Brighton Dome Comedy Festival: nine days, two venues

Brighton is about to get a lot louder for the next nine days. The Brighton Dome Comedy Festival is back, running from today, Friday 16 October, right through to Sunday 25 October, and this year it's doing something it's never done before: it's teamed up with Komedia. The result is a festival spread across two venues instead of one, which the organisers are billing as bigger and funnier than ever.

The bulk of the action stays at the Brighton Dome, where the line-up is split across the Concert Hall, the Corn Exchange, the Studio Theatre and the Founders Room. The Concert Hall is the big room, and it's where the headliners land. Tom Davis opens things off tonight with his tour Spudgun, and later in the week you'll find Blindboy Boatclub bringing The Blindboy Podcast live on Sunday 18 October, Taskmaster champion Maisie Adam with Whatsherface on the 21st, Nish Kumar on the 23rd, and Sam Campbell closing out the weekend with two nights of Kid Giblet on the 24th and 25th. Simon Amstell also drops in for a limited-edition tour date on the 22nd. For something a bit different, the All My Friends indie disco makes its Brighton debut on the first Saturday, with Elis James, John Robins and Dave Masterman DJing together for the first time in more than two years.

The Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre pick up the slack with a steady stream of stand-up. Catherine Bohart, Jazz Emu, Stevie Martin, Jimeoin, Larry Dean, Laura Smyth and Rosie Holt all have dates there, while the Studio Theatre leans into the newer names, with Celya AB, Lara Ricote and BBC New Comedy Award winner Dan Tiernan. Over in the Founders Room, the cartoonists Modern Toss have set up an exhibition called Flies – Collected Specimens 2004–26, more than twenty years of work based on flies, and co-founder Jon Link is running a Make a Fly workshop on the 17th for anyone who wants to build a life-size fly out of clay, wire, paint and hair.

That's where Komedia comes in. The festival now spills over to The Basement and the Komedia Studio at 44-47 Gardner Street, which adds a whole second strand to the week. John Crace, Phil Ellis, Aurie Styla and the Solve-Along-Murder-She-Wrote show are all on the bill, alongside the Comic Boom and Komedia Comedy Club festival editions. The Komedia Studio is busy too, with Jordan Brookes, Robin Ince and Joanna Neary, Sergi Polo, Amy Matthews, Kim Blythe, Sooz Kempner and Rich Wilson all taking the stage. There's also a Funny Women Live in Brighton night on the 24th, putting women and non-binary comedy front and centre.

It's not all for the grown-ups, either. There's a Comedy Club 4 Kids in the Komedia Studio on the 17th, the duo Shelf bring The Kids Show 2 to the Studio Theatre on the 24th, and the Live at Brighton Dome BLEEPED show in the Corn Exchange is a swear-free night for ages 11 and over. There are free comedy workshops for 11 to 16-year-olds on the 24th and 25th, and a Finding Your Funny series of clowning workshops for adults in addiction recovery running from the 13th to the 22nd in collaboration with Spymonkey. One nice touch worth knowing: every performance at the Brighton Dome comes with live subtitles, so no one misses a punchline. The festival is supported by Mayo Wynne Baxter, and tickets are being sold through brightondome.org and komedia.co.uk, so it's worth picking your nights early.