Fringe Show Explorer

That’s
a wrap.

The Edinburgh Fringe 2026 is over. The last show finished at 23:30 on 31 August, and with it this site’s reason to exist.

Thank you, all 4,902 of you. You came from 59 countries, opened 28,298 pages, and spent an average of 3 minutes a visit deciding what to see. That is a genuinely lovely thing to have watched happen.

Here is what the summer looked like from inside the database.

4,316
Shows
65,101
Performances
4,902
Of you
59
Countries

The Fringe 2026, in numbers

Sell-out rates and lead times, when shows actually ran, and the rest of the 4,316 shows, counted from six months of ticketing data.

The hot tickets

Sold out fastest

13,082 of 55,680 ticketed nights (23%) went off sale before curtain-up, and 1,184 of them vanished more than a month ahead. Cancelled nights are not counted: this is shows selling out, not shows giving up. These are the ones that went earliest, measured by how far ahead of showtime the last ticket went, across the whole run.

  1. 1
    Connor Burns: FLOW
    Just The Tonic Nucleus · Comedy
    92
    days early
    26/26 nights
  2. 2
    Ania Magliano: Peach Fuzz
    Monkey Barrel Comedy · Comedy
    73
    days early
    16/17 nights
  3. 3
    Newscast
    Gilded Balloon at the Museum · Events
    72
    days early
    5/5 nights
  4. 4
    Transmission: Into the Dark
    Traverse – Elsewhere · Theatre
    72
    days early
    52/52 nights
  5. 5
    Nish Kumar: Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy (Work in Progress)
    Monkey Barrel Comedy · Comedy
    69
    days early
    24/24 nights
  6. 6
    Paddy Young: Will Sir Be Laughing Alone?
    Pleasance Courtyard · Comedy
    64
    days early
    17/19 nights
  7. 7
    Tim Vine: Sillypun Valley
    Pleasance Courtyard · Comedy
    62
    days early
    7/7 nights
  8. 8
    Phil Wang: UH OH
    Monkey Barrel Comedy · Comedy
    60
    days early
    12/12 nights
  9. 9
    One Hundred Voices
    The Scottish Parliament · Theatre
    58
    days early
    413/461 nights
  10. 10
    Rose Matafeo: Work in Progress Morning Hour
    Monkey Barrel Comedy · Comedy
    57
    days early
    14/14 nights

Connor Burns: FLOW sold its whole run a median of 92 days out. The earliest night went 167 days before the audience turned up.

Your picks

What you all clicked

You opened 1,997 different show pages 10,787 times between you. These were the ones you kept coming back to.

  1. 1
    Paddy Young: Will Sir Be Laughing Alone?
    Pleasance Courtyard · Comedy
    144
    views
  2. 2
    Mario Adrion: Live a Little
    Pleasance Courtyard · Comedy
    87
    views
  3. 3
    One Hundred Voices
    The Scottish Parliament · Theatre
    84
    views
  4. 4
    30 and F*cked: Alessandra Ford
    Greenside @ George Street · Comedy
    79
    views
  5. 5
    Best of the Fest
    Assembly George Square Gardens · Comedy
    78
    views
  6. 6
    Nish Kumar: Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy (Work in Progress)
    Monkey Barrel Comedy · Comedy
    67
    views
  7. 7
    ROLEPLAY
    Summerhall · Theatre
    67
    views
  8. 8
    Kathleen Hughes: Twig
    The Gilded Saloon · Comedy
    67
    views
  9. 9
    Daniel Sloss: BITTER
    Edinburgh Playhouse · Comedy
    65
    views
  10. 10
    Connor Burns: FLOW
    Just The Tonic Nucleus · Comedy
    64
    views
  11. 11
    Phil Wang: UH OH
    Monkey Barrel Comedy · Comedy
    62
    views
  12. 12
    1 Hour To Turn Your Life Around – Comedians Solve All Your Problems
    Laughing Horse @ The Brass Monkey (Drummond Street) · Comedy
    59
    views

Both lists agree at the top: Paddy Young: Will Sir Be Laughing Alone? was the most-looked-at page on the site and one of the fastest sell-outs of the festival. You lot knew.

The room

Where you came from

6,633 visits across the summer. 69% of you were on a phone, mostly, we suspect, standing on the Royal Mile working out what to do next.

Page views per day

Busiest day: 3 July with 1,988 views, the day the site hit the front page of Reddit. The festival itself peaked in the second week.

