Summerhall Arts Reveals 36 Shows of 2026 Festival Programme Including Xhloe & Natasha, Adam Riches, and More

Home of boundary-pushing performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, arts charity and year-round cultural hub Summerhall Arts has announced 36 more shows of the 2026 instalment of its renowned festival programme.

Summerhall continues to host diverse and intersectional work, with 60% of the shows female led, 24% led by artists of colour, and 30% featuring an LGBTQI+ narrative. Over 55% of artists and companies are international, bringing work from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, England, Canada, USA, Colombia, Italy, Greece, Germany, France, Netherlands Luxembourg, Malta, Denmark, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to Summerhall’s iconic performance spaces.

This roster of shows reflects an eclectic body of work spanning theatre, performance art, drag, cabaret, puppetry, dance, circus, pole, and comedy, encompassing themes that touch on identity of all forms, digital toxification and misinformation, ongoing conflicts and injustices across the world, mother-son relationships, conspiracies, why men are so odd, existing on the internet, the weight of personal heritage, public vs private apologies, and much more. Music is celebrated throughout the programme, from contemporary opera to Neutral Milk Hotel-inspired cabaret, Korean geomungo, gig theatre, and even one man singing the same song for an hour.

Summerhall Arts has announced that triple Fringe First winners Xhloe and Natasha will premiere a brand-new show at Summerhall this festival. Co-presented with Soho Theatre and SoHo Playhouse, the duo - described by The Scotsman’s Joyce McMillan as “the most compelling performers on the Fringe” - will perform Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It. Combining precise choreography, absurdist clowning, and a nine-foot puppet, the show is a piercing exploration of conspiracy and misdirection.

Another legend of the Edinburgh Fringe, Summerhall will welcome back Comedy Award winner Adam Riches with a brand new solo theatre show. After embodying fiery tennis player Jimmy Connors in his acclaimed, sell-out, smash-hit, Jimmy (Summerhall, 2024), Riches returns with The Captain - the true story of Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to ever swim the English Channel.

Summerhall Arts has announced the winners of its three festival awards to help support artists to bring boundary-pushing work to the most critically acclaimed venue at the festival. The Mary Dick Award for UK-based d/Deaf or disabled artists, in collaboration with Birds of Paradise Theatre Company, goes to Patch of Blue (Cassie and the Lights) and 3hc, who will premiere You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next) - a potent, joyful and moving exploration of care written by disabled actor and writer Keron Day, and former care worker Alex Howarth, supported by Theatre Royal Plymouth.

The Autopsy Award for artists working in Scotland is awarded to Glasgow-based contemporary performance artist Althea Young who will premiere The Dreaming, a stirring blend of autobiography and fantasy that blends performance art, theatre, and choreography, to explore topics including mutant babies, alien insemination and the urge to reproduce.

The Meadows Award, for artists of colour from anywhere in the world, goes to Palestinian multidisciplinary performance artist Fadi Murad and his show, Come Back Home - a contemporary theatre work exploring ongoing grief, dispossession, and how the past continues to inhabit the present, which deals with self criticism, fear, and the unknown through the lens of absurdity. 

Summerhall Arts has announced the return of several hit shows from past festivals. Edinburgh Comedy Award 2025 nominated Canadian slimeballs Creepy Boys (S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger) return with their five-star anarchic fever dream about nothing, SLUGS, and present a new work-in-progress, Nude Parade, which is like a live theatre version of the game of Operation - and it’s trans. Actor, writer, clown, comedian, and all-round nincompoop Scott Turnbull returns with his acclaimed 2025 ‘edutainment show’, Surreally Good; New Zealander’s premiere interactive theatre company Binge Culture return with their 2024 immersive hit, Werewolf, perfect for fans of The Traitors; and Summerhall-based Pickering’s Gin return with a revised version of its renowned immersive Speakeasy Experience.

More returning Summerhall favourites include multi-award-winning theatre-maker and director Adam Lenson, who achieved acclaim for his debut solo show Anything That We Wanted to Be in 2023. Adam premieres Is it too late now to say sorry? - a new collision of gig, storytelling, and autobiographical investigation which psychologises the apology, both personal and public. And Buzzcut Productions (Bark Bark, 2024) return with their signature blend of live camera work, puppetry, and a live score to premiere The Wreck, a new show about two siblings diving a shipwreck and discovering the fate of their family’s seaside nightclub.

