Halloween 2026 in VR: Every Event, Update and Launch With a Date on It

Phasmophobia's Halloween event started yesterday and runs to November 1. VRChat's horror showcase opens a week from today, Valve's Halloween sale has a start date, and Meta's does not.

Nearly all of October's VR calendar is already public, scattered across patch notes, store update feeds, a contest rules page and one Steamworks table. Here it is in date order. Every entry was checked on October 9 at the developer's or the platform's own page, and the one date that comes from somewhere else says so.

Already running

Since October 2: Gorilla Tag. Another Axiom's Halloween update put the decorations back up, added a cosmetic set called Bare Bones and brought back Ghost Tag. The post gives no end date. Gorilla Tag is free on Quest and Steam.

October 8 to November 1: Phasmophobia, Crimson Eye. Kinetic Games' event post names eight locations that turn red under the Blood Moon: 6 Tanglewood Drive, 42 Edgefield Road, 13 Willow Street, Grafton Farmhouse, Bleasdale Farmhouse, Camp Woodwind, Nell's Diner and the standard version of Point Hope. Play an investigation on any of them and you earn event points. You also hunt for Blood Moon totems, and the event weather makes the ghosts harder. Points unlock a seasonal tee, an ID card and badge set, a charm, and a trophy that upgrades as you go. Would you rather skip all of it? Wednesday's patch added a toggle that turns the event maps off for your session.

Phasmophobia plays flat or in VR on Steam and on PS5 with a PS VR2. There is no Quest version. On a Steam Frame, Valve's rating is still Unsupported for standalone play, from a test dated July 22, before Kinetic replaced the VR character rig in August.

October 8: two launches. Shil, a surreal first-person puzzle game with enemies you cannot see, arrived on Quest at $14.99. And Into the Radius 2 reached PS VR2 at $39.99, on the date CM Immersive moved it to after a certification delay.

Next week

Tuesday, October 13: Real VR Fishing. Not horror at all. Devs United Games says its October update brings five Halloween maps, three of them new, with one new fish for each. The Zombie Shark and Haunted Goblin Shark return from earlier years. Five pumpkin costumes, two rod sets and a title are earned by playing, "no purchase required." The same update adds hand tracking with a built-in tutorial. It also adds an early ice fishing mode for mixed reality, the view where you see your real room through the headset's cameras, and in that mode your own floor turns into ice. The post sits on the game's Quest listing, and UploadVR reports the same day for Steam.

Thursday, October 15: two Phasmophobia deadlines. A Twitch Drop is a reward you get in a game for watching streams of it. Phasmophobia's hands you the Crimson Eye tee for two hours of viewing, and it ends at 11:59 PM BST, which is 3:59 PM Pacific. The same day, Double XP and Rewards switches on and stays on until October 22.

Friday, October 16: Spookality goes on show. Spookality is VRChat's yearly Halloween jam, a contest where creators build worlds and avatars to a theme before a deadline. This year the theme is Camp Whispering Screams, which VRChat's announcement describes as "a tribute to 80s-style horror." Entries closed on October 1 and judging runs through the 15th. From October 16 to November 2, the twelve winning worlds are featured in a Spookality World Row inside the app, and the twelve winning avatars get a public row of their own.

Quest owners get the whole set. The official rules say worlds "MUST be cross-platform (PC, Android, and iOS)." A standalone Quest runs the Android version of VRChat, so every winning world should load on the headset with no PC involved. VRChat is free on Quest and Steam.

The last ten days

Thursday, October 22: a jam deadline. The VR IS DEAD Halloween Jam on itch.io gives developers three weeks to build a VR horror game. Fifty-seven had signed up as of October 9. Submissions close at 11:59 PM Pacific on the 22nd, and entrants then play and rate each other's games until noon Pacific on October 29. The prize for the top three teams is a title on the host's Discord server. No cash. The host, who runs the Fist Full of Shrimp YouTube channel, calls it "a laid back and fun jam meant to help beef up your development skills while helping others."

What you get out of it is a page of free, short, strange VR horror games, all of them in by the 22nd. The host's FAQ advises entrants to aim for as many headsets as possible and to consider both a PC build and an Android build. A PC build runs through SteamVR like any other game. An Android build comes as an APK, the file format a Quest installs apps from, and installing one from outside the store is called sideloading: you turn on developer mode for the headset in Meta's phone app, plug it into a computer and send the file across with a tool such as SideQuest. These are three-week builds from hobbyists, so expect rough edges, and download only from an entry's own itch.io page.

Monday, October 26: Steam Scream V, and a charity week. Valve's Steamworks event schedule lists Steam Scream V, this year's Halloween fest, from October 26 to November 2. The table gives dates and nothing about prices. It will be the first Scream with a Steam Frame out, and the list of horror games certified to run on the headset by itself is short. Over in Phasmophobia, the last week of Crimson Eye doubles as Ghost Hunts 4 Hearts, a fundraiser with the American Heart Association. Kinetic says the community raised over $100,000 last year.

Thursday, October 29: Dark Trip. Dark Trip is a gothic horror escape room from iWorlds, dated October 29 on Steam, and its store page says you can play it flat or in VR. A free demo went up on October 8 if you want to try it before then. The jam's rating period ends at noon Pacific the same day.

November 1 and 2: the end dates. Crimson Eye and Ghost Hunts 4 Hearts finish on Sunday, November 1. The Spookality showcase and Steam Scream V both run through Monday, November 2.

No date yet

Meta had not announced a Halloween sale for the Quest store on its blog when this was published. Already Dead, a fixed-camera survival horror game for PS VR2, still reads "Releases on: 2026" on the PlayStation Store. Sega's House of the Dead: Reawakened will not make Halloween at all; its reported debut is the IAAPA Expo in Orlando, November 17 to 20.

If you would rather just pick a game, the horror guide sorts the best of them by headset, and anything that gets a date after today goes into the release date tracker.