View as table
DatePage viewsVisitors
1 Jul16428
2 Jul8730
3 Jul1,988501
4 Jul510125
5 Jul35375
6 Jul23465
7 Jul414111
8 Jul23054
9 Jul22669
10 Jul30589
11 Jul17877
12 Jul31168
13 Jul29183
14 Jul24586
15 Jul29169
16 Jul38683
17 Jul20563
18 Jul29767
19 Jul22962
20 Jul15746
21 Jul33642
22 Jul30457
23 Jul17356
24 Jul18541
25 Jul30039
26 Jul24751
27 Jul29548
28 Jul27855
29 Jul32358
30 Jul24266
31 Jul45268
1 Aug39966
2 Aug30073
3 Aug39787
4 Aug44285
5 Aug734124
6 Aug609114
7 Aug722135
8 Aug1,294209
9 Aug1,296182
10 Aug807159
11 Aug845172
12 Aug640125
13 Aug886134
14 Aug853159
15 Aug994168
16 Aug547136
17 Aug578121
18 Aug46396
19 Aug789119
20 Aug37094
21 Aug561117
22 Aug844136
23 Aug529107
24 Aug32957
25 Aug19660
26 Aug22167
27 Aug34661
28 Aug36258
29 Aug36279
30 Aug27353
31 Aug7419

Top countries

  • United Kingdom
    3,848
  • United States
    435
  • Netherlands
    53
  • Australia
    48
  • Ireland
    48
  • Germany
    41
  • Brazil
    39
  • Norway
    32

Top cities

  • Edinburgh
    631
  • Glasgow
    366
  • Manchester
    161
  • Southwark
    145
  • London
    117
  • City of London
    77
  • Wembley
    71
  • Islington
    58

Southwark came fourth, ahead of London itself. We assume this is what happens when one city’s traffic gets filed by borough, but we prefer to picture a single, very committed street.

How you found us

  • Reddit
    1,273
  • Google
    929
  • DuckDuckGo
    300
  • Bing
    171
  • Ecosia
    123
  • Yahoo
    65
  • Facebook
    56

Reddit sent 1,273 of you. Six months of careful, thoughtful search engine optimisation sent rather fewer. We have made our peace with it.

What you did here

Every button, counted.

  • Vibe map opened
    13,491
  • Show pages opened
    9,331
  • Times you scrolled for more
    9,529
  • Searches run
    3,889
  • Shows added to My Fringe
    639
  • Hunts for something similar
    57

What you typed

The search box’s greatest hits, capital letters merged. Only the top hundred terms are kept, so this is the podium rather than the full tally.

  • comedy
    44
  • improv
    26
  • magic
    26
  • hole
    21
  • interactive
    21
  • musical
    21
  • dark comedy
    20
  • police cops
    17
  • amanda knox
    14
  • stamptown
    13
  • circus
    12
  • connor burns
    12

Comedy, improv, magic, and then, in fourth place, “hole”. We never did find out. Further down the list: “fly you fools”, “bigfoot”, and somebody who typed “weird” and trusted us completely.

A special mention

The Microsoft Teams contingent

16 of you got here from Microsoft Teams. Which means that somewhere out there, in a channel called #general or #random or, at a push, #social-committee, one person pasted this link into a work chat and then went back to their afternoon.

You are our favourite kind of traffic. We hope the show was good, and we hope somebody replied with more than a thumbs up.

The whole thing

The festival in numbers

We started watching on 17 February and checked back 1,365 times, roughly every two hours, for six months.

321
Venues
78
Countries
brought a show
2,795
Busiest day
14 August
2,283
Cancelled
performances

Shows by genre

  • Comedy
    1,707
  • Theatre
    1,138
  • Music
    420
  • Cabaret
    199
  • Opera
    189
  • Events
    181
  • Spoken Word
    167
  • Circus
    138
  • Children's Shows
    137
  • Exhibitions
    40

Busiest venues

By performances staged.

  • Pleasance Courtyard
    3,705
  • Summerhall
    2,183
  • Gilded Balloon Patter House
    2,010
  • theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall
    1,946
  • Gilded Balloon Teviot
    1,797
  • Hoots @ Nicolson Square
    1,649
  • Underbelly, Bristo Square
    1,631
  • Greenside @ George Street
    1,613

Most performances of anything

Gwen John: Strange Beauties at Modern, 750 slots. Which is what happens when an art exhibition lets you book by the hour.