FringeArts Reveals Programming For The 30th Annual 2026 Philadelphia Fringe Festival

FringeArts, Philadelphia's home for contemporary performance, has announced the full roster of programming for the 30th Annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival, a city-wide celebration of progressive, world-class art that expands the imagination and boldly defies expectations. The festivities will feature over 330 diverse productions and experiences throughout Philadelphia, bringing together local and International Artists for a one-of-a-kind month-long celebration. Audience members will be able to enjoy all that the Philadelphia Fringe Festival will offer from September 8 through September 27, 2026. Tickets for FringeArts Members will go on sale July 15; tickets will go on sale to the general public on July 18.

The 2026 Philadelphia Fringe Festival curated programming includes the Philadelphia premiere of Kramer/Fauci by acclaimed director Daniel Fish (Broadway's Oklahoma!). A special partnership with Philly's iconic Franklin Institute will bring Theater Mitu's Utopian Hotline to the Fels Planetarium, while several world premieres by seminal Philadelphia-based FringeArts favorites Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Ninth Planet, and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret are part of the festival roster. Julia Masli, Sherwood Chen, Lisa Fagan, Lena Engelstein, Ontroerend Goed, Holland Andrews, and yuniya edi kwon all bring Philadelphia premieres to round out the curated programming.

'The Fringe Festival celebrates Philadelphia as a city that is pulsing with the creativity of the working, breathing artists who live here,' said FringeArts CEO and Producing Director, Nell Bang-Jensen. 'Our programming puts Philadelphia's innovative artists on the same stage as creators from other cities and countries, creating opportunities for cross-disciplinary, cross-genre, and cross-cultural exchange.'

'Coming off of 2025's record-breaking festival, we are energized by artists' and audiences' enthusiasm for experimental work,' she added. 'Fringe performance-often characterized by free expression, communal experience, collective wonder, challenging perspectives, and a DIY ethos-plays an essential role in our community.'

'This year, you can find us at nearly 100 venues, from traditional theaters and large cultural institutions to neighborhood bars and city sidewalks. We are excited to continue to grow our presence across the city, amplifying the incredible artistry already happening in every neighborhood. Audiences can look forward to hundreds of experiential performances that will inspire them to see their neighbors, their neighborhoods, and the city in new ways. Philly is scrappy, gritty, and downright magical because we are all lucky enough to be in the midst of this wild creative expression, and it is never more abundant than during the Philly Fringe.'

In addition to the curated programming, the Festival will feature over 300 independently produced productions at venues and unusual spaces across the city. The Festival Hub program will feature the return of popular hubs Cannonball, Circus Campus Presents, Dumb Hub, and Studio 34 New this year are The Lemonade Stand (a home for fresh work and new artists, focused on supporting those who are emerging in the arts scene) and Performance Garage (a dedicated hub for dance and theater at the historic venue, which started out as a horse stable in 1865). These hubs provide a comprehensive extension of the Fringe Festival into Philadelphia's vibrant neighborhoods and provide regular programming throughout the festival, generating artist and audience communities. Each hub features more than a dozen experiences in centralized locations.

Kramer/Fauci

Philadelphia Premiere

Conceived and Directed by Daniel Fish
in association with OHenry Productions

September 8-11, 2026

FringeArts, 140 N Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Internationally acclaimed director Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!) turns his eye to one of the most combustible conversations of the AIDS crisis: the 1993 televised clash between Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading AIDS researcher, and playwright-activist Larry Kramer. A confrontation charged with rage, urgency, and unexpected intimacy, it crystallized a turning point in the fight for care, treatment, and recognition. Fish dramatizes their exchange as both history and provocation, a searing reminder of how art, activism, and public health collide on the most human terms.

Kramer/Fauci is based on a C-SPAN interview produced by National Cable Satellite Corporation, d/b/a C-SPAN, originally recorded on November 30, 1993. Used by permission. Larry Kramer text by permission of the Estate of Larry Kramer. Kramer/Fauci was originally commissioned, developed, and presented by NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Lunar Retreat

World Premiere

By Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths

September 10-20, 2026

The Pearlstein Gallery, 3401 Filbert St, Philadelphia, PA 19104

The moon is leaving us, slowly, imperceptibly, shifting one inch further from Earth each year.

