The 12 stand-out shows of the Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Check out this year's top picks of the Fringe.
This year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe boasts an official total of 3,649 shows, and yet the unofficial count will far surpass the 4,000 mark. By any metric it is the biggest Ed Fringe ever. We’ve seen our fair share of duds so you don’t have to, and whittled down our favourites to twelve of the very best. Behold our top 5-star picks of 2026.
Madeleine Brettingham: Legend
Madeleine Brettingham is the kind of talent that makes you lament the imminent demise of Live at the Apollo as one of the few mainstream showcases for stand up comedy. She is so accomplished as both a writer and performer that she absolutely deserves to rocket to stardom in the same way as a Micky Flanagan or a Kevin Bridges. In Legend, Brettingham skewers sexist tropes and geezer culture with such flair and exceptional joke-writing that you immediately want to fast-forward to her arena tour era. Welcome to your new favourite comedian – even if you don’t know it yet.
Sydnee Washington: My Black Barbie Story
There are two things that strike you about Sydnee Washington. First of all, she is the ultimate survivor. She has lived a life of outrageous and often perilous extremes, from child church elder by association, to a drug and booze-fuelled hell raiser on the road to self ruin. It makes this wheezingly funny account of her many misadventures an absolute riot and unlike any other show at the Fringe. Secondly, it is clear that Washington was only ever looking for acceptance and love, and by the end you are punching the air to discover she finally found it.
The BBC’s First Homosexual
Writer Stephen M Hornby and director Oli Hurst have created something truly outstanding and befitting of the source material for The BBC’s First Homosexual. It brings the characters, context and era to life in a way that only great theatre can. The cast of Andrew Pollard, Jolyon Benson and Max Lohan are impeccable, each playing a myriad of characters with heart, sincerity and utter conviction. Dovetailing between the macro story and a far more personal perspective makes it all the more affecting – and in many ways sadly prescient.
Amnesia
Amnesia is not so much a love letter to Rhyl as a heartfelt paean emblazoned in neon lights. Kimberly Hart-Simpson is an absolute tour de force as Kelly, illuminating the bunker venue like a firework let off on the top deck of a bus. And yet it’s the quality of the writing that really stands out. Some of the turns of phrase and heartbreakingly tender moments would have made the great Caroline Aherne proud. As she rages against the dying of the light to the thumping soundtrack of Pretty Green Eyes, you find yourself – just like Kelly – not wanting it all to end.
The Second Best School Shooting
This is a breathtaking tightrope act of a show by Alice Stanley Jr. One false step and it could have gone horribly wrong. Instead this is a beautifully nuanced work that somehow manages to satirise the noise and narrative around such an emotive subject without ever belittling it – quite the opposite in fact. The performances of Rachael DeBoer and Shaylaren Hilton are superb, in equal parts hilarious and poignant. They riff off each other with such aplomb as dark humour gives way to the inevitable and devastating effects of trauma. It is note-perfect.
Rob Preston: Amazing Global Solutions
There’s nothing better than stumbling into a poorly ventilated hot box of a room at Pleasance-something and realising you’ve discovered someone you’re going to be boring friends about for weeks. Preston’s cast of oddballs and miscreants is so fully formed and acutely observed that it leaves you wanting to dive further into his fucked up little universe. It’s so rare – even with really good sketch comedy – that you want to step into that world. The League of Gentlemen had it; The Mighty Boosh had it. Rob Preston has it. Amazing Global Solutions is a really exciting showcase.
Selina Mosinski: Puss in Boots – A Working Class Fairy Tale
On one level this is an outrageously camp and hilariously bawdy origin story for the artist who would one day become Charity Shop Sue. On another, it is an incredibly smart and deliciously subversive skewering of how fucked up societal attitudes and expectations were towards women – and particularly working class women – in the 90/00s. It’s an East Midlands-based Rocky story punching up at a patriarchy that didn’t allow third wave feminism to flourish. Thank fuck for Selina Mosinski and the gays in her corner.
For Dolores
For Dolores is a work of such jagged and visceral beauty that you leave the auditorium looking like you’ve just disembarked Nemesis at Alton Towers. It explores female friendship at its most intense – a love that is arguably stronger and more complicated than anything romantic or even familial – especially when it is fused by the ending of one life and the cradling of another. Eva O’Connor’s writing is urgent and gorgeous, while Lara McDonnell and Catriona Faint are breathtakingly good as Réaltín and Mo respectively. They are the yin and yang of the poster, with the chemistry that puts the roof of the Traverse in jeopardy. Believe the hype.
Sarah Roberts: Scary Movie 7
It is one of the joys of the Fringe to watch an act develop over time and truly find themselves as a performer. Roberts has always had a natural gift for storytelling and subverting her zillennial persona, but there’s an exquisite ‘looseness’ to her standup now that allows her to deviate from her material and return back to it at will. More than ever she is a comic who riffs and reacts and lives in the moment, weaving the audience into her wicked web and twisted tales. It is part of what sets her apart from her peers as a gifted writer and ebullient stage presence.
Keeley Hazell: Everyone’s Seen My Tits
Keeley Hazell has lived one hell of a life, and boy can she command a room regaling it. Everyone’s Seen My Tits is a woman wrestling back the narrative of her own lived experience from patriarchal forces who have twisted and commoditised it for years. Hazell is a compelling and charismatic narrator who tells her story with remarkable magnanimity, wit and candour. It should come as no surprise seeing as her book of the same name is excellent, but her ability to bring it to life on stage so vividly is a revelation.
Kristen Schaal: The Legend of Crystal Shell
Could there be a more perfect show for the Edinburgh Fringe? A fairytale place where inner and outer critics are constantly telling you that you’re a deluded freak? The Legend of Crystal Shell is an utter joy. It’s hilarious, magical and gloriously daft but what elevates it is the fact it has soul. The chemistry between Kristen Schaal and John Roberts is both riotous and surprisingly affecting. Most of all, we believe in Crystal Shell precisely because Schaal believes in Crystal Shell. She is everyone who ever dared to create anything and faced the fear of ridicule head on. Or horn on.
TO BE FRANK
With apologies to Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi et al, a lanky Aotearoan in an Edinburgh bunker *is* the definitive Frankenstein’s monster. Don’t believe me? Ask the 8-year-old boy who was mesmerised throughout this funny, tender, slapstick, dream of a show. Micheal Hockey is playful and imperious as the gentle-natured, ham-fisted monster, perfectly in sync with the crunch and scrape of Alanna Hall’s guitar. Pixar spend millions of dollars, thousands of person-hours and years of 3D rendering to make you feel something for an inanimate object – Hockey does it with a balloon.
Notable mentions…
Charlie Ashton is a star in the making with his joyous brand of surreal daftness in 48 Chicken Nuggets in a Sequin Dress. Tarot’s Edward Easton can now add singing like a fucking angel to all his many other talents. Replacing George Fouracres in One Man Musical felt like the impossible job and yet Easton is phenomenal. Katy Lees breaks your heart and then mends it again and makes it soar in Breathe: Five Arias That Saved My Life. Finally, Georgina Collins is having the time of her life in the gloriously twisted Succubus.