Apply for Keep it Fringe funding

• Online webinar – 12:00 GMT, Friday 13 February 2026
  This seminar is a chance to learn about the fund and ask any questions you have for the Fringe Society team.
• Applications open – 12:00 GMT, Monday 16 February 2026
  The application form will be live from this date.
• One-to-one advice sessions – 16 – 20 February 2025
  Inexperienced or unconfident filling out funding applications? We’re running a limited number of 15-minute one-to-one online advice sessions for anyone who would like to chat through the fund, its criteria and how you might want to frame your application.
• Applications deadline – 12:00 GMT, Wednesday 04 March 2026
  Applications must be submitted by this deadline – we are unable to accept any late submissions.
• Fund announcements – Monday 23 March 2026
  Confirmation will be sent to all fund applicants confirming the outcome of their application.
• Initial payment – from Friday 17 April 2026
  The initial payment of £2,000 will be sent to successful applicants from this date (shows need to be registered before this payment can be made).
• Funded show registration deadline – Wednesday 03 June 2026
  Successful applicants must have registered their shows by this date to receive funding (this deadline applies only to shows receiving funding – show registration more widely is open throughout the festival).
• Second payment – October 2026
  The date from which the second payment of £500 will be distributed, following the completion of the reporting process.

Keep it Fringe is a funding opportunity for artists staging live, in-person work at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It aims to support those with professional ambitions for their work. The fund prioritises shows that capture the defiant spirit of the Fringe, and artists who face additional barriers in their creative and professional practice.

The grants are designed to help artists on their Fringe journey and can be spent on any costs associated with their show.

The total fund available to UK artists for 2026 is £30,000, made up of 12 grants of £2,500 (distributed in two instalments). We hope to secure further financial support for the programme to allow us to distribute more grants – find out more about supporting Keep it Fringe. 

• Your show must be registered for the 2026 Fringe (registration will be confirmed before funds are paid, but does not have to be completed when you apply, and you can register anytime up to and during the Fringe).
• You must be presenting live and in-person performance.
• You or the company that you represent must have a UK bank account.
• You must be a UK-based performer, or applying on behalf of a UK-based performer.
• Your project (specifically the run at Fringe if part of a larger project) must not be in receipt of any Arts Council England, Arts Council NI, Arts Council of Wales or Creative Scotland funding.

The deadlines to submit an application is 12:00 GMT on Wednesday 04 March 2026. Please ensure your application has been successfully submitted through the SmartyGrants system (you should see a confirmation screen). If you are in any doubt about whether your application has been submitted, please reach out to us as we are unable to accept any application after the deadline has passed.

Funding to shows that are already registered will be aimed to be distributed from Friday 17 April 2025. 

If your show has not been registered by 17 April, you will have until 03 June to complete your registration and receive your funds. If you don’t register by this point we reserve the right to distribute funding to another applicant .

Yes – we’ll inform all applicants of the outcome of their application, though we’re unable to offer individual in-depth feedback to unsuccessful applicants. 

The money needs to be used to support the production of your show but there’s no need to provide comprehensive budgeting information in your application – the specifics of how you spend the money are up to you. You may use the funding to offset the financial pressures of your existing budget, or to fund additional services / work relating to your show. However, good applications should set out clearly the specific ways the funding will help the show achieve its goals.

An evaluation process will take place post-festival which may seek some detail of your spend, however full budget / receipts will not be requested – in other words, it’s up to you. 

Receipts will not be required. However there will be a reporting / evaluation process which occurs post-festival and may seek some detail relating to how you used the fund. This process will also look to explore the impact of the fund on your and your show’s development. Funding of £500  is ringfenced to support admin and reporting requirements – this may be your own time or external support – and you should include how you will monitor and record your progress in your planning.  

No. We will need the details of a bank account but there is no requirement for this to be a business account. All recipients are expected to follow the correct processes in terms of taxation and other aspects of their Fringe finances but there is no requirement for any applicants to hold any specific company or charity status or confirm this detail as part of their application or funding.

Applications will be assessed by a number of external industry specialists incorporating a diverse mix of individuals and organisations from the arts sector. This includes artists, producers, venue managers, representatives from organisations with expertise in diversity and accessibility within the arts, and other Fringe stakeholders. The group of assessors will not include Fringe Society staff. Each application is scored by two separate assessors.

Once confirmed as eligible, applications will be assessed based on responses to the following three questions as set out in the form: 

1. Tell us about your show and what stage you’re at in your plans for Fringe 2026 (200 words max).
2. Tell us about your budget and how this funding will help (200 words max).
3. Tell us what you hope to achieve in Fringe 2026 and your ambitions for your show (200 words max).

