Halloween Wars Season 16: Air Time, Judges, the $30,000 Prize and the Full Sunday Schedule

Food Network's oldest Halloween franchise is back on Sunday nights, and this time nobody in the room is new. Season 16 is an all-stars run — every carver, sugar artist and cake decorator on the floor has competed here before.

Here is the season on one screen, then the answers to the things people actually search for.

Checked Saturday, Sept. 19: Food Network and TVmaze both list six hours, through “Final Four” on Oct. 18. Rotten Tomatoes' season page carries a seventh, “The Final Fright” on Oct. 25, with the $30,000 on it — that is one listing and neither Food Network nor TVmaze has it, so we have left the row marked expected rather than locked. We update this table the day a listing appears.

Every title this season carries the prefix “Back from the Dead:” on the listings; we have trimmed it so the rows stay readable. Seven Sundays, finishing six days before Halloween.

What time is Halloween Wars on?

Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Food Network, one hour. Only the season premiere ran two hours; every episode after it keeps the single hour.

Set the recorder to run a few minutes long anyway. Competition hours on this network have a habit of finishing past the top of the hour, and the episode list above tells you which Sunday you are on.

Who hosts, and who judges?

Jonathan Bennett hosts again. Shinmin Li and Andrew Fuller judge, and they are the two who decide which team leaves each week.

That panel is the smallest of any Halloween show on the network this month. Next door on Monday, Halloween Baking Championship puts three judges in front of ten solo bakers. Here it is two judges in front of teams of three, which changes the arithmetic of a bad night: one weak component on a showpiece can sink two people who did their part.

What is the prize?

$30,000 to the winning team, split between its members. That is the largest purse of the network's Halloween slate — the baking championship's champion takes $25,000, and takes it alone.

How does the premiere work?

Two rounds. It opened with head-to-head battles, which is unusual for this show — normally everyone builds against the same brief. Teams that lost their duel dropped into a second round the network calls Do or Die, and one team went home out of that.

So a former champion can go out in night one. That is the hook of an all-stars season, and it is why the opener carried more weight than a normal premiere.

Who is competing?

Returning teams of three: a pumpkin carver, a cake artist and a sugar artist each. Food Network's own competitor gallery names the all-star lineup as Poisonous Perfection, Skeletons, Boo Crew, Blood Suckers, Ghoul'd, Fright Squad, Creepers and Howlers, with faces from past seasons scattered across them.

One caution before you go looking for a bracket: the network's season announcement described the field as seven teams while its gallery lists eight names. We are not going to guess which count is right; the gallery is the fuller list of the two.

Where can I stream it?

Episodes land on HBO Max the day after they air. There is no same-night streaming outside a live TV package that carries Food Network — the options, and which one is cheapest if Food Network is the only channel you want, are in our Food Network streaming guide.

If you are catching up rather than watching live, the day-after window is the one to know: a Sunday episode is on HBO Max by Monday evening, which is also when the baking championship is airing.

Is it worth watching if I only like the baking shows?

Depends on what you watch for. Halloween Wars is a sculpture show that happens to use sugar — the carving and the armature work get as much screen time as anything edible. If the appeal of this genre is technique and taste, Monday is the better night.

If it is spectacle, this is the bigger swing of the two. Nothing else on the network's fall slate looks like a nine-foot sugar creature late on a Sunday night.

How does it fit the rest of the week?

Neatly, for once. Sunday is Halloween Wars, Monday is the baking championship, and Wednesday is MasterChef — we keep the running answer on who won MasterChef season 16. The full grid is in next week's schedule, and the season-long version lives in our fall lineup.

Thursdays stay empty until Hell's Kitchen opens its 25th season. Until then, Sunday is the appointment.

Quick answers

When does Halloween Wars season 16 premiere? Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network, as a two-hour episode.

How many episodes are there? Six are locked, every Sunday from Sept. 13 through “Final Four” on Oct. 18. A seventh on Oct. 25 shows up on Rotten Tomatoes as “The Final Fright”; Food Network has not listed it, so treat that one as expected.

Who won last season? Season 15 wrapped in October 2025 — Poisonous Perfection took that $25,000, and all three of them are back here. This all-stars field is drawn from winners and near-misses across the run, which the premiere introduces team by team.

Is Halloween Wars on Netflix? No. It is a Food Network original, and next-day streaming is on HBO Max. Netflix's cooking slate is on our streaming competitions page.

Sources

• Food Network — premiere date, two-hour running time, host, judges, $30,000 prize, next-day HBO Max streaming
• Food Network — the all-star team names
• Halloween Daily News — premiere format, head-to-head battles and the Do or Die round
• Rotten Tomatoes — season 16 episode titles and dates, including the Oct. 25 finale
• Listings data via TVmaze — episode numbers and air times through Oct. 18

Elsewhere on this desk — the Food Network competitions hub, the MasterChef page, and the carving and cake tools we have actually gone and priced in knives and pans seen on air. Our sister sites Reality On Air and Game Show On Air run the same Sunday-night grid for their own corners of the schedule.

By the Kitchen On Air desk · Updated Sept. 28, 10:12 a.m. ET