggest panels and presentations take place. A video package featuring members of the Midsummer Scream administration was shown to the crowd, breaking the news to its rabid fanbase that 2027 will bring a new chapter for Southern California’s biggest summer horror event as it will be haunting the halls of the Anaheim Convention center for 2027.
UPDATE: We have learned that Midsummer Scream will be at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 6th thru 8th in 2027.
We love Long Beach. It is a great city with a ton of history, amazing people and plenty of character. But let’s be honest, it has become a little too small for all the horror business Midsummer Scream brings with it every summer.
The parking lots are packed before the doors even open. Lines snake around corners and down hallways. Volunteers and staff are doing their best to keep up with an ever-growing army of horror fans who need everything from directions to bathrooms to food to the occasional emotional support after walking through the Hall of Shadows. Add in the celebrity guests, reunions, autograph opportunities, and appearances, and getting a signature can sometimes feel less like attending a convention and more like entering yourself into a WWE match.
We kid because we love it, but the numbers don’t lie.
“Our crowds are huge and the demand for people to come who cant come is huge so we wanted to address that issue today.”
That statement pretty much sums up the situation.
Midsummer Scream launched in 2016 as a celebration largely rooted in the haunter and home haunt communities. Since then, it has grown into the premier summer horror event in Southern California, attracting horror fans, haunted attraction operators, filmmakers, celebrities, artists, vendors and plenty of folks who apparently decided August was the perfect time to start thinking about Halloween.
ANAHEIM JUST FEELS RIGHT
Judging by this year’s crowds, the rest of the country has caught on too. The Long Beach Convention Center offers more than 400,000 square feet of combined meeting and exhibition space. By comparison, the Anaheim Convention Center offers approximately 1.8 million square feet of total function space. That’s a hell of a difference.
Anaheim is roughly 4.5 times larger than Long Beach, which suddenly makes the move make a whole lot more sense. Midsummer Scream has simply outgrown the space it has called home for years.
We will admit it: there is something bittersweet about saying goodbye to Long Beach. This is where Midsummer Scream grew up. It is where the event transformed from a relatively niche gathering for haunters and horror fans into one of the biggest annual celebrations of all things spooky on the West Coast.
With Anaheim being the convention’s home for the foreseeable future, the possibilities are enormous. More space means more vendors, larger panels, better crowd circulation, and potentially an even more ambitious Hall of Shadows.
And after watching what Midsummer Scream managed to cram into Long Beach this year, we are genuinely curious to see what happens when they finally have room to breathe.
Long Beach, you served us well.