This year’s Curated Program spotlights artists at the forefront of contemporary practice; it showcases international trendsetters and genre-exploders remaking artforms for the here and now. It includes a groundbreaking program of experimental work for children and d/Deaf and Disabled makers leading bold new approaches to access. And at the centre of the program: the landmark 10th season of Deadly Fringe.
At the centre of this year’s Curated Program is Dhandha/Campfire, where Joel Bray’s new work embraces light, sound, sculpture and performance as a vehicle for gathering, ceremony and shared experience. Joel’s breakout work biladurang emerged through the first Deadly Fringe season; his return with a work of such scale and ambition for the milestone tenth year speaks powerfully to what the Melbourne Fringe Curated Program can make possible. This is the creative heat of Fringe: artists venturing beyond the familiar, and a city willing to move closer.”
For the first time, Melbourne Fringe Festival will also hold an Encore season in Ballarat from 22–25 October, featuring regional-exclusive events alongside a selection of popular shows from the 2026 metro Melbourne season.
THE CURATORIAL SHAPE OF THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL
The Festival kicks off with the Opening Night Gala on 29 September. The now infamous spectacle at the Capitol Theatre brings together the Festival’s boldest and brightest with high-voltage performances and standouts from across the program to launch the 2026 Festival. In 2026, it’s hosted by the award-winning actor, singer, writer and comedian Michelle Brasier.
There are plenty of free activities to participate in this Festival including CIRCUS FIRE Spectacular! by ZAP CIRCUS at Prahran Square. An internationally awarded circus show featuring energetic feats of acrobatics and fire. Tarrabelle and Rusty from ZAP Circus bring their electrifying show to Melbourne for a free outdoor evening of entertainment.
Almost ten years after its premiere, Congress by All the Queens Men returns to the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Congress is presented as a ritualised performance experience; providing opportunity and audience to those that may not be represented by the contemporary political systems.
MAKING WORK RADICALLY ACCESSIBLE
Radical Access is a program that challenges artists to bring access into their art making and practice, to make radically accessible work. This year, a bold, Deaf-lead work, Manifesto of Silences by Irene Holub reimagines opera blending sign language, movement, projection and immersive sound to bring silenced Deaf histories to life.
PASSPORT BRINGING WORLD-CLASS PERFORMANCES TO MELBOURNE
The Passport program brings world-class performance to Melbourne without the jet lag. Hailing from Canada, Fashion Machine by The Other Guise Theatre Society trains local kids to interview, design for, and remake the outfits of brave audience volunteers live, before showcasing the results in a kid-commented fashion show. Also from Canada, SLUGS by the
award-winning Creepy Boys (S.E. Grummett & Sam Kruger) is an electro-punk concert, play, clown show and basement puppet nightmare rolled into one.
Winning two of the most sought-after awards at Edinburgh Fringe, the Fringe First Award and The Stage’s Fringe Five, PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD by In Bed With My Brother from the UK is a three-act show about the best worst band of all time, The Shaggs. The quintessential outsider band, and the question of who gets to decide whether you’re a legend or a loser.
Joining them is Distillation by Luke Casserly from Ireland. A multi-sensory performance built from a unique perfume of the Irish Midlands bog, exploring loss and connection to place in the wake of Ireland’s peat harvesting industry closure. To round out the Passport program is QFWFQ by Gregory Nussen from the USA. A surrealist, award-winning solo show inspired by Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, this razor-sharp, absurdly funny and deeply personal show breaks all genres and has no fourth wall.
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF LEADING TAIWANESE ART
Since 2020, Fringe Focus Taiwan has seen world-class Taiwanese artists perform in Melbourne Fringe. In 2026, there are two Australian premieres. Free UR Head by Very Theatre is a Venice Film Festival-selected VR dance experience that uses real-time XR technology to synchronise a room full of strangers in shared, unrehearsed movement. Palingenesis by d_Antidote Productions and Chuang Po-Hsiang is inspired by the Rat King phenomenon where creatures become so entangled they can never separate, three masked dancers morph through and around each other exploring intimacy, trust and transformation.
PULSE – AN EXPERIMENTATION WITH FORM
In its fourth year the Pulse program showcases Australia’s boldest contemporary performance makers experimenting with form through creative risk-taking. This year Dr. Jonathan Homsey presents 40-LOVE an improvised dance fusing Vogue and Krump, set to the radio broadcast of the 2025 Australian Open Women’s Final.
Exhibit by Emma J. Hawkins and Leisa Prowd is a part-performance, part-installation encounter in which two women – often mistaken for one another – lean into the chaos of being seen, mis-seen and underestimated. TILL THE DAY I DIE by Katie Sfetkidis and Mark Wilson is a new production of Clifford Odets’ once-banned anti-fascist play, staged on the back of a truck at Trades Hall in the same spirit as the original 1936 protest performances. Born in a Taxi presents Prime Time, an intergenerational work featuring a cast aged 4 to 93 that challenges assumptions about age and ageing
NORNIR by Freya Schack-Arnott is a multi-disciplinary work in which live cello, resonating strings and movement interweave in a web of shimmering vibration. Informed by stories of weaving, binding and restricting (transformation), Nornir will explore and reshape our relationship to the cello, the body and to sound. The Enormous Radio by Roslyn Oades and Bob Scott is a large-scale immersive audio installation of hacked, repurposed radios that speculate on the possibility of interspecies communication. Zoë Bastin Dance presents The River in a site-responsive dance duet performed at dawn and dusk on the banks of the Werribee River, exploring love as a force of attraction, erosion and change.
