The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

What:  The world’s largest art fes­ti­val, the Edin­burgh fringe fes­ti­val see over 55,000 per­for­mances of 3,500 shows take place across 350 venues over the course of 3 weeks as every­one from house­hold names to peo­ple mak­ing their fes­ti­val per­for­mance debut are giv­en a chance to show­case their tal­ents to an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence.

Tak­ing place on the streets of Scotland’s Cap­i­tal and con­cep­tu­alised as a protest to social norms in the re-build­ing of post war Britain, the Fes­ti­val now hosts per­for­mances in a range of cat­e­gories includ­ing com­e­dy, cir­cus, opera, musi­cals, music, plays, exhi­bi­tions and much more, with their being no entry require­ments as to who can per­form and with their being total open access and free entry to thou­sands of shows there is  always some­thing for every­one to enjoy at the Edin­burgh fringe.

When: The fes­ti­val lasts for three weeks and always takes place in the last three weeks of August – with a num­ber of per­for­mances being repeat­ed on mul­ti­ple days.

Where: Per­for­mances takes place all over the city of Edin­burgh – from the bars and clubs to the main towns sta­di­um and theatre’s – the best advice for venues to watch a per­for­mance is to vis­it the fes­ti­val web­site below and pick the one’s that most inter­est you. For per­form­ers it’s as sim­ple as con­tact­ing a venue that you wish to per­form in and see if they have an open slot.

Dura­tion: The fes­ti­val last for three weeks, with hun­dreds of per­for­mances tak­ing place each day – you can expect per­for­mances to being around 9am each day and con­tin­ue to start through­out the day until mid­night, expect per­for­mances to lasts an aver­age of an hour – although you may find some from as lit­tle as 10 min­utes to a max­i­mum of a full day.

Tick­ets: A large host of the events at the fringe fes­ti­val are com­plete­ly free to attend so it’s a case of find­ing the shows and head­ing to the venue – for the more estab­lished acts in the more promi­nent are­nas you can expect to pay a fee (rang­ing from £5- £35 pounds) and tick­ets are avail­able from the offi­cial fringe web­site at: [https://www.edfringe.com/]

For those wish­ing to per­form, it’s advised to get your act togeth­er and noti­fy the fes­ti­val (on the link above) and then find a venue to host it before adver­tis­ing it to the wider pub­lic – as scouts are known to attend the fes­ti­val it’s also a chance to become the next big thing !

Need to Know: Accom­mo­da­tion in Edin­burgh tends to sell out months in advance so it’s advised to book ear­ly and to make a rough plan of the acts that you want to attend – espe­cial­ly for the high­er pro­file events as tick­ets again tend to sell out ear­ly.

More Info: For an FAQ on attend­ing and per­form­ing and for more infor­ma­tion on the Fringe fes­ti­val includ­ing a list of the line-ups and when they are per­form­ing vis­it the offi­cial site of the fes­ti­val at: [https://www.edfringe.com/]