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Over 130 Edinburgh Fringe shows on sale at theSpaceUK

23 Feb 2026

theSpaceUK has announced the first tranche of shows on sale for the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, offering an early look at a programme that leans heavily into new writing, solo performance and formally hybrid work across theatre, cabaret and musicals.

an exciting and relevant mix for theSpaceUK

Music-led storytelling opens the list with #SHORN, a new piece from Elsa Jean McTaggart marking 15 years of touring. Performed alongside long-time collaborator Gary Lister, the show combines original songs with spoken reflection, positioning itself as both a personal stocktake and an artistic reset. Elsewhere, Triple Lutz Productions’ Dear Michelle Kwan places a darkly comic coming-of-age story within the insular world of teenage figure skating, where devotion, ritual and adolescent intensity slip into something more unsettling.

Solo work features prominently. Tom Nemec’s A Cat in a Box draws on autobiographical material to examine love, trauma and survival within a dysfunctional family. Raising Cain Productions’ The Night Ali Died reconstructs a single night of escalating violence through overlapping perspectives, blending thriller mechanics with intimate character study. Julie Flower returns following a five-star Fringe run with Grandma’s Shop, a multi-character solo show set in a Sheffield second-hand clothes shop in the late 1980s, using local and personal history to explore community, counterculture and care.

Darker ensemble work appears in Minotaur Theatre Company’s And The Little One Said, a black comedy set in the late 1990s in which a summer holiday collapses into moral compromise. Political satire arrives via January 6th The Musical, where two aspiring performers attempt to sing and dance their way out of alleged involvement in the US Capitol insurrection. From Italy, Action Theatre’s Democrazy uses physical theatre and Balinese mask to examine populism and dictatorship, framing contemporary political unease through a chance encounter and dedicating the work to Alexei Navalny.

Cabaret and musical theatre are also represented. Canada’s The Cheesecake Burlesque Revue, celebrating 20 years and recently named Best Large Group at the 2024 Burlesque Hall of Fame Awards, brings a body-positive variety show to Edinburgh. Vocal trio The Sundaes return with Diva Las Vegas, a short-run cabaret built around diva anthems, while Thank You for the Muesli offers an ABBA-inspired musical comedy that leans unapologetically into camp and wordplay.

Musical theatre entries include Music & Murder By…, in which a writers’ retreat turns lethal, and Spraywatch: A Beautiful Rescue, an unauthorised, 1990s-inflected seaside musical comedy from Low Fat Productions. Completing the announcement is I Made You a Mixtape by Response Theatre Company, a movement-led dance theatre piece set at a 1990s dorm party, with performers responding live to popular music so that no two performances are quite the same.

It is an exciting and relevant mix for theSpaceUK, continuing a well-established programming approach.

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