Brighton’s biggest month is back. Brighton Fringe 2026 returns from Friday 1 May to Sunday 31 May, transforming the city’s pubs, theatres, basements, gardens and pop-up venues into a 31-day celebration of comedy, theatre, cabaret, circus and everything in between. Now in its 21st year, the open-access festival remains one of the largest of its kind in the world, with around 400,000 attendances expected across the month and a programme heavy with homegrown Brighton talent — more than 30% of events are produced by artists based right here in Brighton and Hove.
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A Head Full of Bees by Lela Bergeron
1, 3, 29, 31 May 2026
It’s Sesame Street meets The Exorcist with original music and songs. A solo Comedy with Music about “Learning to Love Your Weird” What if you secretly think you might be demonic and doomed to hellfire? How do you reconcile that with creative ambition, a dedication to Motherhood and a wisp of hope that all is not lost?
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The Final Episode by Kathryn Mincer
1 – 3 May 2026
An exciting and ground-breaking one-woman thriller about a conspiracy theory podcast gone wrong……………..
‘The Final Episode’ is a one-act thriller based around Carly and her podcast on conspiracy theories. It is all fun and games until we watch Carly unravel a conspiracy, revealing a deep hidden truth.
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EURYDICE adapted by Sarah Ruhl
1, 13 May 2026
Forget the lyres and the robes. This is Eurydice through the lens of gig-theatre. Expect a high-octane blend of live music, visceral movement, and spoken word. We’re descending into the underworld not with a whimper, but with a bassline that thumps in your chest. In a world of fading memories and static, Eurydice must choose between the comfort of the shadows and the painful noise of the living.
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CHEKHOVIAN : Letters & Scenes
1 – 3 May 2026
Chekhovian weaves together scenes from Anton Chekhov’s four major plays, with intimate letters between Chekhov and the newly formed Moscow Arts Theatre and thus, reveals the artistic and personal struggles and joys that shaped their ground-breaking work. An intimate evening exploring how Chekhov so perfectly captured love, longing and the quiet complexities of the human heart. With scenes from The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
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These Roots Are Made For Walking
1 – 3 May 2026
When women’s stories are recorded, who gets the last word?Three original solo plays illuminate untold stories from history, exploring themes of queerness, feminism, bodily autonomy, gender roles, and activism throughout the 20th century. When women’s stories are recorded, who gets the last word? Three original solo plays explore themes of queerness, feminism, and gender roles throughout the 20th century.
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VAPISTS! by Andrew King
1 – 3, 8, 10 May 2026
Smurting is dangerous.. VAPISTS! Are even worse. Especially when two young brokers in the city of London are firmly in the closet for different reasons in ANDREW KING’s intriguing new satire. At World Media the system crashes! With hidden sexualities, and, in one case, a hidden gender (not to mention agenda)! success leads to excess, as the staff are suddenly SMOKIN! in the closet and in the Sauna……..
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THE WORKPLACE
2 – 3 May 2026
Delve into the dysfunctional lives of the employees of………………. We’ve not got that far yet! After sold-out shows in Cambridge, London & Brighton (2024 & 2025) & Edinburgh (2025) Fringes, The Workplace has come back to Brighton! Join us for your new favourite workplace sitcom. Based on suggestions from the audience, a new cast of eclectic characters live out the every day of working the 9 to 5, with ego clashes, office politics and absurd workplace situations.
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He’s 6 Years Older Than Me by Taeyun Kim
2 May 2026
This play is a conversation about consent, power dynamics and privilege with arguments for and against the act of stealthing. It is a young woman’s self-reckoning of self-sabotage, confronting the questions arising from the sexual encounters she has been in. Within the belief of fixing the problem, she digs into every detail and all things in common that these men had and/or did. ‘He’s six years older than me.’ So was he and so was him. How is that relevant in this situation, in this conversation, in this play?
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KINDER by Ryan Stewart
2, 4, 5, 6, 7 May 2026
The Brighton Fringe Excellence award-nominated & List’s Best LGBTQIA+ Edinburgh Fringe Show award-winner makes its Brighton Fringe premiere! After an unexpected call derails a performance planned by newly arrived drag artist Goody Prostate, booked to headline the local “reading hour”, they are forced to pull their act together in real time and get ready to face a crowd of unruly children and their parents.
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Saving Myself by Tim Stubbs Hughes
2, 3, 9, 10 May 2026
Set over one night, SAVING MYSELF centres on Lilly, a young woman alone in her flat, surrounded by books, half-remembered rituals, and an unlit candle. Since childhood, Lilly has been blamed for things going wrong: pets that disappeared, toys that broke, the uneasy silences that followed her through her family home. Over time, these stories became fact, shaping how others treated her and how she learned to understand herself.
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Bluff Creek by Charlie Flynn
3 – 4 May 2026
Bluff Creek is a new play about the men behind the Bigfoot phenomenon, and the 60 seconds of grainy footage that fooled a nation. In 1967, Bob Gimlin and Roger Patterson went for a ride in the woods with a movie camera and a mission: to catch a Bigfoot on film. And that’s just what they did. Based on real events, Bluff Creek examines the lives of the men behind the Patterson-Gimlin film. It’s a story about the cost of lies, the nature of belief, and the enduring fascination with America’s resident Abominable Snowman.
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NIUSIA
3 – 7 May 2026
Following a sell-out, Scotsman Fringe First award-winning Edinburgh premiere, the debut work from Filipa Bragança Award-nominated artist Beth Paterson makes its Brighton Fringe debut! Niusia was a Holocaust survivor. She saved people’s lives in the camps, set up a new life for her family as a refugee, and was an iridescent entertainer. But her granddaughter, Beth, only remembers an angry, dying woman. She’s ready to learn her stories, but what she discovers is all the questions she didn’t know existed (and wasn’t allowed to ask).
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Download our Fringe 2026 Brochure
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| Thanks for reading. We’ll be back soon with more shows, classes, and behind-the-scenes updates.
Fun fact to end on: The original Fringe began in Edinburgh in 1947, when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to perform alongside the newly established Edinburgh International Festival, which had invited only a select group of artists. Rather than be excluded, they created their own shows on the “fringe” of the official programme — and that spirit of openness is what “Fringe” still means today.
Until next time
The Lantern Theatre and ACT |
