Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society releases ticket and audience data as 2025 event concludes

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 closed today, with the Fringe Society reporting that more than 2.6 million tickets were issued across 3,893 shows.

Chief executive Tony Lankester described the festival as “the single best platform in the world for artists to showcase their work” and a vital part of the arts world, stating: “We recognise the many challenges artists, producers and venues face in staging the event, and call on the City of Edinburgh Council, the Scottish Government and the UK Government to continue working with the Fringe community to explore ways to alleviate these challenges.”

The 2025 Fringe clashed with major stadium performances from Oasis, taking place during the early part of the month and leading to soaring accommodation prices.

This year’s programme saw 301 venues host 53,942 performances from artists representing 62 countries. Seventeen international showcases were presented, with countries including Denmark, Australia, South Korea and Canada.

The Fringe also drew the highest number of accredited journalists in its history, with over 1,080 media professionals from 36 countries attending. The festival attracted 1,770 industry delegates from 68 countries, including producers, bookers and festival programmers.

In addition to theatre and comedy venues, 320 street performers and artists entertained audiences on the Mound and Royal Mile as part of Fringe Street Events.

The 2.6 million tickets sold (more specifically, 2604,404) is fractionally down on 2024, which registered almost 2.61 million tickets. Last year had fewer shows appearing – with 3746 – suggesting the average audience number per show has decreased. This is around 400,000 tickets behind a pre-pandemic highpoint of 2019. In 2019, there were 59,600, well ahead of this year’s 53,942.

The society did not break down how the tickets sales were split between different genres – such as comedy or theatre productions.

One of the key operators at the Fringe, Pleasance celebrated a strong year, with 460,000 tickets issued across its venues at the Courtyard, Dome and EICC.

The 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe will run from 7 to 31 August.