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A shirtless man wearing a bright orange suit jumps enthusiastically inside a distorted, circular panoramic view of a city square under a sunset sky.
29 Sep – 18 Oct

Melbourne Fringe Festival

  • Festival
  • Comedy

Melbourne Fringe Festival returns with a program of 500+ exciting, boundary-pushing arts events. Curiosity is a spark and Melbourne Fringe Festival is where it catches alight. This year the festival is challenging Melbournians to Turn Towards the Heat.

Melbourne Fringe Festival is Victoria’s longest-running multi-arts festival, platforming the vital voices of our brightest artistic talent for 43 years. Its inclusive programs platform anyone with an artistic project to share, particularly working to showcase First Nations artists, d/Deaf and Disabled creatives, queer storytellers, emerging youth perspectives, and international risk-takers. It offers a focused snapshot of urgent, ambitious art being made right now.

This year festival hubs are located at Trades Hall, Carlton and North Melbourne’s Meat Market.

For information on individual shows, all venues and ticketing visit the website.

Hours

Date Times
Tue 29 Sep
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Wed 30 Sep
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Thu 1 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Fri 2 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Sat 3 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Sun 4 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Mon 5 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Tue 6 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Wed 7 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Thu 8 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Fri 9 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Sat 10 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Sun 11 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Mon 12 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Tue 13 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Wed 14 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Thu 15 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Fri 16 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Sat 17 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am
Sun 18 Oct
  • All day 12:00am - 12:00am

Location

Victorian Trades Hall Council
54 Victoria St
Carlton 3053

Open in maps location for Victorian Trades Hall Council

Price and bookings

From free to $50

Book online for Melbourne Fringe Festival

Contact details

  • telephone number: 03 9660 9600
  • email address: info@melbournefringe.com.au
  • Visit website for Melbourne Fringe Festival
Instagram page for Melbourne Fringe Festival

Accessibility

  • Accessible toilets
  • Assisted listening
  • Audio description
  • Auslan interpreted
  • Blind/low vision supports
  • Mobility access
  • Quiet spaces
  • Relaxed/low sensory
  • Service animals

All accessibility information is self-reported by the listing owner. It has not been verified by the City of Melbourne.

Part of Melbourne Fringe Festival

A young person with long blonde hair, wearing a  green satin top and making an animated, expressive gesture with hands up near their face against a solid olive-green background.
9 – 18 Oct

Tegan Higginbotham: Follow That Turtle!

Award-winning comedian Tegan Higginbotham is back with an unmissable hour of stand-up gold.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A performer in a black outfit, shorts, and a wide-brimmed black hat stands on a stage with a red floor, holding a large, flowing red cloth like a matador.
28 Sep – 11 Oct

Marketing Man

Satirical chaos that tears the lid off hustle culture, hype mythology, and the dark art of the sell.

  • Comedy
  • Entertainment
Two actors holding megaphones in front of bare trees.
1 – 4 Oct

Till the Day I Die

A new production of Clifford Odets' once-banned anti-fascist play, staged on the back of a truck.

  • Theatre
  • Entertainment
Saucy woman biting into a pie with cream and red sauce like blood dripping over her face and shoulders.
30 Sep – 4 Oct

Mrs Lovett's Famous Meat Pies Grand Reopening Extravaganza

Peel back Mrs Lovett’s meat curtains and experience an immersive night of gore, vore and more.

  • Comedy
  • Cabaret
A vintage-styled woman in a pink dress holding a clear umbrella, with red liquid resembling blood dripping from the umbrella.
5 – 11 Oct

Zoe's Killer Instinct

A timid actress becomes a murderous megastar after a chance meeting with a mysterious bag of knives.

  • Theatre
  • Music
Felt cut-out themed picture of a woman on a pizza with cut-out tomatoes and a cat on a stool.
30 Sep – 4 Oct

Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan

A Fringe show traversing milestone birthdays, trying to leave your hometown and missing your mum.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Close-up of woman's face with pursed lips.
14 – 18 Oct

Hannah Camilleri: Dinner Hannah Show

Award-winning clown Hannah Camilleri brings her loose, playful, absurd comedy show to Fringe.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Mossy bird's nest balanced between twig branches on a tree.
25 Sep – 18 Oct

Design X Nature

An outdoor exhibition of artworks exploring how natural systems inform creative practice.

