If you have been keeping an eye on the Brighton Fringe this year, the bad news is that the 2026 edition has already come and gone. The festival ran from 1 May to 31 May, so by the time we reached the end of the month, the curtains had closed on another year. It was the 21st edition of what is billed as the third largest Fringe festival in the world, and true to form it took over Brighton, Hove and the surrounding area with comedy, theatre, cabaret, music, dance and children's shows.
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About 30% of the programme was staged by companies based in Brighton and Hove, which is a decent chunk of local talent given the scale of the thing. The festival keeps its registration fees affordable for artists, with an Affordable Payment Plan that lets them pay in two instalments over three months, and this year 33 scholarships went to artists, covering registration, financial support, mentoring, marketing and extra performance opportunities worth around £13,000 in total. The Made In Sussex season came back for its third year, with a pre-Fringe showcase and free registration for those taking part.
A huge part of the month sat with the Laughing Horse programme, which ran daily across The Caroline, Walrus, Temple and A&O Hostel, with more than 150 shows and a mix of paid, pay-what-you-want and free tickets. Among the titles that got a look-in were Jonny Woo's Surburbia, Mohit Mathur and Leigh Toney's Are You Even Indian?, OnTheNose's MAN!FEST: A Boy Band Fantasy, Beth Paterson's NIUSIA, RatBag's RATMAGEDDON, Police Cops: The Original, Alexis Sakellaris's CHILD STAR, Mystic Smeg's Guess Boo, Kathy Maniura's The Cycling Man, Cohabitors, Resonant Void bringing Butoh over from Tokyo, GODZ, Portals, Buster, The Highland Joker's Bubble Show, Darryl J Carrington's Out of the Box, Fishy Tales with the Seabream Sisters, Madame Chandelier's Opera Party for Kids, Feast and Fable, BEAVERHAUSEN, C'est Magnifique, and Big Quiffy Bingo's An Evening Without Kate Bush, which marked its fourth annual season at the Brighton Spiegeltent.
The bill kept going with The Fools' Nerd Ball, A Night at the Museum, Words By The Water's Fringe and Friends, poetry from Ella Sadie Guthrie, a book by Kate Ireland, live illustration from Chris Riddell, a conversation between Nigel Wrench and Duncan Lustig-Prean, Addiction – It's a Family Matter, Running With Scissors, the Brighton Gay Men's Chorus, Arias in the Garden, The Cabarave with DJ Krafty Kuts, Debussy's Romantic Piano by Candlelight with Matthew Shiel, and The Great 80s & 90s Movie Soundtrack Songbook. There were tours too: Fearless and Fabulous Women of Brighton, Ghost Walk of the Lanes, Take Shelter! inside a WW2 air-raid shelter, the Witchcraft & Magic Tour, and The Daddy Long Legs Rides Again.
For a sense of the prices, the Best of Brighton Fringe Comedy ran at Laughing Horse @ The Walrus and Hideaway at 4:30pm on 23, 24, 25, 30 and 31 May, with standard tickets at £7 and concessions at £5, and the 23 May show selling out. John Callaghan's Cabaret Electro played Laughing Horse @ Caroline of Brunswick on 16 and 17 May, 18 plus, with standard tickets at £11 and concessions at £5. Over at the SpiegelGardens in Victoria Gardens North, the Tivoli Spiegeltent put on comedy, cabaret, live music, family events and late-night DJs with unreserved seating, so it was worth turning up early if you were in a group. The whole thing is run by a registered charity, and it relies on grants, donations, registration fees, sponsorship and Friends memberships, with less than 3% of its income coming from public sources.
Published Date
11 August 2026
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