Dundee’s favourite weekend for horror, cult and weird cinema is back this May and Dundead 2026 looks like a gloriously unhinged belter.
Returning to DCA from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 May, this year’s festival promises four days of terrifying premieres, blood-soaked vintage titles and bone-chilling contemporary horror, with a line-up that feels bolder, stranger and more deliciously warped than ever.
Now in its 14th edition, Dundead has built a loyal following by doing more than just sticking a few scary films on a big screen. It has become one of the city’s coolest film events full stop the kind of festival where cult favourites, obscure gems and brand-new nightmares all get to share the same dark room.
And for 2026, the festival is adding something especially tasty.
This year, Dundead is teaming up with Invisible Women, the feminist archive activist collective, for a retrospective strand titled She’s a Maneater! Cannibalism, Consumption and Carnal Appetites. Which is, frankly, an incredible name.
The strand brings together six repertory horror films centred on women whose appetites for food, sex, power, revenge or all of the above push far beyond what polite society is usually comfortable with. The result is a gloriously gory programme that digs into horror’s long-running fascination with female hunger, desire and transgression.
From cult provocations to arthouse body horror, the retrospective includes Dumplings, Blood Diner, Santo vs Frankenstein’s Daughter, Raw, Trouble Every Day and The Velvet Vampire six films that sound like they’ll leave a fair bit of destruction in their wake.
Alongside that, Dundead’s Petrifying Premieres strand brings in six new titles selected by festival programmer Michael Coull, including two UK premieres and four Scottish premieres.
Expect supernatural dread, creepy coming-of-age stories, campy chaos and some very welcome new voices in genre cinema. The line-up includes Camp, Theater is Dead, Roqia, Buffet Infinity, Silencio and Her Will Be Done, with films arriving from Canada, the USA, Algeria, Spain and France.
So aye, there’s plenty to get your teeth into!
For anyone wanting to properly throw themselves into the madness, festival passes are available in two flavours. A Full Pass gets you into all 12 screenings and includes a festival T-shirt and print, while a Half Pass lets you pick six films and comes with the T-shirt. Both feature this year’s artwork by Agnes Xantippa Boman, which leans beautifully into the She’s a Maneater! theme.
Pass prices
Full Pass: £102
DCA Members: £96
18-25 Members: £75
Half Pass: £54
DCA Members: £51
18-25 Members: £37.50
General sale starts Friday 27 March at 10am.
DCA Members and 18-25 Members can book now, as long as they’re logged in.
Dundead has always been one of Dundee’s coolest little festivals smart, unsettling, funny, camp, grisly and full of films you probably won’t catch anywhere else in quite the same setting.
And this year, it looks hungry.
See the full programme and book at DCA.
