👻 Known for: Outrageous costumes, over-the-top nightlife and one of the country’s biggest Halloween street parties
🎃 Don’t miss: The West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval, spooky rooftop movies and Halloween parties along the Sunset Strip
West Hollywood doesn’t save Halloween for one night. Throughout October, the city leans into spooky season with themed pop-up bars, horror movies under the stars, costume parties, bar crawls, masquerades and Halloween events at hotels, restaurants and nightlife venues.
But everything builds toward the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval, when a mile-long stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard closes to traffic and fills with more than 100,000 costumed revelers. It’s one of those events where watching the crowd is half the entertainment.
And these aren’t your average last-minute Halloween costumes. Expect enormous wigs, elaborate makeup, pop-culture parodies, barely-there outfits and creations that look like they took months to build. Add live music, DJs and the anything-goes atmosphere of West Hollywood’s Rainbow District, and the entire neighborhood becomes part of the party.
You can also spend an October night watching horror movies from a rooftop overlooking the city, order Halloween cocktails inside a bar temporarily transformed into something much creepier or head to the legendary Sunset Strip, where clubs, hotels and entertainment venues get in on the Halloween madness.
And if you want even more scares, West Hollywood makes a great base for exploring the rest of Los Angeles’ enormous Halloween scene, including Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights.
Some destinations celebrate Halloween with a few special events. West Hollywood turns October into an excuse to make an already outrageous nightlife scene even wilder.
✨ Pro Tip: The Halloween Carnaval is open to the public, but organizers recommend leaving kids and pets at home. The enormous crowds and sometimes risqué costumes make this one better suited to adults.
