Over 3,000 shows announced for 2025 Edinburgh Fringe Festival

BBC News

2 days ago

Miriam Margoyles, Jenny Eclair and Bill Bailey are among the performers appearing in more than 3,000 shows at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.The programme for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been launched, including 3,352 shows across 265 venues.Comedy, music, dance, children's shows, magic and cabaret will all be part of the arts festival, which runs from August 1 to 25.Show themes for 2025 include the apocalypse, rave culture, disability and sexuality. New venues this year include Hibs' Easter Road stadium.
Portobello Town Hall will also host acts for the first time, with a mini-festival to celebrate Palestinian art and culture, called Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine.The Famous Spiegeltent - a Belgian wood and canvas, mirrored venue dating back to the 19th century - will return to its traditional festival home in St Andrew Square.Another of the distinctive tents will set up in a car park at the Gyle Shopping centre, where an Italian company will present a circus show.
There are 325 free shows and 529 pay-what-you-can shows, and accommodation has been provided by several universities to make the Fringe more accessible to performers.Some 923 shows are from Scotland, predominantly from Edinburgh, with 657 acts represented, compared to 1,392 from the rest of the UK nations, while a total of 54 non-British nationalities are on the line-up.Tony Lankester, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: "This year's Fringe programme is filled with every kind of performance, so whether you're excited for theatre or circus, or the best of comedy, music, dance, children's shows, magic or cabaret; get ready to dare to discover this August."
On the bill
Famous faces such as Miriam Margoyles, Jenny Eclair and Bill Bailey will all headline shows.Shows like Alice Hawkins - Working Class Suffragette at the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre explores a family connection with the campaign for democracy while VOTE the Musical at Paradise Green takes a "gripping look" at the Suffragettes, exploring activism and personal sacrifice, according to promoters.Jenna Stone's play Happy Ending Street, at Leith Arches, tells a story about three Scottish sex workers dreaming of escaping from their way of life.