Exciting Scotland-based artists will also take to Summerhall’s stages this August,  including two shows from this year’s Made in Scotland Showcase: playwright and drag artist Nelly Kelly, in collaboration with Sanctuary Queer Arts, premieres TRANSMISSION - a darkly-comedic blend of DIY cabaret and political theatre exploring Scotland’s shift from world-leading on LGBTQI+ rights to fertile ground for the anti-trans movement; and circus and aerial specialists Sadiq Ali Company (The Chosen Haram) premiere Tell Me - a bold fusion of dance and circus offering a fresh perspective on life with HIV.

Award-winning Edinburgh-based company Magnetic North present We Will Hear The Angels - an atmospheric and poignant exploration of the strange state of melancholy, evoked from the power of sad music. Performed by five-actor musicians - Apphia Campbell, Mia Scott, Greg Sinclair, Daniel Padden and Nicholas Bone - it combines words, movement and music in a soundscape that includes Hank Williams, Orange Juice, Etta James, Bach, and more. Glasgow-based Euan Munro presents Playback, a tragicomic true story about a child YouTuber featuring his own childhood vlogs.

In the movement and dance strain of the programme, Summerhall will welcome the world-famous Ballet National Folklorique du Luxembourg, led by their flamboyant new Director, Mr Chevalier. The Great Chevalier will see the unpredictable director, hailed as the ‘Bad Boy of Folklore’, perform some emblematic classics, including the iconic Pigeon Dance.

Summerhall Arts Fringe Producer and Programmer, Tom Forster, commented: “With the Fringe landscape ever changing, Summerhall Arts believes we should challenge ourselves as a venue to innovate year-on-year to the same frequency that we demand of artists. To match demand for intimacy with the audience, the Main Hall's end-on format after 14 years will be reimagined in horseshoe format for Festival 2026. A specific request made by Ballet National Folklorique du Luxembourg Artistic Director, Monsieur Chevalier; it is the only layout that can host the renowned Pigeon Dance, and, since the International Festival couldn’t accommodate his request, we at Summerhall Arts proudly stepped in. Boasting an infinity ceiling clearance of 6 meters, leading to a stunning ceiling mural by John Kindness, this new vision for our largest venue will make the Main Hall the most beautiful venue in the city - giving artists and Mr Chevalier a backdrop they deserve.”

Tamsin Shasha will return to Summerhall for the first time since her Fringe First-winning Everything I See I Swallow (2019), bringing Forgive Me - a highly personal show about a hyperactive mother and a gaming-obsessed son, which fuses pole performance, video projection and song. Sweat meets spectacle in New York City-based company, Ballaro Dance’s UK premiere of TWELVE: Going The Distance - a 47-minute contemporary dance work divided into 12 three-minute “rounds”, which is set in a boxing gym and unfolds with the intensity of a title bout. The Taiwan Season returns to Summerhall with the UK premiere of Seed Dance Company’s The Wall, a dynamic, emotionally provocative quintet packed with restless and urgent precision.

An immersive highlight is Daydreams from 81 Productions - producers of the acclaimed durational theatre installation, Mother Has Arrived. An innovative, cinematic work about insomnia, Daydreams involved 3D projection, performance and an ominous soundscape to lock audiences into a sleepless loop where headlines and half-dreams collide.

Summerhall Arts has a growing comedy presence at the Fringe, and this continues in 2026 with Laurie Stevens, known for her 2025 hit character show, David’s One-Man Band (F*ck You, Steven), who this year presents her theatrical debut: An Evening with Gerald Lloyd-Davies. Laurie performs as Lloyd-Davies - an ageing straight Welsh actor, aspiring national treasure and quintessential luvvie. Another star character comedy turn sees actor, artist, and drag king Tessa Parr premiere I AM JOHNNY, performing as very, very male performance poet, Johnny the Biblical Rapper. Co-produced by Camden People’s Theatre, I AM JOHNNY is an unsettling, absurd and hilarious interrogation into the fragile bones of the patriarchy.

