Guides · Wed 28 Oct 2026
Golden Horse 2026: the festival fortnight and awards night in Taipei
The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival runs from Friday 6 to Sunday 22 November 2026 in cinemas across Taipei, and closes with the 63rd Golden Horse Awards at Taipei Music Center on the final night. How the festival's three parts fit together, and how to plan a film trip around awards weekend.
The short answer: The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2026 runs from Friday 6 to Sunday 22 November 2026, with screenings in cinemas across Taipei. It closes on Sunday 22 November with the 63rd Golden Horse Awards ceremony at Taipei Music Center in Nangang. The festival is the public part of a longer season: the Golden Horse Film Academy has been running since Monday 19 October, and the Film Project Promotion sits inside the final week, from Tuesday 17 to Thursday 19 November. All of those dates come from the festival itself, and all are confirmed.
What the festival is
The Golden Horse Awards are the leading honours for Chinese language cinema, and the festival that carries their name is the fortnight in which the nominated films, and a wider programme around them, screen to the public in Taipei. The shape matters for planning: for most of the fortnight this is a working film festival, with audiences moving between cinemas across the city, and the awards ceremony is the single night at the end of it, not the whole event. A visitor who comes only for the glamour of the last night misses the part that is actually open to them, which is two weeks of screenings.
The three parts, in order
The Golden Horse Film Academy, the festival's programme for emerging filmmakers, runs from 19 October to 22 November 2026, so it is already under way as the festival opens. The festival screenings themselves run 6 to 22 November. Inside the final week, the Golden Horse Film Project Promotion, the festival's industry meetings for films in development, runs from Tuesday 17 to Thursday 19 November; it is a trade programme rather than a public one, but its presence explains why Taipei's film world is in town, and busy, in awards week. Then, on the closing night, the awards.
Awards night: Sunday 22 November
The 63rd Golden Horse Awards ceremony takes place on Sunday 22 November 2026 at Taipei Music Center, the concert hall complex in Nangang in the east of the city. The nominated films screen during the festival before the ceremony, which sets the natural shape of a film trip: arrive in the final week, see the nominated work while it is on cinema screens, and let the ceremony close the trip, watched from the city that hosted the fortnight. For visitors, the screenings are the way in; the ceremony itself is the industry's night, and the festival programme is where a trip should be built.
Tickets and planning
Festival screenings are ticketed. Our calendar carries no ticket price for the festival, because the festival publishes its own programme and ticket arrangements, and those are the ones to plan against: the official site, goldenhorse.org.tw, carries the programme as it is released. Two practical points follow. First, the final week is the peak: screenings of nominated films in the days before the ceremony are the seats that go first, so a trip aimed at awards weekend should be booked around the programme as soon as it appears, not on arrival. Second, awards weekend is not happening in an empty city. Christmasland in New Taipei City opens on Friday 13 November, so the same weekend offers Banqiao's lights after a day in the cinemas, and Taipei's hotels serve both crowds at once.
| Part | Dates | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Golden Horse Film Academy | Monday 19 October to Sunday 22 November 2026 | Taipei, the festival's filmmaker programme |
| Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival | Friday 6 to Sunday 22 November 2026 | Cinemas across Taipei |
| Golden Horse Film Project Promotion | Tuesday 17 to Thursday 19 November 2026 | The festival's industry programme |
| 63rd Golden Horse Awards | Sunday 22 November 2026 | Taipei Music Center, Nangang |
More film and arts listings are under arts and culture, and the Taipei city guide covers the rest of the month in the capital.
Sources: the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival's official site and official channel, goldenhorse.org.tw, for the festival dates of 6 to 22 November 2026, the Film Academy dates of 19 October to 22 November, the Film Project Promotion dates of 17 to 19 November, and the 63rd Golden Horse Awards on 22 November 2026 at Taipei Music Center. Checked 27 October 2026.
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