Shorter runs and smaller shows - how the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is changing as costs rise

A recipient of the Keep It Fringe award, which this year handed out £2,500 bursaries to 180 performers, she knows she was in a more privileged position than many.

But she still could not afford to commit to the full, four-week run that has launched many comedians’ careers, instead performing for 12 days between July 30 and August 10.

“I was eventually offered two options [from venues],” she said. “One was a full run and one was the run that I'm doing, and I could only afford the shorter run. So it was a no brainer for me.”

Comedian Ms Rida, who played GP Sammi on Scottish soap River City in 2009, is keeping costs down by staying with a friend’s family.

“I'm thrilled to be able to get there at all, because it felt like a dream at one point,” she said.

“It was actually intimidating. But it's frustrating. I think it's really sad for who didn't get any funding and just can't take a show up there at all. It's tragic, really, that the arts are segregating people in this way - people who have money and people who don't.”

The increased cost of performing at the Fringe has seen a rising trend in artists opting for shorter runs rather than staying at the event for an entire month.

Fringe venues have said while the number of performances held throughout the month remain the same as previous years, the number of different artists performing has risen, due to shared slots and shorter runs.

Meanwhile, others have admitted they have more requests for shorter slots than they can fulfil.

It comes against the backdrop of the 2025 programme having 3,352 shows - the second most in the Fringe’s history - across 265 venues.

Some veteran performers have opted not to attend the Fringe at all this year due to a lack of availability of shorter venue options. Others are cutting corners by self-producing, or turning to friends and contacts to help out - rather than using a major show production company with a bigger budget.

Casts and production teams are also getting smaller, with one venue owner warning the event was at risk of becoming a “one monologue festival”.

When planning for this year’s Fringe, comedian Rosie Nicholls found out the flat she had rented for her Fringe shows every year had gone up in price again to £8,000 for the month.

After three years of successful runs as part of award-winning sketch duo Grubby Little Mitts, the only option available to Ms Nicholls and her team was to cut short their run. However, she could not secure a venue and has been forced to entirely scrap the idea of performing in Edinburgh this year.

Ms Nicholls said she had applied to two major venues, but had not received any suitable offers for a two-week slot - with only full, month-long residencies on offer.

“It was kind of strange to have had a hit show at the Fringe with really good sales, good audiences, good reviews, for three years in a row, and then as soon as we didn't want to do a whole month and sink thousands into that, it wasn't an option for the venues,” she said.

“You have to not take it personally, because they're just trying to make money as well.”

Performer Connor McKenna has managed to secure a venue for a shorter, two-week run for his show, Seltzer Boy at Snug at Paradise in Augustines on George IV Bridge. But high accommodation costs mean he is having to undertake a daily commute to his home in Glasgow, rather than immerse himself in the festival.

“Performing at the Fringe has been a dream for me,” said Mr McKenna, who said the less-well known venue he had chosen was three times cheaper than a similar-sized space at one of the larger venue operators.

“When you're younger, you're starry eyed, you think ‘I'm going to go and have such success and I'm going to meet with all these people, and be just like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’.

“You have all these dreams and part of that fantasy is living in Edinburgh, being in Edinburgh and finding all these wonderful artists and seeing all these wacky shows and having your mindset completely changed.

“And of course, when you get to the reality, it's like ‘OK, the train comes at 12.30 and if I can make it, then I will have time to eat dinner at home’. Part of the wonder of it is a little dampened by the fact that I can't afford to stay there.”

He added: “I really wish I could do the full run, a longer run, so that I can build up an audience as I go through word of mouth. But it being it only two weeks. I don't have as much time to do that.”

Tom Forster, Summerhall Arts fringe producer and programmer, warned performers were being “priced out” of doing full runs, which he said were vital to securing recognition - and generating audiences by word of mouth to create more revenue.

A lack of options for those on a tighter budget means only performers with money behind them can afford to put on a show, which he said favoured professionals, rather than emerging talent and meant the Fringe was no longer “an experiment on the side like it used to be”.

“Each year we are receiving more requests for shorter runs due to financial barriers, but the value of doing a full run at the festival cannot be understated,” he said. “Typically, reviews and word of mouth gathered in the first half generate revenue in the second half.

