The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is a performing arts festival that takes place in Edinburgh every August.
For three weeks, the city welcomes thousands of performers from around the world and across all genres, as well as arts industry professionals, journalists and critics who revel in one of the greatest celebrations of the performing arts on the planet.
The Fringe is an open-access festival, which means that there is no centralised selection process and the festival as a whole is not programmed or curated (though individual venues choose which shows they want to programme). Instead, it is down to the artists and the venues to create the programme. A Fringe venue can be anywhere, from existing theatres and concert halls to repurposed spaces like bars, parks, buses and shipping containers.
The Edinburgh Fringe is the world's largest arts marketplace: around 3,500 shows register each year, across 300 venues, featuring everyone from household names to emerging experimental artists. More than 1,800 arts industry professionals from across the arts and screen sectors, together with around 900 media, visit the Fringe to discover talent, book work and network with peers from across the globe.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society is the organisation that was founded by artists to nurture and uphold the Fringe's values of inclusivity, experimentation and imagination. We don’t produce or select any shows; instead, we’re here to support artists to come to the Fringe, to help audiences navigate the festival, and to celebrate the Fringe and what it stands for all over the world.
- Read more about the story of the Fringe and the Fringe Society.