Bringing a show to the Fringe is a serious consideration and comes with many complexities. While each application will be judged on its own merits, assessors will be looking for applications that show an existing level of planning. If you haven’t considered bringing a show to the Fringe up until now, you can still apply, but your application should demonstrate a good level of planning and consideration.

Our hope is to continue to offer opportunities such as Keep it Fringe in the future. However, this will depend on the financial support available for the project and is not currently confirmed. We’ll update on this as soon as we are aware. Find out more about the Fringe Society’s fundraising. 

Yes, you can apply again in 2026 if the proposed production is new, or if you can demonstrate in your application the professional development you will undertake as part of repeating the work.

We expect to receive a high volume of applications for this fund and as such are unable to factor in any additional supporting information by email or other channels, unless this has been arranged due to access requirements. 

If you are planning multiple shows at the Fringe you can submit an application for each show, but no individual applicant (person, show or company) will receive more than one award or cover multiple shows in one application. Each application should relate to one show that has been registered or will be registered by August. That said, information on connected work can still be provided as context, especially where a show is fundamentally linked to another. 

There are no restrictions on which genres are eligible to apply; however, the fund will only support shows that are presenting live and in-person performance. This means that an exhibition of visual art, for example, would be ineligible for this opportunity. 

No. Priority will be given to applications that demonstrate the greatest need; this should be taken into consideration when framing how the funding would impact your staging of single performance events or similar, for example. 

New work is work that has not been seen by large audiences and is new to the Fringe landscape – this may not be its first outing but it should be showcasing new talent, ideas or stories. Artists who have performed at the Fringe previously are still eligible to apply and where your work is in iterative development you should be able to articulate this in the form.  

For a show to be eligible, the performer on stage should currently live and, if in employment, work in the UK. If there are multiple performers on stage, the majority of these performers should be UK-based in this way for the show to be eligible. We also require any applicant to provide the details of a UK bank account. The person filling in the application does not need to be based in the UK. If you are still not sure whether you are eligible, please get in touch with [email protected]. 

We understand different people will be at different stages of planning and so there is no essential requirement for you to have confirmed a venue at the point of application. However, we will not be able to distribute funding until a venue has been confirmed and the show registered. The deadline for this to happen is 03 June 2026, after which point we reserve the right to distribute funding to another applicant. For help on finding a venue for your show, contact [email protected].

Please get in touch with us on [email protected]. We have an instalment option that can stagger the payment of the registration fee and are also happy to talk through other options if you have any concerns around this. 

Funding for Keep it Fringe UK 2024 and 2025 was awarded from UK Government, as part of a wider programme of investment in the Fringe Society.

Funding for 2026 has come from private donations, including a generous £5,000 donation from Miriam Margolyes.

Awardees will be required to include the Keep it Fringe branding on marketing and PR materials (excluding those already printed) to acknowledge the source of the funding.  

To support an effective reporting and evaluation process, two additional forms will be distributed to successful applicants following the confirmation of the fund recipients. These forms will be hosted on SmartyGrants and are detailed below. 

• Fund Recipient Confirmation Form – The link to his form will be distributed to fund recipients alongside the confirmation of their successful application. It will collect detail that will only be required of applicants who are successful (such as bank details and social media details to support the marketing of the project as a whole). This form will also capture the professional ambitions of the work being funded, which will allow for a more effective analysis of the fund’s impact.
• Post-Fringe Evaluation Form – After the festival has taken place, this form will follow up on the questions asked in the Fund Recipient Confirmation Form, to get a sense of the degree to which each artist has met the goals they identified pre-Fringe, how the fund helped them, and to better understand the overall impact of the fund. This form, as above, will be mandatory, however £500 will be distributed to the fund recipients to acknowledge the additional work required of them through this process. 
• Keep it Fringe branding – you will be expected to include the Keep it Fringe logo in any marketing materials you produce for your Fringe run, including posters, flyers and press releases. You aren't required to include this in your show registration image, or replace any marketing materials you may have already produced.

Being a student does not make you ineligible to apply for Keep it Fringe funding as an individual or as a member of an independent theatre company. However, with the fund’s focus on supporting longer-term professional goals, student societies and equivalent groups directly tied to universities / colleges will not be funded.

In 2025, Keep it Fringe US supported five US artists to perform at the Fringe with $2,500 grants. We currently have no funding in place to run the programme in 2026. We are seeking partners to help remove financial barriers for artists and continue this vital cultural exchange between the US and Scotland. Can you help us make Keep it Fringe US possible in 2026?