"We really believe a theater is the heartbeat of a town," Erika Moss, vice president of Filmanthropy and Education at the Telluride Film Festival, told KOTO this August, speaking about the Nugget Building at the corner of Main and Fir. In ten days the 17th Telluride Horror Show opens without that theater. Its films will play in a high school auditorium, a black box theater, the opera house, and a library program room. Only the library room is free. It seats 60.
That small room shapes the October 16 to 18 weekend for anyone in town who wants to see some of the festival without buying a pass. The empty space on Main Street is why the room exists in its current role.
The Seat the Festival Is Holding Open
The festival's 2026 venue page still lists the Nugget Theatre, but only to say that its "longtime venue and local movie theater, is still closed for renovations," and that the Horror Show "will return to the Nugget when it reopens."
The building has a long history in that location. It went up in 1892 as L.L. Nunn's First National Bank of Telluride. Since then it has held offices, retail, and a movie theater. The Telluride Film Festival has operated the Nugget Movie Theater since 1998 and bought the whole building in 2021. The building has been closed since 2024. The Telluride Daily Planet reported that demolition, tuck pointing, and structural reinforcement ran from October 2024 to July 2025. By KOTO's August 3, 2026 report, the site had "sat seemingly still for months, with only the south and east exterior walls remaining standing," before construction started again.
Brandt Garber, the festival's production manager, described the work as "scratch and sniff," because "you don't know until you get in." He said the interior "really wasn't salvageable to be able to sustain the development proposed." In August he described the current work: "They're drilling micropiles, there's excavation going on, and the foundation shortly."
So the Horror Show has to fit its weekend into other rooms.
Five Rooms, One Walk
The festival says every 2026 venue is in Telluride and within walking distance of the others, and that venues are subject to change. The rooms are:
- Palm Theatre, 587 seats, at Telluride High School a few blocks from downtown. This is the largest venue.
- Sheridan Opera House, 230 seats, built in 1913 and next to the courthouse on Main Street. The festival calls it "the heart of the festival" and tells guests to look for its gargoyle mascot.
- "The Blob," 120 seats. This is the black box theater next door to the Palm, which the festival renames for the weekend.
- "Horror Vault," 60 seats, in the program room at Wilkinson Public Library downtown. It hosts the free screenings.
- Telluride Elks Lodge, in the historic Swede-Finn Hall a couple of blocks from downtown and the Palm. It hosts events, not film screenings.
The four screening rooms seat 997 people in total. The Horror Vault holds about 6 percent of those seats, and every film officially listed for it is free.
The Free Showtimes in the Vault
The festival schedule marks four films in the Horror Vault as free admission, and one of them plays twice.
- Friday, October 16, 2:10 PM: Blood & Guts
- Friday, October 16, 4:20 PM: Willow Creek
- Saturday, October 17, 3:10 PM: Night of the Demon
- Sunday, October 18, 9:50 AM: Black Zombie
- Sunday, October 18, 12:30 PM: Blood & Guts, second showing
Black Zombie is a documentary. Night of the Demon is a 1980 film and one of several Bigfoot-themed titles in this year's program. Willow Creek also plays in the Vault on Friday afternoon, so the Bigfoot theme runs through the free slate as well as the paid screens.
One Vault title is an exception. Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson plays in the Horror Vault at 12:30 PM on Saturday, but the schedule does not label that showing as free admission. Its Sunday 12:30 PM showing is at The Blob. The official listings don't say whether Vault screenings need an RSVP. With 60 seats and a festival crowd in town, arriving early is the safest approach. The festival notes that times, films, events, and guests are subject to change.
The Paid Door Has a Line Order
Every other screen runs on a line order. The festival sells three ways in. A 3-Day Pass covers most of the festival and includes special events open only to pass holders. A 6-Pack gives six individual tickets that let the holder "stand in line with 3-Day pass holders at the venues." Single tickets are sold at each venue's door just before showtime, "but only after 3-Day Pass and 6-Pack holders have been admitted and seats are still available."
All passes and tickets are non-refundable, and 3-Day Passes are non-transferable.
A single ticket depends on how many seats are left in the room. In the 587-seat Palm, more seats may be left after pass holders go in than in the 120-seat Blob. The Vault is the one room where the line order doesn't apply to the films marked free.
What Fills the Other Rooms
The festival published its full lineup on October 6. The schedule shows where the larger events will land.
The centerpiece film, River, plays at the Palm on Saturday at 12:40 PM. Victorian Psycho is the closing-night film. On Sunday at 12:30 PM, FANGORIA's Meredith Borders joins director Ernest Dickerson at the Palm to talk about First In Fright: The FANGORIA Compendium, along with a screening of his 1995 film Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight. Fango's BJ Colangelo and Brian W. Collins and Bloody Disgusting's Meagan Navarro are also guest hosts this year.
The Elks Lodge hosts the festival's literary program. This year's guest writers are Nat Cassidy, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, Eric LaRocca, and CJ Leede, with longtime host Jeremy Robert Johnson. A conversation with Due, Cassidy, and Johnson is at the Lodge Friday at 2:30 PM. On Saturday the Lodge hosts a horror book fair and signing with the guest authors. The Secret Horror Society meets there Sunday at 12:30 PM.
The Sheridan Opera House shows most of the shorts and many of the Colorado premieres. Erie opens Friday's Sheridan program at 1:50 PM, paired with Sorrow Doesn't Sleep At Night. This year's nearly forty shorts are grouped into blocks named after vintage horror comics, including Chamber of Horror, Forbidden Worlds, Sinister Stories, and Weird-Ass Tales. One of the shorts is a 30th-anniversary screening of Season's Greetings, which introduced Sam from Trick 'r Treat. The "Forbidden Worlds" block plays the Sheridan Sunday at 12:30 PM.
What Comes Back on Main and Fir
If the Film Festival meets its goal, the Horror Show will be moving back into a very different building. Moss described the theater as "this beautiful, fully remodeled venue," being built with Dolby, Meyer Sound, Harkness, and Salter. The retail space will return, shared with nonprofit organizations, and the upstairs offices will be used by the festival and the community. A new building behind it, the Luddy House, named for festival founder Tom Luddy, will house artists and filmmakers in residence "year-round, many weekends throughout the year, not just during the Telluride Film Festival," and they will program the theater. The roof is planned as an education pavilion with a commercial kitchen.
The project also includes employee housing and will be an all-electric building. It received a $1.5 million award through the Colorado Community Revitalization Tax Credit. Moss also explained why the festival wants a permanent home. During the film festival, it runs what she called a "space chase" to find offices for each part of the operation, "and that's been getting very difficult."
The Telluride Film Festival aims to open the Nugget Building by 2027. Until then, the Horror Vault at Wilkinson Public Library has free seats on Friday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning.
Lars Carlson has lived in Telluride since the late 1980s, and he follows what is happening at the Nugget site and the town's other historic buildings because these projects affect how the town works year-round. If you would like to talk about how projects at Main and Fir and elsewhere in the historic district relate to a property you own or are considering, Lars Carlson is available. Request a confidential consultation.
