As has been expected, San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ film festival, Frameline, is going to return to its old home at the Castro Theatre in 2026, and this will be for Frameline 50, marking 50 years of the world’s oldest queer film fest.
Frameline made the announcement Thursday morning, confirming that Frameline 50 will take place from June 17 to June 27, and while it will be happening across multiple venues, the festival has long used the grand Castro Theatre as its home base for opening and closing night screenings.
“It’s official,” festival organizers announced. “We can’t wait to celebrate 50 years of independent queer media, so pencil in Frameline50’s dates and join us in the Castro and across the Bay Area this Pride Month for a first-of-its-kind milestone.”
Frameline held its first festival screenings in 1977, and began using the Castro Theatre as its hub in 1981. And for filmmakers, the submission window for this year’s festival opened today, with an early-bird deadline of November 21, and a regular deadline of January 26.
There was plenty of consternation among neighborhood denizens and lovers of the Castro Theatre that Another Planet Entertainment (APE) would not let the theater be used very regularly for movie screenings after its $41 million renovation was complete — and after the orchestra-level seating was removed. But APE has pledged to use many of the theater’s unprogrammed nights, when no concerts are scheduled, to show films there, and removable seating is reportedly part of the renovation.
APE took over management of the theater, which is still owned by the family of its founders, the Nasser family, in January 2022.
But, it was always assumed that Frameline would return to using the theater — likely along with other annual film fests, like the Silent Film Festival, Jewish Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, all of which have been displaced the past two years.
Frameline has used theaters like the Roxie and Oakland’s Parkway in earlier years, and the past two years has also held screenings at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio, and elsewhere.
“The Castro, as a neighborhood, is a vital part of Frameline’s legacy and, over the last few years, we’ve formed incredible partnerships with other San Francisco theaters too,” says Frameline Executive Director Allegra Madsen, speaking to the Chronicle. “On the whole, we’re looking forward to celebrating in-person movie-going and five decades of queer film history throughout the Bay Area.”
While we await a more fleshed-out programming schedule for the theatre between March and June, and in July and beyond, we know that the theater will be occupied by an extended residency featuring Grammy winner Sam Smith, who will be performing on 20 dates between February 10 and March 14.