Lunar Retreat is an interactive, multi-sensory performance inspired by the gradual distance growing between the moon and the earth. This immersive journey invites audiences to wander, witness, and reflect on how we move through care, loss, and transformation—both individually and collectively.

Created by choreographer Nichole Canuso in collaboration with ocean explorer and visual artist Rebecca Rutstein, experimental sound designer Bobby McElver, video designer Kate Freer, set designer Anna Kiraly, and a visionary cast of performers, Lunar Retreat opens a space for poetic, playful, and communal connection with the shifting rhythms of our planetary bodies. Lunar Retreat reflects on our deep evolutionary ties to the ocean and the moon, reminding us that we are all interconnected with the natural world.

Lunar Retreat is built upon gentle invitations, individualized prompts, and communal activities through which you are offered opportunities to engage along your own chosen path and move at your own pace. Come as you are. Wander. Reflect. Return.

This is a limited capacity performance. Audio description will be available for all performances upon request.

The Holy Fool

World Premiere

By Ninth Planet

September 10-19, 2026

The Gym at Impact Services, W Tusculum St and N Front St, Philadelphia, PA 19134

This world premiere dance-theater piece uses cinematic style to explore familial bonds, love, and heartache.

Mother makes dinner. Daughter sets the table. One empty chair. A knock at the door. Expecting someone? Back to dinner. You made a mistake. Everyone's watching. The bills pile up. The job's never done. Another disaster. And your face—it's older. The cameras are rolling. The Fool is laughing. You're doing just fine.

Through the eyes of an American family, The Holy Fool examines the toll of aging, grieving, and growing up in a culture where normativity is the most valuable currency. A thrilling ghost story unfolds in a dreamlike visual landscape scored by a hypnotic blend of trumpet, percussion, and synthesizers. Co-directed by Ninth Planet's Sam Tower and Nia Benjamin, and collaboratively written by the ensemble, The Holy Fool marks the company's return to the Fringe after a sold-out run of High Noon as part of Cannonball in 2022. Festival veteran and co-founder of Headlong, David Brick, returns to the stage alongside his daughter, Zephyr Saffron Brick, and Philly theater heavy-hitter, Bi Jean Ngo.

Created by Ninth Planet. Directed by Sam Tower and Nia Benjamin. Collaboratively written by Bi Jean Ngo, David Brick, Hannah Gold, Katarina Poljak, Zephyr Saffron Brick, Sam Tower, and Nia Benjamin. Original music by Jordan McCree and Marty Gottlieb-Hollis.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Philadelphia Premiere

Created and Performed by Julia Masli

Directed by Kim Noble

A Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Touring Production

In association with Schtick

September 10-13, 2026

The Proscenium at the Drake, 302 S Hicks St, Philadelphia, PA 19102

Julia Masli's award-winning solo phenomenon ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (a New York Times Top Pick of the Year) comes to the Philadelphia Fringe Festival following critically acclaimed and sold-out runs at The Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, SoHo Playhouse in New York City, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, London's Soho Theatre, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The absurd ha ha ha ha ha ha ha has grown into a major sensation during its tour of the UK and USA. Performer Julia Masli creates a hilarious, yet moving and unpredictable live experience at the intersection of comedy and performance. What begins as playful improvisation evolves into a collective ritual of care, vulnerability, and unexpected humor. Part clowning, part surreal social experiment, part connection-forging alchemy, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha transforms the Drake into a playground of spontaneity, outlandish hilarity, and surprising poignancy, all shaped in real time by the audience. Utterly unlike anything else onstage, this is a completely different experience every night that keeps audiences coming back again and again.

Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle

World Premiere

By The Bearded Ladies Cabaret

Installation on view during the Fringe Festival: September 10-27, 2026
Live Events: September 12, 19, 26, 2026

Installation & events continue through December 2026. Tickets to be released at beardedladiescabaret.com.

The Hairport, 444 N 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123

Welcome to the Bearded Ladies' Hairport, an interactive installation & performance series built on 16 years of accumulated baggage from a queer cabaret company devoted to art, care, mess, and community. While you're waiting for a flight that may never take off, unpack your baggage and rifle through some of ours. You may recognize something as your own, or find something you never knew you were carrying.

Made for anyone who has ever lost a bag, gotten stuck, or missed a (metaphoric) flight, this trans(formational) installation asks: how do you know it's time to move on when you don't know where you're going?

