Adelaide Fringe
Adelaide Fringe, formerly Adelaide Fringe Festival, is Australia's biggest arts festival and is the world's second-largest annual arts festival, held in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Between mid-February and mid-March each year, it features more than 7,000 artists from around Australia and the world. Over 1,300 events are staged in hundreds of venues, which include work in a huge variety of performing and visual art forms. The Fringe features many free events occur alongside ticketed events for the duration of the festival.
In 2023 Adelaide Fringe became the first festival in Australia to sell 1 million tickets. This has doubled from 500,000 tickets in 2015.
The main temporary venue hubs are The 'Garden of Unearthly Delights, Gluttony and the Wonderland and 500 other temporary and permanent venues hosting Fringe events are scattered across the city, suburbs and region. In a period in Adelaide's calendar referred to by locals as "Mad March", other events running concurrently are the Adelaide Festival of Arts, another major arts festival starting a week after the Fringe, which includes Adelaide Writers' Week and the four-day world music festival WOMADelaide, and also the Adelaide 500 street circuit motor racing event, with accompanying evening music concerts.
The Fringe attracts many international visitors as well as from all over Australia, and in 2019 generated an estimated in gross economic expenditure for South Australia, which included in spending by the 2.7 million attendees. Each year has brought a new record in all aspects of the festival for many years up to 2020.
Founded in 1960 as a loose collection of official and unofficial events run by local artists, and initially seen as adjunct to the main Festival of Arts, the Fringe became an incorporated body in 1975, with the 1976 festival named Focus and later Adelaide Festival Fringe, before the 1992 change to Adelaide Fringe Festival. It has grown from a two-week long, biennial festival to a major annual international festival.
The Edinburgh Award', worth, was introduced by Arts South Australia in 2017, open to local Adelaide Fringe artists who wish to tour their work to the Edinburgh Fringe.
Description
Adelaide Fringe is the second-largest annual arts festival in the world, after the Edinburgh Fringe, and the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, places it won in 2017, and it continues to grow each year. Artists from across the globe participate in the Fringe alongside home-grown talent, in all art forms. Adelaide Fringe also organises its own public events. The Adelaide Fringe is an open-access event, meaning that there is no curator seeking out the events which form part of the programme."Mad March" is a term used by locals to describe the period of five big events running concurrently in the local calendar: the Adelaide Festival of Arts, which includes Adelaide Writers' Week and the four-day world music festival WOMADelaide, as well as the Adelaide 500 street circuit motor racing event, with accompanying its evening music concerts.
Adelaide Fringe begins with free opening night celebrations, and free as well as ticketed events continue for the duration of the month-long festival. The festival includes contemporary work in a wide range of art forms including cabaret, comedy, circus and physical theatre, dance, film, theatre, puppetry, music, visual art, magic, digital and interactive and design.
In 2026 the Adelaide Fringe will be held from 20 February to 22 March.
Governance and funding
The Adelaide Fringe and Adelaide Festival of Arts are separate organisations, with different philosophies and intent.The Adelaide Fringe is governed by the Adelaide Fringe Board, which employs a director and CEO, a deputy director and a large team of adjunct staff to manage various aspects of the festival. A number of major contributors to the history of the Fringe have been named as life members, including the founder, the late founder, Frank Ford.
The principal funding partner for many years has been BankSA. Government funding has increased in recent years. The Government of South Australia is a major sponsor, through Arts South Australia from 1997 to 2018, and since then directly via the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. The City of Adelaide, The Advertiser, 9News are also among the partners of the Fringe, and corporate and private donors help to support specific initiatives for artists.
Directors and CEOs
As of January 2025, Heather Croall is the CEO and director, having been appointed in 2015.Greg Clarke was CEO and director 2011–2014. Sandy Verschoor was CEO 2006–2010, while Christie Anthoney filled the post of director from when the Fringe went annual in 2007 to 2010; and Karen Hadfield for the 2004 and 2006 festivals.
Venues
In 2019 there were 517 venues, which included "pop-up" venues in parks, warehouses, laneways and disused buildings, as well as established venues such as theatres, hotels, bars, pubs, art galleries and cafes. Buskers regularly perform in Rundle Mall and elsewhere in and around the city as well as in the suburbs.Accessibility has been greatly improved in recent years, with a number of initiatives included to try to ensure that as many venues and events are able to be attended by people of all abilities.
Because of Adelaide city centre's compact size, many of the venues are fairly close to each other. The city's surrounding parks provide several clusters of venues, outside of the established and converted venues within the city and suburbs. There are three main venue hubs:
- The Garden of Unearthly Delights, the group of venues set up within a temporarily fenced area of Rundle Park / Kadlitpina, was first used in 2000, with only one Spiegeltent, known as "The Famous Spiegeltent".
