Edinburgh Fringe History: From 1947 Opposition to a Global Cultural Platform

The Edinburgh Fringe began as an uninvited arrival. In 1947 a handful of theatre companies, left out of Edinburgh’s new International Festival, came anyway and found their own stages; within a few decades their unofficial gathering had grown to hundreds of companies. Edinburgh Fringe history is the story of how that open, unselected model survived decades of growth, and even a pandemic, to become one of the largest cultural events anywhere. Knowing it changes how the Fringe looks today, and it gives real depth to a stay on our Edinburgh Festival Fringe small group tour.

1947: performing without permission

The first Edinburgh International Festival opened in 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War. Its founders, led by Rudolf Bing of the Glyndebourne opera festival with the support of the city and the British Council, hoped that great art could help reconcile a divided continent, and they built an invited programme of the highest quality. Our account of how August turned Edinburgh into a festival city follows that story in more detail.

Eight theatre groups who had not been invited came to Edinburgh that summer regardless. They found their own small venues and staged their shows on the fringe of the official festival. In the context of 1947 this was a modest gesture, a few companies looking for an audience, but it set the pattern for everything that followed. The Fringe would never be selected or programmed by anyone else.

1948: the Fringe gets its name

The Fringe Society’s own history says the performers themselves coined the phrase 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. Either way, the name captured the idea exactly: these were performances at the edge of the festival, not part of it.

The 1950s: organising without controlling

The uninvited companies kept coming. By the middle of the 1950s there was a first box office and a guide to the unofficial shows, and by the end of the decade, according to the Scotsman’s history of the festival, around 19 companies were competing for audiences. With more performers came a need for coordination that did not undermine the Fringe’s independence.

The answer was the Festival Fringe Society, created in 1958. It brought the participants together, gave artists information, published the Fringe programme and set up a central box office. The decisive move was what it chose not to do. In keeping with the spirit of 1947, its constitution said the Society would take no part in vetting the programme. That one principle, open access, is the thread that runs through the whole of Edinburgh Fringe history.

The 1960s: growth and its first critics

The Fringe’s success brought its first anxieties. As early as 1961, the Scotsman records, the director Gerard Slevin was already warning that it had grown too big. The Fringe kept growing regardless.

The 1960s also left permanent institutions. In 1963 the Traverse Theatre began as a small theatre club in a former brothel in the Lawnmarket, at the top of the Royal Mile. It moved to the Grassmarket in 1969 and in 1992 to a purpose-built two-theatre home on Cambridge Street, and it has built its reputation on world premieres and new writing. Its story mirrors the Fringe’s own, from improvised rooms in the Old Town to a permanent place in the city’s cultural life.

The 1970s: championing new writing

By the early 1970s the Fringe was large, but new plays were a small part of it. In 1972 only 45 new plays premiered there. The following year Allen Wright, the first arts editor of The Scotsman, launched the Fringe First awards to encourage companies to bring new work to Edinburgh and to recognise outstanding new writing premiered at the Fringe. By 1977 the number of new plays had risen to 138.

What is a Fringe First?

It is a newspaper award for new work, and the rules are strict. To qualify, a show must be genuinely new and premiere in Edinburgh, and it must be listed in the theatre, dance and physical theatre, musicals and opera, or children’s sections of the programme. There is no fixed number of awards each year, and companies cannot enter directly.

The 1980s: comedy and the super-venues

The 1980s changed the character of the Fringe. In 1981 the Perrier Awards were founded to recognise comic talent at the Fringe, and the first winner was the Cambridge Footlights, whose company that year included Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The awards have run ever since, renamed the Edinburgh Comedy Awards in 2006.

The same decade saw the arrival of what the Scotsman calls the super-venues, among them the Assembly Rooms, the Pleasance and the Gilded Balloon. The Fringe’s open-access rule was left untouched. Two decades after Slevin’s warning, nearly 500 companies were performing across the city.

What are the Edinburgh Comedy Awards?

They are the Fringe’s main comedy prizes, recognising emerging comic talent. Eligible shows are seen by a panel of ten, drawn from television and radio professionals, journalists and members of the public. Past winners include Steve Coogan, The League of Gentlemen, Hannah Gadsby and Rose Matafeo.

Edinburgh Fringe history since 2000: from one million tickets to a global platform

Growth continued through the 1990s and into the new century. The Scotsman’s history dates the first year with more than a million tickets sold to 2003, and by 2019 the total had passed three million. That year turned out to be the last full festival before the Covid-19 pandemic; the Fringe returned on a smaller scale in 2021.

It has since regained much of its scale. 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 now describes the Fringe as the world’s largest arts festival and the world’s largest arts marketplace. The eight companies of 1947 have become an international meeting point for performers, producers and audiences.

Has the Fringe’s open-access principle ever changed?

No. The Fringe Society says the policy written into its constitution in 1958 remains central to how the Fringe works: it still does not run venues or programme performers, and anyone with a show and a venue willing to host it can register. What has changed is the scale and the professional structure around that principle, from large venue operators to awards and an international marketplace.

Seeing Fringe history on a small group tour

Much of this history is still visible in the streets. The Lawnmarket, where the Traverse began, the Grassmarket, where it moved in 1969, and the closes and courtyards of the Old Town are still part of the festival’s setting, and our guide to Edinburgh’s main sights is a good introduction to the Royal Mile.

On the tour, an orientation walk and a Fringe orientation with the Program Leader help you read the city and the festival together, and tickets to four Fringe performances are included, with selections confirmed once the programme is published. Visits to the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Museum of Scotland, and two free days, leave room to explore at your own pace.

How much walking does the tour involve?

Around 3 to 5 kilometres a day, some of it on uneven surfaces. The tour is graded Level 1, Introductory to Moderate, but the Old Town is built on a steep ridge with cobbles, steps and narrow closes, so comfortable, well-gripped shoes are worth packing.

For more of the city beyond the festival, our guide to places to visit in Edinburgh off the beaten track suggests quieter corners, and our country spotlight on Scotland sets Edinburgh in its national context. To experience the festival those first companies started, with tickets arranged and a Program Leader on hand, the nine-day Fringe tour travels with up to 16 travellers, and solo travellers are always welcome.