Why this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe will be one of the biggest ever
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has revealed a 10 per cent increase in the number of shows in its official programme – which will be the fourth biggest in the 77-year-history of the event.
Organisers say the event has had a "show of confidence" from artists and performers despite the absence of several key venues and fears that rising costs would put off performers from taking part.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdThe Fringe Society, which oversees the festival, has revealed that more than 3317 shows are in its final 2024 brochure.


The number of performances in the line-up has topped 50,000 for the first time since 2019 and has increased almost 14 per cent in the space of 12 months.
Lyndsey Jackson, deputy chief executive of the Fringe Society, said the level of demand to perform this year demonstrated the “critical mass” of performers and companies who wanted to be part of the festival.
The number of Fringe shows and participants was growing year-on-year in the run-up to the pandemic, reaching a peak of 59,600 performances of 3841 productions across 323 venues in 2019, when the event attracted more than three million people for the first time.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdThis year’s Fringe programme, which will have 51,446 performances of 3317 shows across 262 venues, is marginally bigger than it was in 2016, when it boasted 50,266 performances of 3269 shows across 294 venues.


Notable absences from this year’s programme include Gilded Balloon’s main venue hub at Teviot Row House, which is undergoing a major refurbishment. Two New Town venues, the Rose Theatre on Rose Street, and the New Town Theatre on George Street, are not being used this year.
However more than 120 shows will be staged under the one roof on George Street at the home of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which will be run as a venue by Greenside for the first time in August.
Ms Jackson said the size of the programme was driven by demand from performers and companies willing to take on the financial risk of appearing at the event.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdShe added: “We’ve never really been interested in growth and scale, but there is a critical mass that makes this festival quite magical.


"This year’s programme is a good show of confidence from artists that the Fringe is still the valuable place to have work seen by audiences and industry.
“Our job is primarily to be helpful and make sure artists coming to the Fringe has a really clear set of objectives about what they want to achieve.
"We spend a lot of time interrogating those reasons and ambitions, and making sure that they’re not doing the Fringe naively.”
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdFringe Society chief executive Shona McCarthy said there had been a “collective effort” across the festival landscape to try to offer more financial support to artists and performers, including its “Keep It Fringe” fund, which the UK Government is supporting.
She admitted the cost of accommodation was still the “biggest issue” facing the festival, but insisted the Fringe Society had done everything it could to tackle the issue, including urging the Scottish Government and city council to ease new restrictions on home-letting and home-sharing.
Ms McCarthy said: “Our advice for anyone thinking of coming to the Fringe is to book as far in advance as they can and look at places that are within travelling distance.
"Glasgow is totally commutable, there are later train services to support the festival, and I’d also look at places that are on the tram route. People should shop around and not be put off.”
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.