Celebrities from top shows including Love Island, Hollyoaks and The Traitors swapped the red carpet for the horror maze as fright night Screamfest celebrated its 15th anniversary with its biggest event yet.
The celebrity-filled opening night at the National Forest Adventure Farm near Burton upon Trent marked the launch of Screamfest’s 2026 season and its brand-new horror attraction, Cortex 17, one of seven attractions on site.
Love Island duo Olivia and Alex Bowen, who met on series 2 of Love Island UK, were among the celebrities who attended, and were joined by Reece Ward, who appeared in the third series of BBC reality show The Traitors.
After taking on Hellcatraz, the park’s most intense scare maze, Reece said: “Honestly such an experience, you come here to be scared and I’m on the edge of my seat no matter where I look…My voice has gone I’ve just been screaming.”
Other stars attending included Love Islanders Reuben Collins and Ethan Ellis, The Traitors’ star Leon Jackman, Paigey Cakey star of the Netflix hit-series Sidemen Outside, Love is Blind’s Jordan Taylor and Married at First Sight’s Adam Nightingale.
Soap stars braving the scares also included Waterloo Road’s Liam Scholes and Summer Violet Bird plus Hollyoaks’ Anya Lawrence.
Screamfest started at the National Forest Adventure Farm in 2011.
This year’s event is its largest yet, with six scare mazes and a trailer tractor paintball experience AREA 52 set in an alien apocalypse.
New attraction Cortex 17 sees guests volunteer for Project Eidolon, a clinical trial exploring the potential to unlock dormant psychic abilities. Set within a covert 1960s hospital, volunteers are administered Cortex 17 before making their way through the facility, witnessing the wide-ranging side effects of the experiment as they unfold.
Ivor Robinson, who runs Screamfest with his brother Tom, said: “To mark 15 years of Screamfest we wanted to do something a bit different, and our red-carpet opening has definitely started off the season with a bang.
“When we first started Screamfest we could never have imagined we would be here today welcoming over 30,000 guests year on year. It makes all the hard work worthwhile to hear the laughter, screams and thrills each night. This year we have our biggest event yet with new scare maze Cortex 17 spread out across a whopping 440 square metres.
“As the attraction continues to grow, we look forward to seeing where the next 15 years will take us.”
The adult-only fright night Screamfest runs for 14 nights throughout October.
For tickets and more information, follow this link.
- Screamfest recently won the UK Theme Parks silver award for this year’s best scream park. Read that story here.
