Southport Comedy Festival’s 17-show bill names two women. Manchester’s 53-show festival takes open applications for £55

Jason Byrne’s opening night at Southport Comedy Festival is sold out. So are both Jason Manford shows, Henning Wehn, Gary Delaney, Scott Bennett and Paul Merton’s improv night. Good festival on paper, and also a bill on which, across seventeen shows in a marquee in Victoria Park, exactly two women are named: Suki Webster, billed with Merton on 10 October, and Hayley Ellis, listed as support on the afternoon and the evening Manford shows on 4 October.

Chortle got there first, on 27 September. Its line did the rounds: “the only woman in the whole line-up is Suki Webster, appearing with hubby Paul Merton”. The festival replied, and Chortle carried the reply. Manford is being supported by Hayley Ellis. Laura Smyth “was due to attend before rescheduling her tour”, and two of the eight new comedian of the year finalists are women. All of which is true, and all of it reads differently next to what the published programme actually offers an act who wants on it.

What’s on at Southport Comedy Festival 2026?

Southport Comedy Festival runs from 2 to 18 October 2026, its fifteenth year. The venue is what the festival’s own site calls “a giant luxury heated and seated marquee in the beautiful grounds of Victoria Park”. That is courtesy of Elite Events, in association with Halliwell Jones Kia Southport. The published What’s On page lists seventeen shows. Tickets start at £8 plus booking fee for the New Comedian of the Year grand final on Saturday 3 October. Comedy Bingo Back To The 90’s on 17 October is £10. They top out at £30 plus booking fee for Byrne’s 30 Years Byrning, which has already gone.

The rest is a touring-headliner column: Paul Sinha, Jimeoin, Clinton Baptiste, Henning Wehn, Gary Delaney, and Paul Merton and Suki Webster with Mike McShane. Then Adam Kay, Mike Wozniak, Scott Bennett, Mick Miller and Seann Walsh. A Best of the Fest compilation night follows on 16 October at £15 plus booking fee. That one has Steve Gribbin, Clayton Jones and Brennan Reece, hosted by Brendan Riley. Riley also hosts the bingo and the new act final, which makes him the busiest person in the tent and almost certainly the one who knows where the spare gaffer tape lives.

Hayley Ellis plays the matinee and the evening

On a bill built almost entirely from acts who arrive with their own hour and their own poster, the support slots are the only doors in. Southport’s published programme names three of them: Ellis on both Manford shows, Patrick Monahan opening for Clinton Baptiste on 7 October, and Oliver Bowler on the Mick Miller matinee on 18 October. Paul Sinha’s afternoon show on 3 October is listed as “Plus support” with nobody named, which usually means the slot exists and the decision hasn’t landed yet, or it has and nobody has updated the page.

Two of those three named support slots are the same act on the same day, which is how big-tent programming tends to work. The headliner tours with a warm-up, the warm-up does both houses and gets one car park pass out of it, and the festival books one act rather than two. It is efficient and it is also why the smaller type on a festival bill so rarely has many names in it. If you are an act in the North West hoping a seventeen-show marquee programme means seventeen chances, the honest count is closer to four.

Manchester’s version costs £55 to get on

Thirty-odd miles inland, the Women in Comedy Festival opens on 1 October and runs to the 11th, its fifteenth year too, with 53 shows across six venues in Manchester’s Northern Quarter plus a seventh one-off show in Altrincham. Beyond The Joke’s line-up piece is the fullest published account of it. Founded by Hazel O’Keefe in 2012, the festival is now run by Jess Toomey of the Frog and Bucket with Aimee Perry programming.

Manchester is one of those special cities where people come out and support the arts, there is so much going on and the venues in the Northern Quarter embrace it all. They really have helped us keep this festival going. There is still so much work to be done for women in comedy. I love programming this festival because in some small way, we are making a change and a path for more women of all backgrounds to know they have a city and a festival that embraces them.

That is festival programmer Aimee Perry, quoted by Beyond The Joke. The bill includes Belfast’s Emer Maguire, former Traitors winner Hannah Byczkowski with her debut, Lady M with a show about her job as a sex worker, sketch trio Sardines, and Yuriko Kotani, who won the BBC New Comedy Award. Chloe Reynolds brings a debut called Dissonance after winning Leicester Comedian of the Year this year.

The applications page is the bit a working act actually needs, and nobody has written it up. The festival takes open applications, and the page says so in plain terms: “Anyone can apply from beginners to seasoned pros. You can apply as a solo act or split bill, 3 or 4 on the line up or a improv troupe”. The cost is stated as “a small participation fee of £55”, justified by non-profit status. In return, “the acts get to keep their ticket revenue if you are at one of the smaller venues we use (Excluding the Frog & Bucket comedy club)”. The slot is an hour, with “20 mins to pack in space before your hour slot and 5 mins to pack out”. The Frog and Bucket itself is described as seating 245 theatre style with a full tech set-up.

The two front doors are different shapes. Southport’s hands you a support slot if a headliner’s agent already has your number, whereas Manchester’s gives you an hour, a brochure listing and the box office, in exchange for £55 up front and 25 minutes of get-in and get-out around your own show. Neither is charity, and the £55 is real money for an act who is down to two and a half paid gigs a week. At least it’s a number you can work out on a beer mat before you commit, which is more than you can say for a Northern Quarter car park on a Saturday night. The two awards are cash as well: Best Show is £500, sponsored by Manford’s Comedy Club, and Best Newcomer is £500 plus a performance spot, sponsored by the Frog and Bucket. Applications for the next edition open in 2027, and the festival’s stated eligibility is that it is “an all-inclusive event open to acts who are cis women and those who identify as female and non-binary performers”.

Entrants heard back by the 18th, and the page still says 2025

The one genuinely open door at Southport has already closed for this year. The New Comedian of the Year final is on Saturday 3 October with eight finalists. Entry was by YouTube link through the festival’s form, and registrations opened at 10am on 31 August. The rules page says entrants would be informed “either way by Friday 18th September 2025” as to whether they had a place. The year in that sentence is clearly a leftover from the last cycle, which is the sort of thing you notice only if you were actually reading the page to enter.

The rules are worth copying into a 2027 note now. Entrants must be 18 or over, and must not have performed comedy in front of a paying audience prior to October 2022. The site spells that out as “Maximum of 4 years experience”. They must have at least ten minutes of original material, and must be free for the final. Travel and accommodation are on you. That four-year cap is tighter than it sounds. If you started during the quiet years and took a while to get going, you may already be out, which is a different problem from the one building a five-minute competition set solves. Eight slots, one video, one shot, and a hosting fee for Brendan Riley either way.

The thing I’d want to know, standing at the back of that marquee on the 3rd, is how many of the eight finalists came through a Manchester room. And how many of those rooms are hosting a Women in Comedy Festival show a fortnight earlier. Nobody publishes that, and the acts themselves probably haven’t counted.