Bart Skellington Is Coming to Springfield in The Simpsons' Stop Motion Nightmare Before Christmas Opening
The Simpsons will open this year's Treehouse of Horror with a stop-motion Nightmare Before Christmas spoof on Oct. 25 on FOX.
Springfield is stepping into Halloween Town for this year's annual Simpsons scare special. A newly revealed stop-motion opening recasts several of the show's most familiar faces through the world of The Nightmare Before Christmas, with the sequence set to debut on FOX this Sunday.
The big change is in the opening itself. This year's Treehouse of Horror begins with a stop-motion parody of The Nightmare Before Christmas, turning Bart into Jack Skellington, Marge into Sally, Homer into Halloween Town's two-faced Mayor, and Ned Flanders into Oogie Boogie, while other recognizable Springfield residents also take on roles inspired by Tim Burton's holiday classic.
In the clip below, the intro's song plays as a spoof of This Is Halloween, with music by Bleeding Fingers. The sequence premieres with this year's Treehouse of Horror episode on Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on FOX, and viewers who miss the broadcast can stream the episode the following day on Hulu.
The special itself will feature three separate stories. They focus on Marge's marriage, a frightening adventure involving Bart and Santa's Little Helper, and Homer taking a driving lesson.
How the stop-motion intro was made
The animation was created by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the company behind Robot Chicken. Production took about three months in total, spread across preparation, filming, and post-production.
The team used hand-sculpted puppets for the characters and built the sets from cardboard and foam. Studio co-founder John Harvatine IV said the filmmakers looked to The Nightmare Before Christmas for the segment's lighting, movement, and character designs. They also shifted Springfield's usual yellow skin tones toward blue so the cast would better match the mood of the setting.
For Disney and Halloween fans, that means this year's Simpsons special is not just getting a new couch-gag style detour. It is opening with a full visual tribute built around one of the season's most recognizable movie worlds, arriving as part of the annual anthology event this weekend.
