Comedy
Review
Edinburgh Fringe 2026: as it happened
The flyers are flying, reviews are rolling in and the Fringe is in full swing – join us as we dive headfirst into 2026’s madness
You wake to the sound of bagpipes. Scotland the Brave, naturally. It’s hot, uncharacteristically so even for an Edinburgh morning in August. Open the window and the city hits you all at once: sun-warmed stone, the smell of coffee, sausage and tattie scones, and the unmistakable fizz of an Irn-Bru passing for breakfast nearby. Flyers are changing hands in a dance of back-and-forth, voices are vying for attention above one another and somewhere down the street a show is already beginning. A fire breather crosses your path. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 is officially underway.
Being the world’s biggest performing arts festival and all, the choice paralysis can be staggering. But we’re at the Fringe in search of Fresh Comedy, and we’re here to catch as many shows as possible. From the next big thing to the return of established favourites, follow our Edinburgh Fringe 2026 journey below as we report back on what’s worth seeing.
Rachel Fairburn
Rachel Fairburn debuted her first character comedy project, Side Eye, at the Fringe in 2024, which was loosely focused on the seven deadly sins. Her next foray, Vexy Beasts, instead uses a salon in the fictional Manchester suburb of Harpurvale and the juicy gossip of its owner Leanne as its connecting thread. As the show’s director and SNL UK writer Chris Cantrill puts it, the show represents “the absolutely standard of northern character comedy… except she says c*nt every other sentence.” He’s not wrong: Fairburn loves the clout behind the c-bomb, but the show is a lot more clever than that. All of the characters have their own funny angle and distinctive accent – not least the posh gentrifier whose every other word is “literally” – and there are some very recent references that suggest she’s tinkering with the show as it goes along. But Vexy Beasts also gently moves towards a narrative arc that is far more satisfying than just a collection of exaggerated but relatable social stereotypes.
Joe Lycett & Friends
It’s been a little while since Joe Lycett has hit the stand-up touring circuit, what with recently becoming a father and starring in the forthcoming season of The Celebrity Traitors. But with a new tour announced for next year, the presenter and general wind-up merchant has brought some friends to the fringe to help him get back into it. Not that he needs the help – he reels off stories of his new life with “the babeh” with immediate ease – but it’s a very good trio of guests today: Parisian-in-London Celya AB puts the Brits’ world-famous dry comedy to shame, and delivers groans and chuckles alike with a gag about Placebo; Dane Buckley’s best bits of his Indian-Irish heritage are full of sass and sentiment; while Reuben Kaye is having absolutely none of the crying babies in the afternoon’s least family friendly segment. A perfect hour’s warm up for Lycett’s return to the spotlight next year.
Olga Koch
There’s a broad age range in the audience tonight for Olga Koch’s Fat Tom Cruise, but it’s hard not to feel that those of us in our early 30s are the real target here. We find Koch, 32, in her time machine bedroom, taking us back to the awkward years of the 2000s (via the 1970s) when growing up meant a strange mix of schoolyard politics, questionable pop culture and an internet that was only just becoming part of everyday life. There’s plenty of nostalgia, but Koch isn’t just trying to remind us what it was like to be young; she’s more concerned with the things we were absorbing without really understanding them. Her Russian-British upbringing adds another layer to this, as does her time at NYU and the frat hazing culture that surrounded it, as she looks back on the expectations, embarrassments and cultural clashes that helped shape her. Her pace is rapid and the quick gags and callbacks are slick, but all of it leads to a nuanced conclusion that will catch you off guard.
Olga Koch plays The Wardrobe, Leeds on 10 November – find tickets here
Evaldas Karosas
For all the shows on offer that promise to push the boundaries of their art and broaden our expectations of it, there’s a palate cleaning freshness to Evaldas Karosas. A Capable Man indeed, his new show is banger after banger, sharply honing in on steadily degenerating topics covering his upbringing in Lithuania and more recent time living in London, delivered with a snappy pace that makes the hour sail by.
Christopher Hall
Woe betide anyone trying to leave Christopher Hall’s new show early – as one unfortunate audience member (who may or may not be me) finds out. This is, after all, a show all about the oomph, the je ne sais quoi, the pizazz (not to be confused with pizzas) that Hall brings to every function; so much so that he’s begun feeling like an employee when friends invite him to their weddings and baby showers. Pizazz works so well because it’s this exact sense of friend-like relatability – brutal but honest, and always a source of fun – that has been key to Hall’s rise since he began uploading sketches on social media during lockdown. Hearing stories of his own personal friends only strengthens this connection, giving Hall plenty of license for ad-libs and dancing outbreaks – not that he’d ask for permission, anyway.
Lou Wall
Where the tall grandmas at? It’s the question at the heart of the new show from Lou Wall, who is like one of those incorrigible friends who arguably takes their curiosity too far when they lock in to a new interest or obsession. At 6ft 5, Wall’s height has been commented on their whole life – not least from cute, tiny grandmas. The realisation steers Wall onto a journey not to stop until they find a 6ft grandma. Nominated for Most Outstanding Show at the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Where Are All The Tall Grandmas? is collated with Wall’s characteristic use of presentation style multi-media and song, and like their last smash show Behind The Fourth Wall, this seemingly single-minded search actually reveals far more about identity and family, balancing sweet sentimentality with straight up chaos.
