Heidi Klum spent Halloween 2026 inside a giant severed hand, and that was only the loudest of the horror costumes celebrities wore over the weekend. Karol G walked in as the Corpse Bride, Summer Walker lip-synced as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and Jordyn Woods and Karl-Anthony Towns went out as White Walkers. The seven looks below are the ones with real genre roots, and every photo is an Instagram post from this week.
Heidi Klum Was a Severed Hand
Klum arrived at her 25th annual Halloween party in New York City on Saturday as a giant, bloody left hand, with long red nails, replicas of her own engagement and wedding rings, exposed bone at the wrist and tendons hanging off it. Only her eyes and mouth showed, and her helpers wore blood-stained hazmat suits. She captioned the reveal video “TALK TO THE HAND.”
The build came from prosthetics designer Mike Marino of Prosthetic Renaissance, Klum’s longtime collaborator, who told People it took four months to make after a year of brainstorming and that he was not initially in favor of the idea because of how hard it would be to pull off. Klum told the magazine where it started: “I was looking at my hand and I was like ‘hmm…I wonder if I could fit in a hand.’” Fans guessing in advance had landed on The Substance and Slither. Last year she went as Medusa. This one is gorier, which is the point of a Klum costume.
Karol G Was the Corpse Bride
Karol G recreated Emily, the title character of Tim Burton’s 2005 stop-motion film Corpse Bride, in a blue-hued bridal look. Helena Bonham Carter voiced Emily in the original, and of every costume on this list it is the one that reads from across a room, because the character is a silhouette and a color before she is anything else.
Janelle Monáe Built Three Creatures
Janelle Monáe runs her own Halloween party, Wondaween, and this year’s theme was Creature Carnival. She spent the weeks before it posting as “Piper the Party Starter,” a green-faced creature with one hypnotic pink eye and a top hat, then as a decomposing zombie she called the “Ghostess With the Mostess,” complete with a neck wound that spurts blood. For the party itself on October 29 in Los Angeles she debuted an original creature, the “Amazing Fish-Boy,” revealed on The Jennifer Hudson Show, with scaled skin and wandering bug eyes. One of her posts was flagged by Instagram as sensitive content. Last year she opened the season as Beetlejuice.
Summer Walker Honored Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter
Summer Walker dressed as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and posted a lip-sync to “Sweet Transvestite” as a tribute to Tim Curry, who died in August at 80. The choice of song is the right one: it is the character’s entrance in the 1975 film.
Jordyn Woods and Karl-Anthony Towns Were the Night King and a White Walker
New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns went out in Manhattan on Saturday, October 24 as the Night King from Game of Thrones, with Jordyn Woods beside him as a White Walker, in a head-to-toe prosthetic makeover. It was their first Halloween as a married couple; they wed on August 15 in Malibu. HBO posted a time-lapse of the makeup transformation.
Amaya Espinal Was Queen Akasha
Love Island USA star Amaya Espinal went as Queen Akasha, the ancient vampire Aaliyah played in 2002’s Queen of the Damned, the Anne Rice adaptation released six months after the singer’s death. It is the only costume on this list taken from an R-rated horror film.
Jordan Chiles Was Clawdeen Wolf
Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles closed the week as Clawdeen Wolf, the werewolf from Monster High, the lightest entry here and the only one drawn from a franchise made for kids.
Klum has said she starts planning the next costume as soon as the party ends, which means the 2027 reveal is already in progress.