Blank Placard Dance, Replay

Philadelphia Premiere

By Anne Collod and Sherwood Chen
Based on a work by Anna Halprin

Distribution La Magnanerie-Paris

September 13, 2026

March begins on Broad Street and ends near FringeArts. Visit PhillyFringe.org for route details.

An arresting procession of individuals marches through the city carrying blank placards. Silent signs are held aloft by silent protestors. A marching band plays. When intrigued passersby ask what they are protesting, the marchers turn the question back to them: What do you want to protest? A discussion ensues. Ideas circulate.

Anna Halprin's Blank Placard Dance was first performed in 1967 in San Francisco. Created in response to the Vietnam War during an era of social unrest in the United States, the original performance was interrupted by the police. Since then, this iconic happening has been re-staged at festivals and in cities all around the world.

For the 2026 Philly Fringe Festival, during Philadelphia's celebration of America's Semiquincentennial, choreographers Anne Collod and Sherwood Chen lead twenty local performers in picking up the placards and marching through Center City. As topical now as it was nearly sixty years ago, Blank Placard reaffirms the power of the collective in a society that values individualism.

Friday Night Rat Catchers

Philadelphia Premiere

By Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein, and performed with Marianne Rendón

September 17-19, 2026

FringeArts, 140 N Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Fun reigns supreme in a glittery, dark, experimental piece of dance theater.

Beneath the shimmer of a disco ball, two lucky contestants dance like they have the world on a string. The year is 1976 and the martinis never run dry. They've hit the jackpot! What could go wrong?

While the contestants nearly lose their minds with the pleasure of being selected, The Host has reconfigured the game. Ripped headfirst from their shrimp cocktail, gameplay unfolds at breakneck speed. Cement punctures the dancehall, the party grinds to a halt, and an inky night belches to the surface.

Award-winning dance makers Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein, performing with acclaimed actor Marianne Rendón, bring Friday Night Rat Catchers to Philly fresh off of a sold-out run at Under the Radar Festival.

Handle with Care

Philadelphia Premiere

By Ontroerend Goed

Co-Presented with Athenaeum of Philadelphia

September 17-19, 2026

Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 19 S 6th St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Handle with Care is a theatre performance in a box. No actors, no technicians. Just a box. And you.

A box is mailed to the theatre.

The instructions are clear:

Invite a group of people, on a specific date, at a specific time.

Let the audience take their seats.

Place the box at the centre of the stage.

The audience is waiting.

And then an audience member stands up and opens the box.

The show has started.

In Handle with Care, the audience is in control. The artists provide the structure; you shape the experience. Choose your role—take the lead or observe as others make choices. Together, you create something special: a shared experience filled with reflections on time, transience, and togetherness. And don't worry—there are no wrong choices. For one hour, you'll live something unique, fleeting, and unrepeatable. Here. Now. Together. No one is watching.

Utopian Hotline. A Telephone Hotline, A Vinyl Record, A Performance

Philadelphia Premiere

A Mitu Collaboration

September 24-26, 2026

Fels Planetarium at The Franklin Institute, 222 N 20th St, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Is anyone out there? Is anyone listening? Are we alone? In 1977, NASA launched the twin Voyager spacecraft to try and answer these questions. Aboard both is the Golden Record, an artifact intended to communicate who and what we are. After almost 50 years and over 13 billion miles, this proverbial message in a bottle is the farthest human-made object from Earth. If we were to send another message into the distant future, what message would we send?

To answer this, Mitu created a public telephone hotline (646-694-8050) prompting people to leave messages to the future. Utopian Hotline uses these voicemails alongside interviews with NASA astronauts, astrophysicists, astronomers, and middle school students to create a moment of community. This project invites audience members to gather under the dome of The Franklin Institute's Fels Planetarium to re-imagine our shared future.

Audiences and the general public are invited to call 646-694-8050 to answer the question: "How do you imagine a more perfect future?" These anonymous messages may be used as part of this or another performance of Utopian Hotline.

Museum admission is not included with show tickets. Must be purchased separately at fi.edu.

How does it feel to look at nothing

World Premiere

By Holland Andrews + yuniya edi kwon

September 25-27, 2026

FringeArts, 140 N Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Virtuosic composer-improvisers, multi-instrumentalists, and transdisciplinary artists Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon present the world premiere of an elemental new opera.