  • Free
  • Art
A man in three different exaggerated poses against a pink, starry background.
30 Sep – 4 Oct

Twinky Twinky Little Star

Zak shares his gay childhood, his parents' broken gaydar, and his quest to understand gay life.

  • Comedy
  • Entertainment
A theatre production featuring three actors dressed in mid-20th-century period costumes against a dark, moody background.
6 – 10 Oct

Murder in the Market: A Murder Village Improvised Whodunnit

It's Agatha Christie but improvised - in Murder Village, people shop till they drop dead.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A make-up artist applying lipstick to a woman dressed in a lobster costume.
30 Sep – 8 Oct

Jenna Suffern: Lobster In A Glass

The return season of Jenna Suffern's comedy show Lobster In A Glass.

  • Comedy
  • Entertainment
A squashed pack of cigarettes on the ground.
30 Sep – 11 Oct

Anti-Smoking Super Show

Smoking is bad. This show is good.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A performer wearing a dramatic sheer tulle green cape with a high gathered collar, illuminated by a vibrant green under-light against a tinsel backdrop.
5 – 10 Oct

The Loch of Love

A one-monster clown cabaret tracing the life of Nessie.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Layered satin fabric in yellow and pink with embossed pattern.
2 – 16 Oct

Design X Nature Artist-in-Residence: Pastures

Visit artist Cara Johnson as she adds to her artwork, Pastures.

  • Free
  • Art
Woman lying on her back, her legs bent over her head, feet against a window.
29 Sep – 3 Oct

The Boards Above Her Face

An original solo show about a young woman who has the power to transform things into other things.

  • Theatre
  • Entertainment
Woman dressed as a fairy smoking a cigarette and looking grumpy.
6 – 18 Oct

Rama Nicholas in Fairy Smut

Comedy, fantasy and romance collide in this hilariously smutty tale.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Five women dressed like a rock band.
16 Oct

Queering the Music Video

Panel discussion and premiere of three d/Deaf accessible music videos from The Legend of Queen Kong.

  • Film
  • Entertainment
Artwork showing three identical cars floating against a blue sky with a woman's image repeated running down the right side border
29 Sep – 4 Oct

Get Real

To describe life realistically would take longer than to live it – Get Real is shorter than life.

  • Theatre
  • Entertainment
A woman wearing a short, bright pink terry cloth robe and sunglasses smiles while standing on an outdoor balcony, holding a fluffy dog in one arm and holding a white pool skimmer pole with her other hand. In the background, a hillside town overlooks the ocean.
14 – 15 Oct

MILF and Cookies

A comedy and song smackdown of marriage, divorce, dating and smashing through the boys club.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A man in a red racing suit with patches sewn all over it, wearing a helmet and glasses with a cartoon godzilla in the background.
7 – 18 Oct

The Year There Were No Monsters

A brand new one-man comedy from the award-winning Shane Adamczak.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Three actors wearing beige clothes lined up together, noses bleeding and looking startled.
1 – 18 Oct

Nosebleeds

A comedy-sketch show as hilarious as it is dark.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Performer dancing in front of a fish-eye image of Fed Square.
29 Sep – 18 Oct

Dhandha/Campfire

In an age of digital isolation, Joel Bray is lighting the way back to each other.

  • Free
  • Art
Smiling woman dressed in black T-shirt, standing in front of blurred garden background.
10 – 16 Oct

Design X Nature Walk: Home is Where the Nest Is

Explore the city life of birds with leading urban ecologist Dr Jacinta Humphrey.

  • Talk
  • Exhibition
Burlesque performer wearing a glittery tank top with long fringed gloves, holding a wire.
9 Oct

Club Fringe: Club Blaq

Featuring a line-up packed full of the best queer BIPOC acts and DJs.

  • Nightlife
  • Cabaret
Walking tour guide Deb Robinson, a smiling middle-aged woman wearing glasses and a large black sun hat.
9 – 18 Oct

In Her Footsteps: Women, Crime & Justice in Melbourne

Walk Melbourne’s darker history through the stories of women, crime and justice.

