Designed as a home for live performance and art “on the fringe,” the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival has been operating since 2014 as part of a global Fringe movement. The 10-day-long slate of shows launches around Pittsburgh on Thursday.
The concept started in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1947 to be “on the fringe” of the more traditional Edinburgh International Festival. Since its inception, the annual festival there has grown to the point where it ran for 25 days in 2025. It’s also spun off local festivals all around the world. Pittsburgh’s Fringe Festival is now in its 13th year.
This year, the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival will include about 50 different shows with a total of about 130 performances over the festival’s 10-day run, according to executive director Xela Batchelder.
“We have performances every day. One thing we are careful to make sure is that we have some shows on Monday and Tuesday,” she said.
Pittsburgh Fringe is an unjuried festival, meaning that Batchelder does not curate what is admitted.
“I’m very adamant about that. It’s open-access. Our Fringe is actually structured very similarly to Edinburgh,” she said.
The shows are a mix of new, startup shows from local artists and touring productions that are doing the Fringe circuit. The festival is also partnering with local organizations, including Point Park University and Attack Theatre to expand their reach and encompass more members of the Pittsburgh artistic community.
Genres range from drama to comedy, from dance to visual art, from storytelling to stand-up comedy.
Check out Savage Art Escape’s performative escape room “.enclosure.” at Coexistence Collective on March 28. “Much A-Brew About Nothing” finds a cast of inebriated Shakespearean actors onstage at the Bloomfield Garfield Activity Center on March 20 and 21. Liv Rocklin’s comedy show “An American (not) in Paris” won Best of the Fringe in Orlando last year and will be at Mr. Roboto Project from March 24-28.
“There’s also visual art. Some Fringes don’t have any visual art, but we do. It’s about giving artists a platform,” Batchelder said. “The audience becomes their own curator, their own festival director of their own experience, which I really like.”
She encourages festival attendees to go see the work that their friends are doing, but also to try something new.
“By having shows that are short — they’re usually about an hour — and very cost-efficient … for what you could normally spend for one night of theater for two hours, you could see two or three of our shows.”
Pittsburgh Fringe show tickets range in cost from free to about $20. Tickets can be purchased online and at the door, and the festival is debuting an app this year that will allow attendees to explore all of the shows and purchase tickets via smartphone.
Shows will take place over a number of venues along Penn Avenue in Bloomfield and Garfield, including Mr. Roboto Project and just-opened venue The Soft Spot. This year, the festival is expanding its circumference; shows will also be held at venues outside of the neighborhood, including Attack Theatre Studios in Lawrenceville, Conjure Bar & Stage in Allentown, Atithi Studios in Sharpsburg and Point Park University in Downtown Pittsburgh.
“A lot of our spaces are 30 seats, so you are very intimate with the performers,” Batchelder said. “That’s what’s really cool, I think. is the funky little spaces you end up in.”
The Pittsburgh Fringe Festival runs from March 19 to 28 across various venues around Pittsburgh. To learn about all of the shows and get tickets, visit pittsburghfringe.org.