Fringe helping Scottish creators take centre stage at the world’s biggest arts festival
The curtain has risen on the world’s most important cultural festival - and this year’s Fringe will once again be the place to ensure Scottish creators are taking centre stage.
Running until August 31, the 2026 Fringe will be spread across 299 venues, featuring 57,000 performances of 4,190 different shows. Actors, musicians, artists, dancers, comics, writers, poets, theatre groups and others from 71 countries will be taking part.
And once again creatives of all stripes from Scotland are set to be celebrated across the event, with the Fringe Society helping to champion the efforts of Scottish talent.
Made in Scotland is a showcase focused on presenting the most exciting work coming out of Scotland, to encourage varied, cross-genre, cross-discipline, cutting-edge acts, and to ensure Fringe audiences have a chance to see these acts first - before they go on to take over the world.
Over the last 18 years the Made in Scotland fund has supported more than 330 Scottish shows. Supported by the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Music Centre, it has helped Scotland’s artists, performers and creatives bring their vision to life on stage, and take their work around the world.
And this year’s highly anticipated line-up once again includes a world-class selection of performances across dance, theatre, interdisciplinary and music.
Among the wildly diverse shows in this year’s strand are ‘If I Can’t Dance I’m Not Coming’, a dance interpretation of Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film science fiction masterpiece Metropolis; ‘Transmission’, a ‘darkly comic’ exploration of Scotland’s shift from leading the world on LGBT+ rights to a fertile ground for the anti-trans movement; ‘Through the Shortbread Tin’ an examination of the impact ‘gift shop’ images of Scotland such as sporrans, stag and shortbread have on Scottish culture; Flowercore by Siobhan Wilson, a musical celebration of Scotland’s overlooked wildflowers; and ‘The Raft of the Crab’, a true story of cancer recovery told through ‘nasty’ puppetry, contemporary dance and gravity-defying stunts on a five-metre Chinese Pole.
“The Fringe is a place that welcomes talent from around the world but it is important that we have a way to ensure artists and performers from Scotland are able to make the most of it,” said Chris Snow, Head of Artist Services at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.
“Made In Scotland is all about supporting Scottish work by creatives based here and helping them to promote that work to the world. The Fringe is the perfect place to showcase work to international industry - it's a crucial marketplace that we're supporting the work launching into.”
In addition to providing funding to artists of between £5,000 and £25,000, the support includes advice on performing and finding a venue, inclusion in an industry showcase to international promoters, guidance on how to make the most of international opportunities and access to previous Made in Scotland performers for mentoring.
“This is really about helping artists who want to bring work to the Fringe that’s ready for international export, and connect with the opportunities that the festival offers to launch it into the world,” says Chris.
“By this stage in the festival, these are all shows that are definitively on the radar of audiences and the industry. What we want to do is make sure the very best talent from Scotland is getting a chance to show the world what they can do.”
The selected productions demonstrate the remarkable range of Scotland's performing arts scene, offering work that engages with urgent contemporary issues, caters to audiences of all ages, and draws deeply upon a rich artistic heritage.
And alongside the main theatre, dance, music and interdisciplinary programme, the highly anticipated Made in Scotland Gigs will also return this year. The project awards small grants to Scotland-based music acts and provides them a slot on a professionally managed showcase event which brings together a curated delegation of international music bookers, talent buyers and promoters.
The programme is produced by Wide Days, Scotland's music convention, in partnership with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, and is jointly supported by the Scottish Government's Festivals Expo Fund and music licensing company PPL, with additional support provided by Creative Scotland, PPL and the Scottish Music Centre.
Made in Scotland Gigs will take over Edinburgh’s Cowgate on Monday, August 17, and acts will perform across three of the city’s best-loved grassroots venues spaces - Bannerman’s, La Belle Angele, and Sneaky Pete’s - offering an essential snapshot of the country’s diverse music scene to a public and international industry audience.
One ticket gives access to all three venues for this year’s line-up featuring eight exceptional Scotland-based acts: Azamiah, Bikini Body, Cathal Murphy, Dara Dubh, Fright Years, Haiver, Helicon, and the Tom Campbell Trio.
Tony Lankester, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: “The Made in Scotland 2026 Showcase marks another exciting chapter for celebrating Scotland's rich and vibrant arts sector. We are delighted to support these artists as they connect with audiences and industry from across the world.”
For full details of this year's Made In Scotland line-up can be found here:https://www.edfringe.com/about-us/news-and-blog/2026-made-in-scotland-lineup-revealed/. To book tickets or for more information, visit the Fringe website at https://www.edfringe.com/.