Russell Howard
Though Russell Howard’s show is technically a Work in Progress, he doesn’t look at his notebook once during his hour with the 4pm Fringe crowd. It’s a tricky time to perform – “you’re starting to think about dinner, aren’t you?” – but Howard has been doing this since 1998, and has the experience and confidence to make even the awkward slot work in his favour. There are moments when his trademark optimism seems to be wearing thin, but ultimately that’s part of what makes the hour connect: Howard finds humour in the shared exhaustion of contemporary life since we last saw him. Fatherhood – or, more accurately, his admiration for motherhood – makes up much of the show’s current material, alongside hilarious stories from touring Scandinavia, including the time he let an 80-year-old woman carry his bags in Sweden. It may be unfinished, but there’s little about Howard’s command of the room that feels like a work in progress.
Reuben Kaye
A Fringe regular since 2017, Kaye returns this year with two shows; Hard to Swallow and The Kaye Hole. The former confronts audiences with political satire, hard-hitting observations and spectacular musical numbers accompanied by a live band. Effortlessly moving through the crowd, Kaye keeps the audience on their toes with devilishly well-delivered punchlines and storytelling that brings global social issues to the forefront in a way that is inclusive and deliberate.
Jason Byrne
Speaking of Fringe veterans, Jason Byrne is celebrating 30 years of stand-up with 30 Years Byrning – although you’d be hard-pressed to guess he’s been doing this for quite so long. Firstly, because he still has the restless energy of a comedian who’s just discovered he can get away with whatever he likes on stage, throwing himself into audience interaction, props and increasingly ridiculous physical bits. But also, few others would be able to keep this kind of show alive for so long, the one that relies on an inherent skill to find audience members with comedic potential and pitting them against each other. Tonight, for example, there is a bus driver-off, somehow finding a driver for Lothian and a driver for East Coast busses, making them stand and list off the bus numbers they’ve driven. It’s complete madness. The anniversary premise gives him an excuse to revisit some of the tricks that have served him well over the decades, from swinging in on a wrecking ball Miley Cyrus style to a good old game of That’s Not A Badger, but there’s little sense of this being a greatest-hits package. Instead, Byrne is as willing as ever to veer off-script, with the audience becoming a far bigger part of the show than the standup whether they intended to or not. Thirty years in, the formula remains refreshingly simple: give Jason Byrne a room full of people and see what happens.
Stamptown
Imagine witnessing The Eric Andre Show live but if it also featured some of the most talented burlesque performers in their field and you’ll arrive somewhere near Stamptown – the ridiculously raucous variety show from Zack Zucker. Every show promises to be different, with Zucker recruiting some of the best acts he can find at the fringe. A particular favourite from tonight is the ever-smiling Mr. Cardboard, a Gaulier-trained clown whose repeated and elated stage invasions play at our patience. There’s also sword-eating, umbrella foot juggling – perfect for the Palais du Variété setting – plus standup and a hilariously tenuous overarching narrative, but Zucker’s own surrealist partnership sound guy and co-creator Jonny Woolley is the real connecting thread. Stamptown needs to be seen to be believed – don’t miss your chance to see this troupe before they return to The Big Apple.
See Stamptown at Soho Theatre Walthamstow 3, 4 & 5 September – find tickets here
Ania Magliano
There’s naturally been an extra buzz around the stars of Saturday Night Live UK at this year’s Fringe, not least Weekend Update’s Ania Magliano. She’ll inevitably draw a particularly enthusiastic young queer crowd — there’s plenty here about bisexuality, sexual awakening and discovering that Sylvanian Families instead of Barbie dolls were the gateway to her early erotic imagination — but the great virtue of Peach Fuzz is how warmly and effortlessly it crosses demographics. It’s a beautifully balanced hour: clever but never smug, and packed with the sort of oddly specific and personal observations that somehow feel universal; laughter and knee slaps punctuate an hour long smile. The SNL UK attention may have made Magliano one of the hottest tickets in toon, but even without the TV hype, this would be one of the Fringe’s most accomplished and endearing shows.
Ahir Shah
There’s something quite apt about seeing Ahir Shah’s new show Golden as the sun disappears behind the moon. As the Fringe crowd gathers at the Pleasance Courtyard, the rest of Edinburgh dons darkened glasses for a glimpse of the rare solar eclipse – quite the backdrop for a show that meditates on the darkness that can overshadow the light of adult life. Following his Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning Ends in 2023, Shah continues with family history but pulls it into focus of life in his thirties: money, marriage and other big changes that arrive with growing older.
Phil Wang
Shah isn’t the only 30 something reckoning with midlife. Getting old is the concern running through UH OH, a show in which his moustache is apparently the least of Phil Wang’s worries. At 36, Wang is finding himself increasingly baffled by the world around him – from the rapid shifts in online culture to Gen Z’s apparent rejection of the progressive politics his millennial generation helped usher in. As he wonders if he’s already “an old c*nt”, Wang is the butt of his own jokes as UH OH finds Wang caught between generations.
Jack Whitehall
Jack Whitehall has spent much of his career trying to make people like him, so becoming a father seems to have presented a whole new audience to please. His latest Work in Progress finds him grappling with the less glamorous realities of parenthood while wondering whether his lifelong instinct to people please is actually doing him any favours. There’s plenty of material about the collision between his comedian persona and the responsibilities of being a new dad, such as scaring off the other parents at nursery, with Whitehall at his best when he turns his own anxieties into elaborate observations. And then there’s childbirth, blessed with an especially vivid retelling – the kind of imagery that may well stay with you longer than some of the jokes, especially when he keeps repeating a phrase that might get this article taken down. It’s unfinished, as the title promises, but Whitehall’s instinct for turning personal discomfort into a laugh has always been ready.