Shaped by Holland and yuniya's lived experiences as partners and trans artists of color, this multidisciplinary performance engages questions of queer parenthood, trans pregnancy, and socio-political disintegration through a poetic, mythological lens.

Drawing from wide-ranging lineages including American experimentalism, Korean shamanic ritual, channeled singing, hardcore punk, and queer DIY, the artists ultimately invent their own language to tell a pre-origin story of a Deity of Nothingness. Entirely improvised, this language of disintegration allows them to embody fluid and entangled identities: deity, witness, child, parent, memory. Featuring a stunning blend of music, dance, ritual, and projection, this transcendent experience invites audiences into a living creative process.

Let Freedom Ring

Philadelphia Premiere

By Paul Ramírez Jonas

Presented by The Association for Public Art and Cherry Street Pier

September 11-27, 2026

Cherry St. Pier, 121 N Christopher Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Paul Ramírez Jonas' monumental artwork plays the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee" in its entirety—all but the final note. Participants must pull a lever to ring the last note on a 600-pound bell at the base of the sculpture to complete the song, a metaphor for how we can work together as a society to fulfill the unfinished promises of our nation's founding. This artwork promotes civic engagement by providing a public site to speak, listen, and learn from one another, and to bring people together to imagine a more inclusive future that embraces the complexities of our past.

Two phrases etched on the bell—"I want to be free from _____" and "I want to be free to _____"—offer an intimate connection to the themes of the work. The Association for Public Art will be collecting and displaying finished phrases from participants as a way to amplify voices and share experiences.

Facilitators are on site Fridays-Sundays from 2 p.m.-8 p.m. to support visitor interaction with the sculpture.

Let Freedom Ring was originally commissioned by Monument Lab for its Beyond Granite exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2023. Support for Let Freedom Ring is provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the Philadelphia Funder Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial.

Fringe Festival Hubs

Fringe Festival Hubs are vibrant centers of activity that host multiple performances and artists during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. FringeArts is proud to partner with these independent hubs, who provide artist support, community connections, and unique audience experiences.

Cannonball Festival

Cannonball will once again take center stage as the largest hub of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, September 8-27, championing a revolutionary artist-led model that prioritizes equity, experimentation, and community connection. This year Cannonball celebrates its sixth festival, with first-time self-Producing Artists joining their vibrant ecosystem alongside seasoned boundary-breakers in 96 productions, totaling 30 percent of the overall Philly Fringe. Audiences can blaze their trail at cannonballfestival.org.

Circus Campus Presents

Circus Campus hosts its fifth hub with Circus Campus Presents! Since the establishment of Circus Campus in 2017, we've been fostering a tight-knit community of teachers, students, performers, creators, movers & shakers. Our hub strives to showcase the skills & variety of these incredible human beings. Many of the hub performers are circus artists, but we also host musicians, poets, dancers, theatre artists, and anyone who feels deeply connected or inspired by the world of Circus. Circus Campus is an educational headquarters located in a restored church facility in leafy-green West Mt. Airy, directly adjacent to Upsal Station.

Dumb Hub

Philly Fringe's ONLY ALWAYS ALL clown, alt comedy, performance art, idiot, freaky sh*t hub. Curated by Sarah Knittel. Watched over by baby angels...and your MOM.

The Lemonade Stand

The Lemonade Stand strives to create a home for fresh work and new artists, focused on supporting those who are emerging in this vital art scene. The Hub has something for everyone: a drag variety show, new takes on classic literature, the plights of being a bride, the horrors of teenage gymnastics, and tipsy takes on Shakespeare. The thirteen wacky, foolish, and brilliant shows take over the Skinner Studio at Plays & Players for a unique, all-in-one intimate performance experience.

Performance Garage

As a dedicated hub for dance and theater during the 2026 Fringe Festival, the Performance Garage brings together artists, audiences, and creative communities in a space designed for discovery and exchange. Housed in a beautifully restored building that began as a horse stable in 1865, the venue was transformed into an elegant space for performing arts. Today, the space features a sprung Marley dance floor, professional lighting and sound capabilities, projection technology, and flexible performance settings that support both intimate showings and full productions.

Studio 34

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