REVIEW: SKVLK Fest 2026 Was a Triumph, and the Stabbing Story Was False

Disclosure: Terry Matari Bryant is the publisher of Newswire Hollywood and heads PR STARPOWER, the festival's publicist. This is a first-person review.

I was there, and SKVLK Fest 2026 was one of the best nights in Los Angeles this year. Anelise turned her 18th birthday into a full-scale Halloween music festival at the family's Thousand Oaks home, and with her father, Jamie Foxx, she put on a show the community will be talking about for a long time.

The lawns were packed with families, friends and young people from across the region. There were carnival rides, a main stage, and a VIP creator lounge where the city's creators filmed, posted and danced into the night. The children loved it. The parents loved it. Organizers put attendance at more than 25,000; the Ventura County Sheriff's Office estimated 3,000 or more.

The music matched the moment. Entertainment Weekly reported a lineup that included Offset, OhGeesy, 310babii and SuperDuperKyle, and Jamie Foxx shared videos from the night praising his daughter. The festival had been set for October 31 and moved to November 7 because of rain. Nobody seemed to mind the wait.

The story that was not true

By Sunday, a different story was racing across the internet. TMZ, citing law enforcement sources, reported that a guest had been stabbed in the neck, and dozens of outlets repeated it, some under headlines like "bloody chaos."

The festival's team says that is false. "No one was stabbed," PR STARPOWER said in an official statement. "There was no 'bloodbath' and no 'bloody chaos.'" According to the statement, two teenagers had a brief scuffle and one received a minor scratch, and Ventura County Sheriff's deputies responded.

Update, Nov. 10: The Ventura County Sheriff's Office has now confirmed it. In its official release (report RB# 26-146404), the Sheriff's Office says detectives contacted the young man on November 9 and "determined the victim was not assaulted with a knife, and the injury appears to be from a mutual combat / simple battery." A juvenile had been booked for assault with a deadly weapon based on the first reports that night. The release also describes two other altercations at the event, including a fight near the stage, and says all three investigations remain ongoing. Read the Sheriff's release.

The festival's team has asked every outlet that published the stabbing claim to correct it.

Read the full statement: prstarpower.com/statement-skvlk-fest-2026.html

Why it matters

SKVLK Fest has grown from a family Halloween party into one of the region's biggest youth culture events, built by an 18-year-old with a vision. A few fights in a crowd of thousands should not erase a night that so many people enjoyed, and the most shocking claim of all, a stabbing, was not true. The real story of SKVLK Fest 2026 is the one I saw: a community celebrating together.