ESO Witches Festival 2026: Oct. 21 at 10 a.m. ET to Nov. 4, with double XP, Plunder Skulls and the new Zhekleg style

Tamriel’s Halloween is back for two weeks, with double XP from the first minute. Here’s when the ESO Witches Festival 2026 runs, how to start it and which bosses drop the style pages you want.

When is the ESO Witches Festival 2026?

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, at 10 a.m. ET until Wednesday, Nov. 4, according to ZeniMax Online Studios. The start was 7 a.m. PT, 3 p.m. in London and 4 p.m. in Paris and Berlin. ZeniMax lists Nov. 4 as the last day and hasn’t posted an end hour.

The festival lines up with ESO Season Two, Echoes of Skyrim, which started at 1 p.m. ET the same day with free solo dungeons and a new Tamriel Tome. Our ESO Season 2 release time page covers what the season adds.

How to start the Witches Festival. Pick up The Witchmother’s Bargain, the event’s introductory quest. It’s in the Quest Starters section of the Crown Store, or you can get it at Olyve’s Brewery in Glenumbra, Stonefalls or Auridon. If you finished it in a past year, you don’t need to do it again.

The quest rewards the Witchmother’s Whistle, a collectible in your Collections menu. Use it to summon a brew cauldron, drink from it and your character turns into a ghastly skeleton.

Two Witches Festival daily quests run once a day per character. Plucking the Crow is built for small groups and rewards Dremora Plunder Skull, Crowborne Horror. The Lord of Fear is built for large groups and rewards Dremora Plunder Skull, Lord Hollowjack.

Both skulls hold the same rewards as other Dremora Plunder Skulls, plus an extremely rare jackpot with every outfit style page for the Zhekleg or Dremora style.

Plunder Skulls and which bosses drop what. Everything you do earns a 100% XP bonus, and bosses pay out skulls. The first time each day you kill each type of boss, you get a legendary Dremora Plunder Skull and 300 Trade Bars. Every later kill of that boss type that day drops an epic Plunder Skull. With the two daily quests, that’s up to 10 legendary skulls a day.

The boss type decides which Dremora style page a legendary skull can hold:

• Arena final bossesBows or legs.
• Invasion bossesDaggers or gloves.
• Delve bossesStaves or belts.
• Dungeon final bossesHelmets or maces.
• Public dungeon bossesShields or boots.
• Trial final bossesSwords or chests.
• World bossesShoulders or axes.
• Tho’at ReplicanumIn the Infinite Archive: any weapon.

Legendary skulls also drop the new Zhekleg style pages, Glenmoril Wyrd treasure maps and style pages and Witchy Writs, which reward Hollowjack style pages. Epic skulls hold Witches Festival motif items, alchemy reagents, furnishings and recipes.

The Impresario opens shop for Trade Bars for the whole event. The vendor stocks rewards from past Witches Festivals, including the Crowborn Hunter, Soulspun Wicker and Grave Dancer outfit styles, and every Sanguine-themed collectible fragment released in 2026.

That includes the first fragment of the Grotto of Desires, an upcoming Sanguine-themed home, all three fragments of the Roseblood Bat pet, the Roseblood Wings recall customization and the Thorn’s Bite Withersteed mount.

The Witches Festival is one of several Halloween events running in late October. Pokémon GO’s Halloween event starts on Oct. 27, as our Pokémon GO Halloween 2026 page explains, and for the next main Elder Scrolls game, see our Elder Scrolls 6 release date page.

This page is updated as soon as ZeniMax Online Studios posts the end time on Nov. 4 or adds rewards to the Witches Festival.