13 Shows I Loved at Edinburgh Fringe 2026

I saw 63 shows at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

I produced three of them, teched another, and spent most of the rest of the month sitting in the audience trying to work out how everyone else was doing what they were doing.

There was a lot of theatre I loved. There was also plenty I didn't. But when I started thinking about the shows that had really stayed with me, I realised they had quite a lot in common.

They were shows.

They took me somewhere. They made me laugh, cry, think, gasp or wonder what the hell I had just seen. They weren't particularly interested in staying neatly inside a genre. They used whatever theatrical tools they needed to tell their stories.

These are 13 of the shows I loved most at Edinburgh Fringe 2026.

1. 1 Pill, 2 Pill, Blue Pill, Red Pill

I'm not normally a huge fan of parody, but this was so creative and funny.

Rather than simply recreating The Matrix and making jokes about it, Becky Goodman explores what the story might look like from the perspective of another character.

The highlight for me was Squiddy, a puppet who was so sweet and endearing that I completely fell for them.

It made me laugh and it was genuinely moving.

And, as you'll probably notice from this list, I love puppets.

2. As Far As We Know

Every year I go to the Fringe and see something I'm really not enjoying, and then something happens and it becomes one of the best things I've ever seen.

As Far As We Know was this year's example.

The first act was hard work for me. A man sits at a desk and speaks fast. Very fast. It was overwhelming and I found it difficult to follow.

And then something happens in the second act that changes everything.

By the time it ended, the whole thing had landed.

It reminded me of something really useful as a theatre-maker: you have the whole hour.

You have that time to win an audience over.

The production design, lighting and sound were exceptional too. It was a great reminder that a show doesn't necessarily have to give you everything immediately.

3. Badgers

I really loved Malaika Kegode's previous show, so I went into Badgers expecting something similar.

It was similarly extraordinary.

I wasn't expecting to be both scared and brought to tears.

The staging was excellent, the live music was exceptional and the storytelling was phenomenal.

There's something very exciting about watching someone who understands storytelling so deeply, but also understands that a story doesn't have to be told through words alone.

4. Dracula: Lucy's Dream

One of the most visually beautiful shows I've ever seen.

Look, I'll be frank. I love puppets.

Four of the shows on this list featured puppets. This is not an accident.

The puppetry in Dracula: Lucy's Dream was exceptional. Having worked for magicians, there were moments when it felt like watching a magic trick. It became genuinely difficult to distinguish where the human body ended and the puppet began.

I've never seen such a spectacle.

More importantly, it showed me the power of visual storytelling.

There are things you can communicate through an image that would take pages of dialogue to explain.

5. Elf Lyons Is The Woman On The Edge

I've been a fan of Elf Lyons for more than a decade. I even did her How To Make Your Dream Show workshop last autumn.

That workshop was one of the most inspirational things I've been on, and one thing that came out of it was very clear to me:

She knows how to make a show.

The Woman On The Edge has to be one of my favourite shows in her catalogue.

It was funny, emotional and hopeful. It had it all.

There was something really satisfying about watching someone who has such a clear understanding of what makes a show work.

6. EVITA TOO

This show was a spectacle.

There were so many surprising moments.

Sh!t Theatre make shows that matter, but they also make them really fun. That's a difficult combination to pull off.

EVITA TOO was bold, exciting and full of theatrical ideas. It constantly surprised me, and I loved not knowing what was going to happen next.

7. Frankie Thompson: Horrible Things

My only appearance onstage during the entire Fringe was being brought up as an audience member for Frankie's Baby Boy Experience.

So that was fun.

Horrible Things was so much fun. Frankie handled audience interaction brilliantly and the show was full of surprises.

There was an incoherence to it that really worked, alongside a consistency that tied everything together.

That's a difficult balance to achieve.

It was really bold and really challenging, but above all it felt alive.

8. Is It Too Late Now To Say Sorry?

My favourite show of the Fringe.

I'm interested in storytelling shows, and this one from Adam Lenson just hit me like a wall.

It had fantastic use of projection, live music and, yes, puppetry.

There was a song about bad apologies that I will never forget.

And there was a joke about Justin Bieber that was the funniest thing I saw all Fringe.

But what really stayed with me was how all of those different elements worked together.

It didn't feel like a storytelling show with some production added to it. It felt like a complete piece of theatre.

That's the distinction I'm increasingly interested in.

9. Kanpur: 1857

As a storyteller myself, this one intrigued me a lot.

I loved how storytelling from Niall Moorjani was integrated into a full-on theatrical show.

It wasn't just someone stopping the action to tell us a story. Storytelling became part of the theatrical language of the piece.

It's a device I can't get out of my head.

And that's probably one of the best things a show can do to you as a theatre-maker.

10. Lawrence Dodd: This Can't Be It

A lot of this list is highly structured, narrative work.

This wasn't.

It was loose. It was anarchic. It felt like anything could happen.

And it was a real treat to see something like this.

It was a living, breathing show that could become anything.

There's something exciting about watching a performer who hasn't completely nailed everything down. You feel like the show is happening in front of you rather than being reproduced in front of you.

11. Rob Duncan: Printer of the Year

Over the Fringe, I became quite attached to a thermal printer.

I was using one when sticking reviews onto the posters for my shows, so when a friend recommended Printer of the Year, I had to see it.

This is a technical masterpiece.

It is also absolutely not a show I could work on.

There is so much that could go wrong, especially when the central piece of technology is a printer, an object with a fairly well-established reputation for being unreliable.

But it worked.

It worked so well.

I really admired the risk involved and the utter creativity of building a show around something so specific.

12. Saving Britney

A fantastic storytelling show that brought back all the nineties and noughties nostalgia.

It was beautifully crafted and very funny.

But what I particularly loved was the range of emotions it took me through.

That's something I kept noticing in the shows I loved this year.

They weren't just funny.

They weren't just moving.

They could make you laugh and then make you care deeply about something a few minutes later.

Fake Escape’s Saving Britney did that brilliantly.

The production design was great too, and it showed the full range of emotions that great storytelling can move you through.

13. Vincent Gambini: This Is Not A Magic Show

Without a doubt, one of the best magic shows I've ever seen.

And I've seen a lot.

What I loved most was how understated it was.

Magicians are often confident performers. This felt as if Nathan Fielder had awkwardly stumbled through a magic show, with Vincent Gambini fumbling his way through something that should have been slick and polished.

I loved how it subverted the usual magician's formula and did something genuinely original with the art form.

It was magic, but it didn't feel like the magic shows I've seen before.

So what did I actually learn?

After seeing 63 shows, I've come away with a much clearer idea of the kind of work I want to make and the kind of artists I want to work with.

The shows I loved this year had a lot in common. They were shows. They took me on a journey. They moved through emotions, making me laugh and making me cry. None of them felt like they belonged neatly to one genre. They were multidisciplinary. They were bold and exciting. And you could see the craft that went into them. They weren't just stories. They weren't just comedy, puppetry, magic, music, clowning or storytelling. They took all the tools available to them and worked out what combination would make this particular story work.

That's the kind of thing I want to make. And it's the kind of artist I want to work with. If that's you, please do get in touch.