For those of us that live outside Los Angeles (particularly outside the West Coast) and have always yearned for the kind of outrageous programming put on by Beyond Fest every year, the genre festival has great news: they’re expanding! The country’s largest genre film festival announced today that a new Midwest arm of the festival will now take place in Chicago, beginning next year.
The inaugural four day celebration will take place from April 2-5, 2026, offering exactly the same kinds of high-energy premieres, repertory screenings, and celebrations of global and local cinema as the original Los Angeles festival. The Chicago arm of Beyond Fest will be hosted at the city’s historic Music Box Theatre, which opened in 1929 in Lakeview and has championed independent, foreign, and classic cinema for nearly one hundred years.
“Since its inception, Beyond Fest has existed in service of film fans and filmmakers that are obsessively passionate about film,” said Beyond Fest founder Christian Parkes. “This passion isn’t something that resides exclusively in Los Angeles; for decades, Music Box Theatre has fostered and entertained some of the best audiences in the world. It’s going to be electric, having our worlds collide.”
Beyond Chicago marks the first geographic expansion of the festival since its founding in 2013, and submissions for the festival are now open through FilmFreeway, with filmmakers from the Chicago, midwest, and Great Lakes regions especially encouraged to bring their “wildest, weirdest, and most uncompromising visions” to the table.
“The Music Box has always been a home for bold, visionary cinema,” said Music Box Theatre owner Brody Sheldon. “Partnering with Beyond Fest means bringing that energy to a new generation of filmmakers and fans — the ones who make this city’s film scene the loudest, smartest, and most passionate in the country.”
More information about the inaugural Beyond Chicago festival will arrive in 2026.