Gaulier-trained clown and home-trained OnlyFans content creator Jessica Aszkenasy presents TITCLOWN: daddy’s little girl - a clown show about boobs, the father wound women hold in society,  and why it’s so hard to live laugh love with heterosexual men - and features a lifesize Henry VIII doll. Finally, award-winning comedian Conk and Quiet Riot bring a conceptually simple show: Man Sings The Same Song Over And Over Again For An Hour. Which song? You’ll need to come and find out.

Continuing the musical theme, Summerhall is delighted to welcome acclaimed New York-based drag queen, Salty Brine (Stage Fringe Five, 2024). This festival, in his genre-defying cabaret style, he sets his sights on combining Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Anne Frank’s The Diaries of a Young Girl, in HOW STRANGE IT IS (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show).

In the #DANISH showcase, groundbreaking combiners of opera and physical theatre OPE-N present Laughing Out Lonely - a thrilling new solo opera about the faceless existence of life on the internet by composing team Matilde Böcher and Asger Kudahl, with a tour de tour performance from acclaimed countertenor Morten Grove Frandsen. Finally, in PLASTIC, geomungo artist Kim Minyoung merges the traditional Korean instrument with media art, expanding its possibilities into new territories.

Summerhall Arts will also welcome two uncategorizable shows from the city of Philadelphia to Edinburgh. Koan Brothers - aka Mason Rosenthal, Sohrab Haghverdi, and Benjamin Rosenthal - will present Foriegner, a dizzying solo, anti-identity, anti-comedy, avant-clown show that follows one asylum seeker's attempt to win an O1-B visa, awarded to individuals of artistic brilliance. And from Lightning Rod Special, the creators of Fringe First winning Underground Railroad Game (2018) comes Lions, an unsentimental two-hander part-clown show, part-eulogy about fathers, life on hold with corporations after death, and the myths of what it means to be great men.

Also from the US, LA-based multidisciplinary artist, performer and film critic, Gregory Nussen brings a metatheatrical piece about the politics of storytelling and truth, loosely inspired by Italo Calvino’s lf On a Winter's Night A Traveler. A solo show without a fourth wall, QFWFQ (pronounced “kfwoofk”) touches on everything from architecture, jazz, gender identity and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Staying on politics and identity - in the #DANISH showcase, Danish-Israeli artist Boaz Barkan brings Our Other Organ, a dissection of antisemitism and its impact on Jewish identity, which culminates in the creation of a “new Zionist body” and its structures of violence and domination. Atop a mortuary table, Barkan digs into a living body to uncover a new organ - the place where racism resides.

Summerhall Arts also welcomes two shows from Ireland. Joy Nesbitt’s Julius Caesar Variety Show scrutinises both the theatre sector and the exploitation of identity in a play that sees a Black actor, a Woman actor, and a Straight White Male actor compete to impress a respected director set on reinventing a Shakespeare play in "unorthodox" ways. And Martha Knight’s new play, The King of All Birds, utilises both voice and vocoder to explore our shared history with the sky: the years it remained untouched, the first ventures into it, and our endless climbing up.

Continuing the animal theme, Hotter Project, in association with Speakerphone Productions and Soho Theatre, will premiere HAM - a kinky eco-hijacking of Hamlet about meat, madness, and the power of shame that twists the classic high-brow tragedy into a sordid wrestle between a vegan and a sausage-lover.

Finally, from Lyn Gardner-recommended double act ‘Britney’ - aka Ellen Robertson (Vladimir, Mickey 17, The Pale Horse) and Charly Clive (Rooster, Pure, The Lazarus Project) - comes Jitters, a brand new two-hander about ownership, tradition, and the all-important ‘L’ word of any relationship: leverage. And contemporary storyteller and theatremaker Nathan Jonathan takes us back to Y-2-K with They’re Just Small Town (Northern) Lads - a funny and heartfelt solo show about growing up mixed-race in a Northern-industrial-town. Expect gelled quiffs and flip-up phones in an exploration of identity, class and belonging at the turn of the millennium.

These 36 new shows are now on sale. They join seven shows that went on sale in February: As Far As We Know (YESYESNONO), GOOD ENOUGH? (HIMHERANDIT), LANDSFRAU هموطن (Mariann Yar), PUTTANA (Beatrice Festi and TeatroE ETS), SAND (Kook Ensemble), Tether (Wonder Fools and Theatre SAN), and Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life (Keith Alessi).

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