Lost Forty Festival of Darkness
Little Rock, Arkansas
The Festival of Darkness is Lost Forty Brewing's annual dark-beer festival and the release party for its barrel-aged Nighty Night Imperial Stout, held at the brewery in Little Rock's East Village neighborhood each fall - a Saturday in late October. It is equal parts beer festival and zombie apocalypse: costumes are encouraged, a costume contest is part of the program, and each edition carries its own theme, like 2025's Wild West-flavored Rodeo of No Return.
The pour list is the draw for beer travelers. Beyond the year's Nighty Night variants, recent editions have brought thirty to thirty-five-plus local and regional breweries, distilleries, and wineries into a beer garden of darkness on the brewery grounds, with stouts, porters, and barrel-aged pours front and center. Live music and circus performers round out the evening, and the event is 21-and-over, with proceeds in recent years benefiting local charities such as Camp Aldersgate.
The festival's origin story is pure Lost Forty: it began in 2016 as a zombie-lumberjack-themed bike ride and grew into one of Arkansas's signature beer events, reaching its eighth edition in 2025. Its host is one of the state's best-known craft breweries, named for the legendary Lost Forty tract of never-logged Arkansas forest, and the festival's dark-beer focus makes it a rare thing in the South - a serious stout festival timed to the first cool nights of the year.
This page is the permanent home of the Lost Forty Festival of Darkness on Beer.Social. When the next edition is announced we link the current dates and details here, and past editions are archived below.