The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is an open access arts festival, the largest event of its kind in the world. It began in 1947 when eight theatre companies turned up, uninvited, alongside the acts performing in the first Edinburgh International Festival. Since then the Fringe has developed into the biggest of Edinburgh’s festivals.
Key facts
- The Fringe is an open access festival – meaning that anyone who can find a venue to perform in can put on a show during August.
- There is no selection process and the festival is not programmed or curated.
- The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society does not produce any shows, does not invite anybody to perform and pays no fees to performers.
- We're here to provide you with the resources, support and exposure necessary to make your show a success.
Fringe handbooks
Everything you need to know is on this website, but if you want to browse offline or at your own pace, the handbooks below can be downloaded in PDF format.
- The Fringe Handbook for Doing a Show
- The Fringe Handbook for Choosing a Venue
- The Fringe Handbook for Registering a Show
- The Fringe Handbook for Promoting your Show
- The Fringe Sustainability Toolkit
- The Fringe Programme Production Style Guide
- The Fringe Networking Handbook
- The Fringe Touring Handbook
- The Fringe Fundraising Handbook
Fringe glossary
Our glossaries will help to make sense of Fringe terminology that you may not have encountered before.
- English - The Fringe language key
- French - Fringe touche de langue pour les locuteurs de français
- German - Begriffserklärungen rund um das Fringe-Geschehen: Deutsch
- Italian - Legenda della terminologia del Fringe in lingua italiana
- Mandarin - 爱丁堡边缘艺术节[中文]演讲者重要术语释义
- Portuguese - Fringe – Termos chave para falantes de Português
- Spanish - Glosario del Fringe para hispanoparlantes
The Fringe programme
Check out the 2018 programme to get a feel for the range of shows, events and format of the festival.
- Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018 Programme (60MB .pdf)
External guides
There’s lots of information available about taking a part in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
- The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide by Mark Fisher
- How to Produce, Perform and Write an Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Show by Ian Fox
- Cracking the Fringe by Jon Gracey and Viv Egan
Please note that the Fringe Society cannot be held responsible for the content of external sites and they may not reflect the opinions of the Society.
Subscribe for updates
Sign up for our regular emails and we'll send you useful updates including reminders about how to register your show, key deadlines, details on information sessions and handy hints and tips on bringing a show to the Fringe.