Halloween has become big business. Now Fanta wants a permanent place in it.
The Coca-Cola Company’s fruit-flavored soda brand is expanding its Halloween marketing into what it calls the Haunted Fanta Universe, a campaign built around original monster characters, collectible packaging, digital experiences and seasonal promotions.
The move represents something larger than another Halloween label slapped on a soda bottle.
Fanta is attempting to create a recurring entertainment world that can return each Halloween, giving the brand its own characters and mythology rather than relying entirely on established horror properties.
The 2026 campaign introduces four original spooky characters created in collaboration with GRAiL, a studio that works with artificial-intelligence-assisted creative production. The monsters appear across themed cans and a horror-style promotional campaign designed to encourage consumers to interact with the characters online.
The official Fanta campaign also includes collectible rewards, digital experiences activated through product packaging and Halloween-themed prizes. Coca-Cola’s U.S. site describes the promotion as “a new world” emerging from the shadows, with the campaign continuing through November 1.
The strategy follows Fanta’s major 2025 Halloween campaign, when the company partnered with Universal and Blumhouse properties and placed characters including Chucky, M3GAN, Freddy Fazbear, Michael Myers and The Grabber on its packaging.
Those partnerships brought recognizable horror characters to the soda aisle.
This time, Fanta is trying to create characters of its own.
Business Insider reports that the company sees Halloween as an opportunity to build the kind of long-running seasonal association that its parent brand Coca-Cola developed with Christmas. That does not mean consumers will necessarily embrace Fanta as a permanent Halloween tradition, but it clearly shows where the company wants to go.
The approach also reflects a larger change in Halloween retail.
Companies are increasingly treating the season as an entertainment platform instead of simply a period for selling limited-edition products. Stores become attractions. Products unlock digital experiences. Mascots receive backstories. Seasonal marketing begins earlier and lasts longer.
Halloween is no longer confined to the final weeks of October.
For Fanta, that creates an opportunity to build something that can be revived every year.
Whether the Haunted Fanta Universe becomes an enduring piece of Halloween culture remains to be seen.
But the company is no longer simply putting monsters on cans.
It is trying to build a world around them.