- Gluttony, a similarly fenced venue hub over the road in Rymill Park/Mullawirraburka.
- The Royal Croquet Club has had a few changes of location since its launch in Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga in 2014, first to Pinky Flat/Tarntanya Wamain the northern parklands, then within the University of Adelaide from 2019.
Adelaide Fringe Ambassadors
In 2012, the Government of South Australia partnered with the South Australian Tourism Commission to create the Adelaide Fringe Ambassador role to promote the Adelaide Fringe across Australia and overseas. The Adelaide Fringe Ambassador also participates in the Adelaide Fringe Opening Night Parade and performs during the Fringe.| Year | Name | Performance | |
| 2013 | Paul McDermott | Paul Sings and The Dark Garden | |
| 2014 | Katie Noonan | Love Song Circus | |
| 2015 | Kitty Flanagan | Hello Kitty Flanagan | |
| 2016 | Julian Clary | The Joy of Mincing | |
| 2017 | Hugh Sheridan, James Cochran, and Adrienne Truscott | Hugh Sheridan in California Crooners Club; Adrienne Truscott in Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It and THIS; James Cochran's Street Art Explosion | |
| 2018 | Courtney Act and Joel Creasey | Courtney Act in Under The Covers; Joel Creasey in Blonde Bombshell | |
| 2019 | Judith Lucy, Gavin Wanganeen, and Hans | Judith Lucy in Judith Lucy Vs Men; Gavin Wanganeen in conversation with Holly Ransom for Fringe Talk Show; Hans in Hans Like a German | |
| 2020 | Marcia Hines, Amanda Palmer, and Fez Faanana | Marcia Hines in Velvet Rewired; Amanda Palmer in An Evening With Amanda Palmer; Fez Faanana in Black List Cabaret | |
| 2021 | Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Electric Fields, Ross Noble, Brooke Boney | ||
| 2022 | Reuben Kaye, Diana Nguyen, Nazeem Hussain | ||
| 2023 | Kween Kong, Sarah Millican, Penny Arcade | ||
| 2024 | Adam Liaw, Prinnie Stevens, Isaac Humphries | Adam Liaw: The Cook Up with Adam Liaw LIVE; Prinnie Stevens: Lady Sings the Blues; Isaac Humphries: Unearthed | |
| 2025 | Nancy Bates, Michelle Brasier, Rhys Nicholson, and Teresa Palmer | Nancy Bates and Friends; Michelle Brasier: It's a Shame We Won't Be Friends Next Year; Rhys Nicholson: Huge Big Party Congratulations |
History
1960–1974: Biennial, 2–3 weeks, status unclear
The first "fringe" event came about in 1960, when a few artists decided to stage their own events in response to the exclusion of many local and smaller-scale artists from the curated Adelaide Festival of Arts. Fringe activities consisted of local visual arts, crafts, performing arts and amateur theatre groups organising productions, exhibitions and events alongside the Festival and running for two weeks. According to Fringe Vault, "These events that have been called 'unofficial fringe activities' formed the beginnings of the 'Fringe'. These were seen as separate to any 'unofficial activity supported by the festival' which were listed in the 1960 Festival of Arts Festival Souvenir Programme under Festival Attractions, other Events and other Exhibitions".In 1962, the number of unofficial local events and exhibitions grew to the point where, according to a thesis by Martin Christmas, "1962 appears to have been the Festival where it was recognised that 'ancillary', were as important as the core cultural activities", and Max Harris wrote an article entitled Adelaide’s Two Festivals.
In 1964, Fringe was host to 52 art exhibitions, collections and performances. Like the Festival of Arts, it was held biennially, for three weeks. Both approved and unapproved events had grown in number. Significant productions of two Patrick White plays, The Ham Funeral and Night on Bald Mountain, staged by local performers in 1961 and 1964 respectively after being refused by the main Festival, served to cement the status of what started being referred to in the press as "Fringe" events.
In 1970, the event grew to three weeks in duration, running from 6–28 March that year and experiencing significant growth in both official and unofficial events and including three major musical performances, four dance performances, an opera, film events and exhibitions.
The first printed souvenir programme was published for the 1974 event, with the title as "Adelaide Festival of Arts, March 9 to 30: Fringe programme". However, there were still a large number of unofficial events: the programme listed 41 exhibitions listed and 20 performances; unofficial events included 50 exhibitions, 10 performances and many other events.