“However, emerging, and independent companies are being priced out of taking that risk; forced to place a higher value on specific portions of a full run - the alleged ‘industry week’ for example - that then devalues the other portion by inferring that there’s no industry around the rest of the time, which is nonsense.”

Mr Forster added: “You’re not going to take the risk on an unfinished product unless your certain the show is a belter and set to take advantage of the duration. Conversely, you might have to make cuts to the show to facilitate a full run to the point where it’s not worth presenting.

“Either way, the only people who can work within that financial uncertainty are professionals, who get paid to strike the balance between finished and unfinished. And those kinds of quality producers, much like everything else, are becoming shorter in supply on the Fringe because often that tricky work goes unpaid.”

Mr Forster said some performers were no longer even opting for a “half” run of two weeks, but a “couple of days here and there” throughout the month.

He said: “That didn’t exist when I first started working at the festival in 2008. Not only does splitting a slot up in that way become much more carbon intense - three shows travelling to one slot, instead of one show per slot - but it also puts pressure on the entire economy of the festival; less accommodation, more demand on press/industry and, of course, more competition for audience attention.”

Katy Koren, co-artistic director of Gilded Balloon, said: "We've noticed an increase in shorter runs since the pandemic, with acts less keen to come to the Fringe for the full month - mostly due to the increased cost of accommodation for artists, which means it just isn't a viable option for many.

"The Fringe used to be a development and training ground for acts to immerse themselves in the festival, improve their performance skills and maybe get spotted and be offered that next stepping stone beyond the Fringe. But a training opportunity that is no longer affordable or, even more worryingly, useful to a performer's career means they'll go elsewhere or look at options to reduce the risk, which is happening more and more.”

Ms Koren added: “We've noticed the number of performances we put on flatline, but the number of shows we have each year is increasing, reflecting the fact that more shows are coming, but just doing shorter runs in our available performance slots."

A growing number of experienced Fringe comedians who have learned the ropes over years of trips to Edinburgh have turned producer to help out up-and-coming acts new to the industry who cannot afford professional support.

Ms Nicholls is one, producing a debut hour from new sketch duo The Mayor and His Daughter, visiting Edinburgh for just a couple of days at the beginning and end of their run.

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Meanwhile, comedian Ignacio Lopez, who has appeared on shows including Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News for You and QI, is producing debut full-length performances from Welsh comedians Steffan Alun and Josh Elton alongside his own show.

He is keen to show the up-and-coming comedians the Fringe is not entirely inaccessible.

He said: “I feel like I've done every kind of show, every kind of venue, every format of ticketing or free collection, pay what you want. I feel like I've tried and tested everything. I convinced them [Steffan and Josh] to take the leap this year.

“I said ‘look, it's not as much of an expense to do a show in a venue with proper light, sound and tech as you think’. There's ways of doing it with a quite DIY mentality.

“I'll design a flyer, I'll get that cheap somewhere. I'll tie all those things together. So when I say producing, that's a really fancy way of saying ‘I'm just introducing two friends to a bunch of other mates who’ll do bits and pieces for them’.”

However, a shorter run does not necessarily correlate with less success at the Fringe.

Last year, comedian Amy Gledhill won the Edinburgh Fringe comedy award after performing a show only for the second half of August, as did Sam Campbell in 2022.

Pleasance director Anthony Alderson has warned rising costs are forcing performers to scale back shows, putting the Fringe in danger of becoming a “one monologue festival”.

He told The Scotsman: “Our entire industry is in danger of losing multiple opportunities for people on and off stage. The shorter runs themselves aren’t the problem per se. People have always come for shorter runs for a variety of reasons.

“The issue is that people are now being forced to ditch their production values because of the cost of being in the city so shows are smaller, less technically ambitious and cannot employ as many people as needed to always create a polished product.”

He added: “The Edinburgh Fringe is one of the cornerstones of our theatre industry. Therefore, if the cost of being in the city becomes so high that we start losing jobs in theatre, then our industry as a whole, and our city, is going to lose out.

“Despite all of this, artists are still coming to Edinburgh because it is still the greatest marketplace on earth for theatre. There are theatres from all over the country, all over the world, who come to see work. But we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t lose the true value of our festival by these shows being minimised. We can’t swap jobs for the cost of beds and expect this festival to thrive.”