Collective Fringe Festival Will Return With New Programme in 2026

Collective Arts Community Trust has announced the return of Collective Fringe, an artist led festival that platforms emerging and upcoming creatives. Growing out of the creative environment of Collective Acting Studio, one of the UK’s fastest-rising actor-training studios, the festival will present four powerful new productions, alongside an opening Scratch Night of early-stage work, offering a snapshot of emerging talent at different stages of development. Designed to challenge the status quo in the UK’s talent-development pipeline, the festival will give emerging and mid-stage theatre-makers the freedom to take risks, experiment and grow.

Collective Fringe offers audiences and industry the rare chance to encounter work at every stage of development in one festival framework, from fully realised productions to early creative experiments. The festival is already proving its impact: artists from the 2025 cohort are continuing to collaborate beyond the programme, with two writers joining the Bush Theatre Writers’ Group and another securing development funding supported by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

With their ethos rooted in equity, collaboration and community, Collective Fringe centres early-career artists, Global Majority artists, disabled artists and those from underrepresented backgrounds. Led by Festival Director Paul Harvard (History Boys, National Theatre; GHBoy, Charing Cross Theatre), alongside Dramaturg Sabrina Richmond (My Cape is Invisible, Pleasance; Hands off my womb! Chapel Playhouse), Associate Producer Prashant Tailor (The Birds, Lyric Hammersmith; Manfred, Birmingham Hippodrome), and Producer Laura Battisti, their team brings experience from across the West End, The National Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, RSC, and major independent stages across London. 

Ahead of the five-day event, participating artists will receive three weeks of free rehearsal space, dramaturgical support, producer mentorship, technical resources, a filmed recording, and a 70% gross box office split. Main-house productions will also receive a £400 upfront fee, recognising the economic reality of taking time away from paid work to rehearse and perform.

This year marks the launch of a new partnership with Trybe House Theatre, who will premiere Richard Adetunj’s Ego’s Killing the Mandem, a play that interrogates grief, ego and systemic bias through a bold courtroom frame. A second production supported by Tara Theatre, RUKHSATI by Saqib Deshmukh, will also be presented, crucially affirming the festival’s commitment to collaboration at a time when small and mid-scale organisations face unprecedented pressure, alongside the presentation of Paz Koloman Kaiba’s Asylum King, a darkly funny thriller exposing Britain’s asylum industry. A fourth production will be announced shortly.

Festival Director, Paul Harvard, comments, We are absolutely delighted to be hosting Collective Fringe, it feels especially vital right now. Collective is home to a diverse range of artists, and this festival is about giving space, time and belief to early-career voices who deserve to be seen and heard at a moment when opportunities across the industry are shrinking. We are proud to be platforming a range of powerful new plays full of joy and flavour. This is a first chance to catch some incredibly exciting playwrights and to visit our beautiful venue if you’ve not been here before – and hopefully to discover tomorrow’s theatre-makers today. Everybody is welcome, and we truly mean that.