The most exciting find of 2026 goes on at 23.25

Chortle’s Tim Harding spent his most-anticipated column pointing at a man in a papier mache head, on at twenty-five past eleven at night in Monkey Barrel 2. The show is Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage, and Harding’s write-up of it is the least hedged sentence in a list of seventeen shows:

Easily the most exciting find of 2026 for me has been Basil Crumbwick, the depraved creation of shy/retiring comedy writer Sam Eley.

Harding writes that Crumbwick spews hysterical, ornately-written filth over the audience, like if Stewart Francis had escaped the universe of the Delightful Sausage. He also reckons Eley is, in his words, Surely a lock for a Best Newcomer nom if the panel have any sense. Whether the panel has any sense is a separate article, and one I’ve been threatened with before.

Look at the clock on that slot, though. It tells you more about how the Fringe 2026 comedy programme is built than any press release does. The acts critics are shouting about are, with a few exceptions, parked after nine at night. Harding’s list has Abby Govindan at Pleasance Courtyard’s Baby Grand at 21.35 and Maya Ricote at the Cellar at 22.40. Wally Baram is in the Ace Dome at 22.50 for three nights only, 19 to 21 August. The Skinny’s round-up of 24 shows to catch puts Sami Abu Wardeh and Li Jin Hao at Pleasance Courtyard at 10pm. Ifrah Qureshi is at The Stand 3 & 4 at 10.15pm, and Stephen Catling at Hoots @ Potterrow at 10.30pm. I’ve yet to see a critics’ list where the after-ten slots weren’t doing the heavy lifting.

How many comedy shows are at the Edinburgh Fringe 2026?

There are 1,401 comedy shows in this year’s programme, out of 3,649 total. The Fringe Society records that as 38.4 per cent of everything registered. The festival runs 7 to 31 August 2026 across 258 venues, with 53,884 performances, work from 71 countries and 1,748 premieres. Theatre is second on 1,025 shows, music third on 388. So comedy is bigger than the next two genres combined, and has been for years, and everyone in Edinburgh has stopped finding that remarkable.

Tony Lankester, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said at launch that Programme launch is an exciting moment for everyone involved in making the Festival Fringe happen and flagged that Within the number of productions registering this year, we’ve seen a notable increase in artist registrations from overseas. Some of that overseas registration will be sleeping four to a flat in Marchmont with a suitcase of props, which is its own kind of exciting.

The listed dates and the actual dates aren’t the same thing, mind. The Stand’s own Fringe 2026 page carries 69 shows and runs 5 to 31 August, and Fest’s comedy picks list several runs starting 5 August, which is previews – cheaper, rougher, and often the only time you’ll see a show before the reviewers have told the act which bits work. If you’re planning a trip around the money rather than the buzz, the previews and the first weekend are where the discounts live. Add in the visitor levy that kicked in this summer and the accommodation maths gets its own line in the budget.

Who’s actually new, and where they’re hiding

Ayo Adenekan is the one I’d move a dinner reservation for. The Skinny has him at Monkey Barrel at Cab Vol at 1.30pm with Homeland Insecurity, an unusually civilised hour for an act coming off a strong newcomer season, and a 1.30pm slot is a bet by the venue that people will come to him rather than stumble in. Also on The Skinny’s list: Kate Hammer with Government Approved Comedian at Monkey Barrel Studio at 5pm, Sepideh Kaav’s 1979: Persianality Disorder at Laughing Horse at Coco BoHo at 5.15pm from 18 August, Amanda Dwyer at The Stand at 6pm, and Dee Allum’s Raumdeuter at Pleasance Courtyard at 4.10pm.

Fest’s picks lean Scottish and mid-career, which is a useful corrective if every list you’ve read this week is debut-hour hype. They’ve gone for Gareth Waugh at Monkey Barrel at 16.20, Rosco McClelland – winner of the Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award – at Cabaret Voltaire at 20.05, Susie McCabe at Assembly George Square at 20.45, and Mark Thomas doing 40 in Stand-up Years at The Stand at 18.05. Fest also picks John Achkar at Just The Tonic at The Caves at 15.40, a Lebanese comedian doing English stand-up for the first time, and Eva Peroni at Gilded Balloon Teviot at 16.40. Sophie Duker’s Hot Beef Injection is at Pleasance Courtyard at 20.30, which is the slot the building gives you when it thinks you’ll sell it.

The venue that has been most aggressive about hoovering up the names is Monkey Barrel, which announced a further 62 shows on top of an already enormous slate, with tickets for that batch going on general sale on Wednesday 1 April and a pre-sale for its £10-tier Patreon members. That announcement included Ed Night, Ian Smith, Roger O’Sullivan and 2025 Best Newcomer winner Ayoade Bamgboye, plus SNL UK names Paddy Young, Bella Hull, Celya AB, Chris Cantrill and Lorna Rose Treen. Patreon pre-sales for Fringe tickets are now a thing, and I don’t love it, though I understand exactly why an independent club with that many rooms to fill would do it.

Sean Morley is the other one worth rearranging an evening for. Harding writes that I’ll say it again, the WIP of this show last year was the best thing I saw all Fringe, another stroke of genius from comedy’s master experimentalist. Backchannel is at Monkey Barrel Studio at 19.50. Lara Ricote, who Harding notes was previously a best newcomer winner and scored a coveted 4.5 stars on Chortle at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, is at Monkey Barrel 3 at 17.40 with Inkling. Two Ricotes on one programme, unrelated as far as any listing says, and I fully expect at least one confused punter in the wrong queue on the Cowgate.

691 shows will take whatever you can pay

691 shows in the 2026 programme are pay what you want or pay what you can, and that’s before you count the ordinary sold-out fallback the Fringe box office runs on every listing. The line on Sam Eley’s own edfringe page spells it out: If no ticket allocation is remaining, limited Pay What You Want tickets may be available at the venue on the day of the performance on a first come first served basis to people in the PWYW queue. That’s the mechanism most first-time visitors miss – a sold-out show is often still gettable if you turn up early and stand in the right bit of corridor.

None of this fixes the underlying cost of putting a show up. Only 16 of 402 applicants got a £2,500 Keep It Fringe grant this year, Gilded Balloon is handing £2,000 each to five shows, and the venues themselves have had a rough run of it – Assembly spent part of the summer relocating 17 shows to St Andrew Square after a fire. If you can’t get to Edinburgh at all, NextUp’s £50 bundle streams 16 Fringe shows between 17 and 30 August, including Basil Crumbwick.

My favourite entry in the whole programme is a scheduling gag nobody planned. The Skinny lists Frankie Monroe doing A Show for Babies at Monkey Barrel 3 at midday on 24 August, £11.50, and then In the Doghouse with Frankie Monroe at Monkey Barrel 4 from 25 to 31 August at 1.30am. Same performer, same building, thirteen and a half hours apart, and the second one starts after the last bus.

Sources