Entertainment / Edinburgh Fringe
A clutch of Bristol shows heading to the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe
While Edinburgh prepares to host the biggest arts festival in the world, through the month of August, performers of all stripes are putting their shows through final previews in readiness.
Bristol is playing its part, hosting work-in-progress theatre shows at venues across the city, while standup fans meanwhile can enjoy extended seasons of previews at The Gaffe Comedy Club, its sister venue The Robin Hood, and also at The Wardrobe Theatre, courtesy of Chuckle Busters.
As the Fringe approaches, Bristol24/7 rounds up some of the many artists and performers who will be heading north for all – or in most cases part – of the festival.
is needed now More than ever
Harriet Dyer: Easily Distra…
Dyer will arrive at Edinburgh following a hugely successful debut at Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In her own inimitable style, she pledges to “permeate your glockenspiel with tales of wetsuits on buses, bee siblings and cows that cure baldness!”
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CabVol2 at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire), August 5-30 at 8.35pm
Remember, Remember!
Bristol’s Lucy Buncombe has written and co-stars in an outrageously camp new musical which is described as “a wildly inaccurate and joyfully misinformed retelling” of the Gunpowder Plot – with an original score and brimming with pop culture references.
Remember, Remember! – photo: Candid Studio
Queen Dome at Pleasance Dome, August 5-30 at 5.15pm
Overtone
From Fringe First award-winning Bristol theatremaker Tom Brennan in collaboration with The North Wall, Overtone is “an unflinching new play about love, memory and the relationships that shape us”. When a couple happen to spot their former choir director on the street, the boundaries between the past and present collide.
Photo: Tom Brennan
Jack Dome at Pleasance Dome, August 5-30 at 2.40pm
Badgers
Created by Malaika Kegode and Joe Williams of Jakabol – the team behind the acclaimed Outlier – this Theatre Royal Plymouth production in association with Bristol Old Vic will present its world premiere at the Fringe, before returning to Bristol for a five-day run in September. And if you can’t wait that long, you can catch it in preview on July 30 and August 1. “Something has taken root in this town“, we’re told. “A recluse, a disappearance, a mysterious folk song.” Badgers is a genre-blending “mercurial folk tale” that explores “the art of letting go, and the ethics of true crime”.
Joe Williams, Malaika Kegode, Beth Roberts, Badgers – photo: Paul Blakemore
Traverse 2 at Traverse Theatre, August 6-30; times vary
Behemoth: StarStuck
Described as “a joyously subversive sketch comedy spectacle”, sketch troupe Behemoth return to the Fringe with a show exploring no less than “the relationship between art, fame and commerce through clowning, multimedia chaos, grand theatrics, boybands and an ancient parasitic CEO made entirely of Velcro”. They will be previewing the show at The Alma Tavern & Theatre on July 18.
Behemoth StarStuck – photo: Laura Franklin
Squeak at Rotunda Theatre, August 7-16 at 7.45pm
Emma Davies: You Are All Resources
Inspired by losing her job last year, Davies’ satirical character comedy show is set in the world of HR. Alllison Pope (sic) is an HR consultant charged with leading a corporate restructure amidst an atmosphere dripping in sexism, ageism and anxiety. Davies will be previewing the show at the Front Room Theatre, Weston-super-Mare on July 10.
Emma Davies as HR consultant Alllison (sic) Pope in You Are All Resources – 2026 – photo: © Rah Petherbridge
Wee Container 1 at Hoots @ Potterrow, August 7-18 at 4.50pm
30, Burty and Thriving
Local comic and co-founder of the Bristol Comedy Festival, Burt Williamson returns to the Fringe to consider his future in the light of “recent events that have brought his mortality sharply into focus”.
Burt Williamson recording his third standup special – photo: courtesy of the artist
carte blanche! At PBH’s Free Fringe @ Voodoo Rooms, August 8-30 at 3.05pm
My Date wih Pierce Brosnan
Multi-award-winning performer Alistair Aitcheson has been making interactive shows in Bristol for a decade. This “anarchic, saucy and totally unpredictable” queer clown romance is controlled by the audience, who are invited to scan a QR code and put words in the mouth of a talking dummy of Hollywood star and erstwhile Bond actor, Pierce Brosnan. Aitcheson will be previewing the show at the Bristol Improv Theatre on July 23.
My Date with Pierce Brosnan – photo: Alistair Aitcheson
Nineties at Laughing Horse @ City Cafe, August 16-30 at 11.10pm
Stuart Goldsmith: Canary
With a standup career now spanning 20 years, Goldsmith continues to amp up the difficulty level, electing to focus his comedy in recent years squarely at the climate crisis. Fresh from performing on Live at the Apollo and the Netflix is a Joke festival in LA, he brings his second climate hour to the Fringe, before going on tour in the autumn – culminating in his biggest ever solo show at Bristol Old Vic on November 18.
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CabVol1 at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire), August 17-30 at 2.25pm
Marc Burrows in the Ten Best Songs of All Time
12 years on from its first outing, Burrows is bringing his 2014 show charting a lifelong love of music back to Edinburgh. Why resurrect it? “Because I’m 45 now”, he says. “I’ve had therapy. And the songs change.”
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Little Cellar at Laughing Horse @ West Nic Records, August 18-30 at 4pm
Body Parts
From the University of Bristol’s DramSoc comes Body Parts, an experimental and genre-blending “taste of the future of theatre” that promises to explore ageing, lust and Catholic guilt in just 35 minutes. The show utilises facial mapping software from production collaborator, Alensi Studios.
Body Parts – photo: DramSoc
theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, August 24-29 at 2.40pm
Take Care
Late Shift Theatre bring Edie Doherty’s thoughtful play about a day in the life of the staff of a care home for adults with learning disabilities – New Year’s Day, as it turns out. It is billed as “an intimate glimpse into the realities of care work – and the people who show up, every single day”.
As well as crowdfunding to raise money for their Fringe accomodation, the team is planning to walk, run, swim and cycle the 600km distance from Bristol to Edinburgh.
Take Care – photo: Late Shift Theatre
Haldane Theatre at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, August 24-29 at 4.05pm
God Complex
Bethany Griffiths, Kathleen Keaney, James Davies, Hattie Parkinson and Ezra Sandiford from Bristol Spotlights reimagine Aphrodite, Hera, Zeus, Artemis and Apollo – aka the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece – as “morally dubious everymen” in a 2000s sitcom-style play from Felix Glanville and Leah Pollard.
God Complex – photo: Bristol Spotlights
theSpace @ Symposium Hall, August 24-29 at 7.15pm
Pyg
After the Fringe success of their 2025 debut Glass House, Sandcastles Productions return with an inventive and multi-linear play that will be previewing at Tobacco Factory Theatres on July 25. It centres on a mannequin, and three versions of one man: Harrison, who is variously a pensioner, a 30-something, and a teen. The results? “Tender until it’s unnerving”, and “funny until it’s horrifying”, they say.
Pyg – photo: Sandcastles Productions
Forest Theatre at Greenside @ George Street, August 24-29 at 7.35pm
For further details and tickets to all shows at the Edinburgh Fringe 2026, visit www.edfringe.com. Please refer to individual show content warnings and age recommendations.
Main photo: Rah Petherbridge (Emma Davies: You Are All Resources)
Read next:
- Chuckle Busters presents eight weeks of Edinburgh Festival previews
- Harriet Dyer: ‘There’s nothing that’s mended me like comedy’
- The Bristol-born shows going up to the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe
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