  • Entertainment
  • Walking tour
A woman and man wearing clown makeup, smiling, with their hands around each other's throats.
5 – 18 Oct

FU*K! I Killed the Director

Two actors perform Romeo and Juliet moments after killing their director...accidentally.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
View of Melbourne from across the Yarra River
5 – 18 Oct

Jokes About The Time I Got Detained In America

Satire and storytelling from award-winning comedian and writer Matt Harvey.

  • Comedy
  • Entertainment
Woman with long dark hair, standing in front of red background.
28 Sep – 4 Oct

Glimpses of Heaven

A darkly comic solo show about fame, addiction, memory and a fierce mother-daughter love.

  • Theatre
  • Music
Full-length studio portrait of a performer dressed as a stylised, theatrical pink clown against a solid light blue background.
7 – 18 Oct

Adore Händel’s Birthday Party

You're invited to the birthday of history's most scandalous time-travelling songbird.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A simple smiley face on a lime green background.
30 Sep – 4 Oct

Show Show

See some of Melbourne's Fringe's biggest names take part in its most unhinged event.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
View of Melbourne from across the Yarra River
9 – 18 Oct

Hand Foot in Mouth

A raucous, raw one-woman show and live DJ set by Gen Z's Mary Poppins, Bronte Locke.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Sculpture with black skittles and rope.
29 Sep – 22 Nov

Weaving the Everywhen

Step into a woven sculptural landscape where ancient clay and seasonal grasses unsettle linear time.

  • Free
  • Art
A black cat lying on its back under a dramatic spotlight beam with two disembodied arms reaching up to touch it.
28 Sep – 3 Oct

Autonomy of Flo(w)

Experience the raw complexity of being human in a play that tackles the issue of sexual violence.

  • Theatre
  • Entertainment
View of Melbourne from across the Yarra River
14 – 18 Oct

Guillotine! or, A Modest Proposal

A new show from Anna Piper Scott and Margot Morales, part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A woman with long, light-brown hair sits outdoors by a rocky stream.
30 Sep – 8 Oct

Spring!

A one-woman sketch comedy show set at a haunted spa.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A person dressed in a formal tuxedo and white gloves holding a small silver tray with two whisky glasses on it.
13 – 17 Oct

Country House: An Improvised Comedy of Manners

Peek into the lives of 1920s high society with Wilde, Wodehouse and Downton Abbey, improvised.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Striped strip of barrier tape tied between two posts on a lawn in front of a tree.
17 Oct

Design X Nature Talk: Queer Ecologies Panel Discussion

Artist Courtney Coombs and guests explore queer ecology and the role of noticing.

  • Free
  • Art
A scene from the play Bitch Boxer, featuring a performer on all fours, in red boxing shorts, singlet and boxing gloves captured mid-motion in a long exposure motion blur.
7 – 18 Oct

Bitch Boxer

A fierce one-woman boxing story of grief, rage, love and fighting to take up space.

  • Theatre
  • Entertainment
Cabaret artist and vocal coach Amelie Peters posing in front of a pink neon wall sign that reads Pals in Pink, against a solid pink background.
14 – 18 Oct

Sink or Sing! A Sing-Along Cabaret

An award-winning singer and vocal coach brings big cabaret energy to Melbourne Fringe Festival.

  • Music
  • Cabaret
People standing in a circle around a central figure with confetti raining down.
3 Oct

Congress

Interwoven with music and dance, the work addresses personal visions for our collective future.

  • Free
  • Theatre
Three performers dressed in Regency outfits with fan, book and top hat.
29 Sep – 18 Oct

Jane Austen Improvised

A wholly improvised performance of a tale woven in the moment by the talented cast.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Cabaret performer Tina Del Twist on stage wearing a fur stole.
3 – 17 Oct

Tina's Rooftop Piano Bar

Tina Del Twist lets her velvet voice and wicked wit loose with a bevy of dazzling guests.

  • Comedy
  • Music
A woman seated at the wheel of a car, looking to the side with an alarmed expression.
29 Sep – 4 Oct

Back to Me

A relevant and timely musical production about violence against women.

