Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Open Access, Eight Companies and a Festival City

In the summer of 1947, eight theatre companies arrived in Edinburgh without an invitation and put on their plays anyway, on the edges of the city’s brand-new International Festival. From that act of self-invitation grew the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the event most visitors simply call the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which now fills the Scottish capital every August with thousands of shows in hundreds of venues. Its founding principle has never changed: no one chooses who may perform, so anyone with a show and a venue willing to host it can take part. This guide explains how the Fringe began, how its open-access model works and how it fits into Edinburgh’s wider festival city, and our small group tour to the Fringe is built around exactly that freedom.

1947: eight companies on the fringe

The Fringe exists because of another festival. The Edinburgh International Festival was founded in 1947, shaped by Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Glyndebourne opera festival, with the Lord Provost John Falconer, the city council and the British Council. Two years after the Second World War, its founders wanted a festival where great art could reach across political and cultural boundaries. Its programme was invited and carefully chosen, and our account of how August turned Edinburgh into a festival city tells that wider story.

Not everyone who wanted to perform that summer had been asked. Those uninvited groups performed anyway, outside the official programme. The Fringe Society’s own history says the performers themselves coined the name Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Outside that account, the word is usually credited to the Scottish playwright and journalist Robert Kemp, who used it in an article in the Edinburgh Evening News in August 1948.

What made those first companies significant was not their number but their stance. They did not ask permission, did not wait to be selected and did not depend on the official festival for a stage. That independence became the Fringe’s character, and it explains why, decades later, the Fringe still has no artistic director, no selection committee and no artistic programme of its own.

From uninvited groups to the Fringe Society

More performers followed the 1947 example year after year, and as the numbers grew they needed a way to work together without giving up their independence. In 1958 the Festival Fringe Society was created. It brought the participants together, gave artists information, published a programme of Fringe shows and created a central box office. Crucially, its constitution, in keeping with the spirit of 1947, said the Society would take no part in vetting the programme.

That decision defined everything that followed. Most festivals are built from the top down, by a director who decides what audiences will see. The Fringe is built from the bottom up, by thousands of separate decisions taken by artists and venues. The Fringe Society, today a registered Scottish charity, describes itself as founded by artists to nurture and uphold the Fringe’s values of inclusivity, experimentation and imagination, and it is careful to state what it does not do: it does not run any venues or programme any performers.

How open access works today

For a performer, taking part in the Fringe begins with finding a venue. The Society requires a venue agreement to be in place before a show can be registered. Once a venue has agreed to host it, the show is registered with the Society and a registration fee is paid; the Society checks the listing against its style guide, the company and the venue approve a proof, and the show goes on sale through the Fringe box office and website. There is no audition and no artistic selection by the Society at any stage.

The Society’s own work is to make that open marketplace navigable. It publishes the official programme, website and app, runs a centralised box office that sells tickets for every Fringe show, offers advice and resources to artists, producers and venues, and promotes the festival locally, nationally and internationally. Venue operators decide which shows they will host, and companies decide what to bring.

What kinds of shows are at the Fringe?

Almost every kind of live performance. The Fringe Society’s programme groups shows into categories that include theatre, comedy, music, musicals and opera, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret and variety, spoken word and children’s shows. In 2025 that work came from 62 countries.

The Fringe in the streets

Not all of the Fringe happens indoors. In recent years the Fringe Street Events have turned parts of the city centre into a busking festival, centred on the High Street section of the Royal Mile between Cockburn Street and George IV Bridge, Hunter Square, and the Mound Precinct off Princes Street. The Fringe Society describes more than 500 buskers, offering music, magic, circus and sideshow acts, alongside professional street performers mixing comedy, theatre and circus skills, living statues, and traders such as portrait artists and caricaturists.

The street events work on the Fringe’s founding logic in its simplest form: perform in public and let the audience decide. There is no ticket; if you enjoy a show and can afford it, you put money in the hat, and the organisers note that a simple thank-you is welcome too. The Society’s programme has also included daily finale performances by marching bands, choirs, drumming groups and brass bands at the Mound Precinct, and a community stage beside St Giles’ Cathedral for Edinburgh school and community groups. For an introduction to the Royal Mile itself, from the castle to Holyroodhouse, our guide to Edinburgh’s main sights is a good place to start.

Is the Fringe accessible for visitors with limited mobility?

Many venues are, but not all. The Fringe Society reported that 60 per cent of shows in 2025 were in level-access venues and that nearly 25,000 tickets were issued through its access ticketing service, so access varies from venue to venue. The Old Town itself, part of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site, is steep, with cobbles, steps and narrow closes. The tour is graded Level 1, Introductory to Moderate, with around 3 to 5 kilometres of walking a day, some of it on uneven surfaces.

The scale of the modern Fringe

The eight companies of 1947 have become a festival measured in thousands. In 2025 the Fringe listed 3,893 shows in 301 venues, with work from 62 countries, and the Fringe Society estimates that more than 2.6 million tickets were issued. The Society describes the Fringe as the world’s largest arts festival and the world’s largest arts marketplace.

When does the Edinburgh Fringe Festival take place, and how long does it last?

The Fringe runs for about three weeks every August. Exact dates change from year to year, so check the Fringe Society’s website before making plans around a particular weekend. The other August festivals, including the International Festival, overlap with it.

A festival within a festival city

The Fringe is the largest of Edinburgh’s festivals but far from the only one. The International Festival still presents its invited programme of orchestras, opera, theatre and dance each August. The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has been staged on the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle since 1950. The Edinburgh International Book Festival began in 1983, two decades before Edinburgh became the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004, and the Edinburgh Art Festival, founded the same year, describes itself as the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. Since 2007 the city’s eleven major festivals have worked together through Festivals Edinburgh, which counted around four million attendances across them in 2025.

The relationship between the curated International Festival and the open Fringe gives August in Edinburgh its particular energy. One offers a carefully chosen programme in the city’s great halls; the other offers almost everything else, in almost every available room. Festivals Edinburgh reports that nearly 40 per cent of 2025 festival audiences were Edinburgh residents, so the festivals are part of the city’s own cultural life rather than a show staged only for visitors. Our overview of the Edinburgh festivals and their effect on the city looks more closely at how they share its streets and buildings.

How do you choose what to see at the Fringe?

By reading the programme on its own terms. Because nothing is pre-selected, every registered show is listed on equal terms, and the choice rests entirely with the audience. On the tour, the Fringe orientation with the Program Leader is designed to help with exactly that, and tickets to four Fringe performances are included, with selections confirmed once the programme is published.

Experiencing the Fringe with a small group

The open-access model is the Fringe’s great strength, and for a first-time visitor it can also be daunting. The tour is built to give you a footing without taking away the freedom that makes the Fringe what it is. After a welcome dinner on arrival, the group takes an orientation walk with the Program Leader, and a Fringe orientation follows. Tickets to four Fringe performances are included, and the itinerary adds a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland, a visit to the National Museum of Scotland and a whisky tasting and dinner. Two days are left entirely free, and all eight nights are spent in the same Edinburgh hotel, so there is no packing and moving during the festival.

For wider ideas on the city, our guide to places to visit in Edinburgh off the beaten track suggests corners the festival crowds tend to miss, and our country spotlight on Scotland sets Edinburgh in its national context. On a free day, you could explore the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh, or head down to Leith to see the Royal Yacht Britannia.

Decades after eight companies arrived uninvited, the Fringe remains a festival that anyone may join, on stage or in the audience. To experience it with tickets arranged, a Program Leader to help you find your way, and time left free for discoveries of your own, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Small Group Tour travels with up to 16 travellers, and solo travellers are always welcome.