Every year, the internet waits for one costume. Not a film premiere, not a red carpet gown. Heidi Klum's Halloween look. And on Saturday night, she delivered something nobody guessed: a hand.
A hand. A really big hand.
According to USA Today, Klum arrived at her annual Halloween party on 31 October as "a life-sized severed manicured hand". Her legs formed two of the fingers. The nails were painted red, the fingers wore gold rings, and at the wrist, right where her face poked out, there was a gory gash with extra prosthetics.
The Hollywood Reporter and Variety ran the same reveal: a severed human hand. It's a costume that is horrifying and elegant at the same time. Only Heidi could make a wound look freshly manicured.
Fair point from the party: she did ask for a big hand, and she got one.
The clues were there
For weeks, Klum played her favourite game: teasing. In a September interview she promised a look that was "very, very bloody". On 24 October she posted close-ups of colourful prosthetic pieces, and fans thought they looked like coral, brains or intestines. Hola and IBTimes collected the wildest theories, from a monster in the film The Substance to the zombies from The Last of Us.
Two days before the party, she gave USA Today one last clue: "My body is going to fit in a shape that normally a human body would not fit in." Looking back, that's exactly what a hand does. Nobody got it.
Even Forbes, writing hours before the reveal, guessed she'd be "some sort of bloody creature full of boils". Close on the blood. Wrong on the boils.
25 years of scaring New York
This was a milestone year. Klum's Halloween party turned 25, and over the years she's been a worm, an alien, Princess Fiona from Shrek and, last year, Medusa. USA Today reports the 2026 party took place at Cathédrale in New York. Forbes says the red carpet was expected to start at 9 p.m. local time.
The model and TV host, who is 53, says she always spends more time getting ready than actually partying, because the prosthetics take hours. Which is the most relatable thing a supermodel has ever said: getting dressed took longer than the party.
The toughest critics: kids
Just before the party, Yahoo Entertainment asked 15 children, aged 2 to 11, to rate Heidi's most famous costumes. The winner with the little ones was her 2018 Princess Fiona from Shrek. The 2022 giant worm got the most "ew". Honestly, both reactions are exactly what she was going for.
The sad bit: no Tom
Every recent year, her husband Tom Kaulitz, guitarist of the German band Tokio Hotel, has joined her in a matching costume. Last year he was turned to stone next to her Medusa. This year, he wasn't there.
"My husband is actually not going to be here because he's on tour sadly," she told Entertainment Tonight, as quoted by USA Today. "He's going to miss the biggest party of the year." She added that the look "would have worked well as a couples costume". We can only imagine: a matching left hand? A giant thumbs-up?
Why we care
Because it's pure fun. No scandal, no fight, just a woman who has spent a quarter of a century treating Halloween like the Olympics. Klum herself likes the mystery best. "I find it more fun when you don't know anything at all," she said before the party.
So, our tip if you're still thinking about next year: start now. Heidi probably already has.