  • Theatre
  • Music
Comedian Roisin McAlinden posing in front of a gilt-framed, shattered oval mirror showing her reflection as a sad fairy tale princess.
6 – 10 Oct

Roisin McAlinden: Fairytale Ending

A funny feminist anti-fairytale using sharp and excruciatingly dark humour from Roisin McAlinden.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Dancers lying in grass, each framing each other's head with their arms.
7 – 17 Oct

Break Down

Watch what happens when a group of dancers runs into a pile of compost.

  • Free
  • Dance
Man with dreadlocks standing in front of a kangaroo-skin artwork.
29 Sep – 18 Oct

Marram: Deadly Fringe Container Exhibition

Discover Marram, a striking exhibition by Iluka Sax-Williams inside the Deadly Fringe Container.

  • Free
  • Art
Man wearing devil's horns and make-up, holding a phone in front of a computer, his hands in the air and mouth open.
30 Sep – 8 Oct

Welcome to Hell

Multiple award-winning comedian Andy Balloch is back with a hilarious corporate onboarding.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
Green-tinted image of a person walking through tall grasses under trees.
3 Oct

Design X Nature Workshop: Nature Journaling in the Drylands

A guided experience of the Australian Drylands through drawing, writing and deep observation

  • Workshop
  • Activity
A cartoon image depicting four movie characters: the Mummy, James Bond, Captain Jack Sparrow and Rose from Titanic.
30 Sep – 18 Oct

Lost in Translation

Famous film scripts put through an online translator a dozen times and read live on stage.

  • Festival
  • Comedy
A performer sits at the top of a tall ladder, playing an electric guitar while below them, another performer stands facing away from the camera, holding the ladder steady with uplifted arms.
15 – 18 Oct

Ocker

Ocker is roving circus tearing through the streets on a portable railway track built in real time.

  • Free
  • Family and kids
A man with several birds around him and a toy cockatoo on his lap, against a bright orange background.
5 – 11 Oct

Oliver Pol: Featherbrained

New Zealand comedian Oliver Pol is a silly goose.

  • Comedy
  • Entertainment
Comedian Matt Bell looking to the side with one eyebrow raised, holding a torch.
2 – 10 Oct

The Ex Files: A Comedy True Crime Tour

Join award-winning comedian Matt Bell to unravel Melbourne’s most shocking true dating crimes.

  • Comedy
  • Tour
Two musicians and a man with a book in an orange room.
12 – 18 Oct

The Village Square

A show that combines live music performance and storytelling.

  • Family and kids
  • Music
A man in a white lab coat stands in a dimly lit, cluttered studio as sheets of white paper fly and float through the air all around him.
30 Sep – 4 Oct

QFWFQ

A surrealist solo show which neither begins nor ends, debuting at Melbourne Fringe.

  • Theatre
  • Entertainment

Only In The City

Only in the City
Inside a bustling market hall

Things you can only see in the city

Uncover secret rooms, historic architecture and iconic landmarks found only in the city.

  • Free
  • Hidden gem
A family of four standing in a grand library with antique desks, large white walls and a dome ceiling.

Things you can only do in the city

There's only one place to find these rare Melbourne experiences and secret spots.

  • Tour
  • Entertainment
Multiple plates on a white table cloth.

Things you can only eat in the city

Where to find the city's most iconic dishes.

  • Restaurant
  • Fine dining

Discover more

A group of older adults smiling and interacting at a table during a community gathering.
1 – 31 Oct

Victorian Seniors Festival

Celebrate Victorian Seniors Festival with free and low-cost events for older Victorians.

  • Free
  • Festival
A person in a pink suit with a large headdress and heavy make-up, smiling and holding a microphone.
15 Nov

Opera Up Late with Reuben Kaye

A wild ride through the world of opera with a decidedly queer lens.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
A train station lit up in rainbow lights

Melbourne's best drag shows and queer-friendly venues

Find burlesque life drawing, cabaret and the best queer-friendly venues in Melbourne.

  • Comedy
  • Theatre
People on deck chairs watching a movie in Fed Square on a large screen.

What's free in Melbourne this month

Everything to see, do and enjoy in Melbourne for free this month.

  • Free
  • Music
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Australian Aboriginal Flag Torres Strait Islander Flag

The City of Melbourne respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land we govern, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin and pays respect to their Elders past and present. We acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.

We accept the invitation in the Uluru Statement from the Heart and are committed to walking together to build a better future. For more information, visit Aboriginal Melbourne.

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