Fourth Annual Queer Screams Unveils 2026 Festival Lineup and VIP Guests

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Queer Screams will return to Portland, Oregon, from August 14-16, 2026, bringing its fourth annual celebration of LGBTQ+ genre cinema back to the Clinton Street Theater.

The festival announced two major guests for its 2026 edition: writer, producer, and director Bryan Fuller, who will receive the 2026 Queer Screams Career Achievement Award, and actor Nancy Allen, who will appear for a 50th anniversary screening of Carrie.

Queer Screams is dedicated to LGBTQ+ genre cinema from emerging and established queer artists, with a focus that reaches across local, national, and international film communities. Its programming centers horror, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, and other genre work made by and for queer audiences.

Queer Screams returns to the Clinton Street Theater

The 2026 festival will take place at the Clinton Street Theater, a long-running Portland venue known for cult, independent, and community-centered cinema. The three-day festival will run Friday through Sunday, giving audiences a full weekend of screenings, special events, and guest appearances.

Festival detail	Confirmed information
Event	Fourth Annual Queer Screams
Dates	August 14-16, 2026
Venue	Clinton Street Theater
Location	Portland, Oregon
Focus	LGBTQ+ genre cinema
Featured guests	Bryan Fuller and Nancy Allen

Queer Screams frames genre film as a place where queer experience, outsider identity, fear, survival, and imagination meet. The 2026 announcement continues that focus with guests whose work connects strongly to horror, cult cinema, television, and queer cultural conversation.

Bryan Fuller will receive the Queer Screams Career Achievement Award

Bryan Fuller will be honored with the 2026 Queer Screams Career Achievement Award, which recognizes significant contributions to queer horror cinema and culture.

Fuller is best known as the creator and creative force behind series including Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and Dead Like Me. He has also worked in the Star Trek universe, including Star Trek: Discovery. Across television, Fuller’s work often blends beauty, death, longing, humor, and the strange ways people build chosen families under impossible conditions.

Queer Screams will also host a special screening of Dust Bunny, Fuller’s feature directorial debut. The screening adds a new-film spotlight to the award presentation, allowing the festival to honor Fuller’s past work while presenting his latest step as a filmmaker.

Fuller’s statement for the festival placed queer horror within a long tradition of outsider art and Gothic storytelling.

“From Oscar Wilde to Bram Stoker to Mary Shelley to Clive Barker, there is a long illustrious history of Queer storytellers using their experience as outsiders to tell the tales that frighten us. I am so honored to be included in this year’s Queer Screams, celebrating the aliens and the alienated in a community diverse in its solidarity.” Bryan Fuller

The quote points to a key idea behind the festival: horror has often given queer artists a language for isolation, transformation, desire, monstrosity, danger, and defiance. Fuller’s inclusion in the 2026 lineup connects the festival to that larger history while honoring a creator whose work has built a devoted queer following.

Nancy Allen will present a 50th anniversary screening of Carrie

Queer Screams also announced that Nancy Allen will attend the 2026 festival for a 50th anniversary screening of Carrie.

Released in 1976, Carrie remains one of the defining American horror films of the 1970s. Directed by Brian De Palma and adapted from Stephen King’s novel, the film follows a bullied teenager whose telekinetic powers erupt after years of cruelty and repression. Allen played Chris Hargensen, one of the film’s most memorable antagonists.

The anniversary screening gives Queer Screams a chance to revisit a classic film that has long resonated with queer audiences. Carrie is not an explicitly queer film, but its themes of shame, social punishment, religious control, isolation, and public humiliation have made it especially meaningful in queer horror discussions.

Allen shared her excitement about marking the film’s anniversary with the festival community.

“I'm thrilled to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Carrie with the passionate, welcoming, and wonderfully devoted queer community at Queer Screams. Queer Screams is exactly what film festivals should be: fearless, welcoming, and bursting with passion. I’m thrilled to be here. Maybe this time, I'll finally get to go to the prom!” Nancy Allen

A 70s Queer Prom will precede Carrie

Before the Carrie screening, Queer Screams will host a live, in-person 70s Queer Prom. The event will invite promgoers to dance to a DJ spinning vinyl and mark the night with a photo booth.

The prom theme draws a direct line to Carrie, where prom becomes the setting for one of horror cinema’s most famous and devastating scenes. At Queer Screams, that image gets reframed as a community event built around celebration, music, and queer joy.

A portion of the proceeds from the event will benefit WeSPARK Cancer Support Center, a nonprofit organization that provides support services for people affected by cancer.

The prom adds a participatory event to the festival schedule, giving attendees more than a screening. It turns a horror milestone into a shared night out, one that nods to the film’s legacy while making room for people who may not have had a safe or welcoming prom experience the first time around.

Queer horror remains at the center of the festival

The 2026 guest announcements reflect the festival’s broader mission. Queer Screams is not simply placing LGBTQ+ audiences in front of horror films. It is centering queer artists, queer readings, queer fandom, and queer community within genre cinema.

That matters because genre stories have long used monsters, ghosts, aliens, doubles, witches, vampires, and final girls to explore what society fears or rejects. For queer viewers and creators, those images can carry an added charge. They can speak to being watched, misread, punished, hidden, transformed, or finally seen.

By honoring Bryan Fuller and welcoming Nancy Allen, Queer Screams 2026 brings together contemporary queer genre television, new filmmaking, and a cornerstone of 1970s horror cinema. The result is a festival announcement built around both legacy and participation.

The fourth annual Queer Screams is set for August 14-16, 2026, at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland. With Fuller, Dust Bunny, Allen, Carrie, and a 70s Queer Prom already confirmed, the festival is shaping its next edition around queer horror history, community memory, and the enduring thrill of gathering in the dark.

Get more information at https://queerscreams.com