The countdown to Gothenburg Fringe 2026 begins here!
Tickets for this year’s festival, taking place on 28 August until 6 September, launch in exactly one week, on Friday 19 June. Once again, we’ll be giving a lovely early-bird discount to our newletter subsribers, so sign up here if you want to take advantage of the offer and be among the first people to get your hands on tickets.
Over the course of the next five weeks, we’ll be giving you an insight into all of the shows coming your way at this year’s festival. With artists from 28 countries performing shows across the city in a plethora of genres, we can’t wait to share this year’s lineup with you. Here’s Artist reveal #1 of 10!
Are You Lovin’ It?
by Theatre Group GUMBO (Japan)
Five stars! The winner of 17 awards in six countries. A global Fringe hit, GUMBO takes you on a surreal, hilarious journey through the wild world of WacDonalds. Meet a Japanese businessman, Trump and Krazy Kitty in this absurd, side-splitting comedy you won’t want to miss!
‘This kooky, edgy, cartoon-like show may be the strangest show’ (Edmonton Journal).
‘Madcap, off-beat, but bitingly savage in its satirical approach, demonstrating American Globalization’ (BritishTheatre.com).
‘The savagely surreal satire of Fast-Food Capitalism’ (Orlando Weekly). ‘The most in-your-face, outrageous, political and subversive show’ (Orlando Sentinel)
Who will love this show?
Those who love the absurd and want to experience something totally different to anything they have seen before.
Mellow Drama
by Enactor Productions / Becca Hoback (USA)
Does life ever feel like a fairytale gone wrong? Learn to cope like a starlet in Mellow Drama – a lively evening of dance, theater, burlesque, puppetry, and old Hollywood glamor. Irreverent humor meets sequin-studded devastation in Hoback’s account of her upbringing in the exotic American Midwest. Offering catharsis in the form of hilarity, Mellow Drama peeks behind the curtain to consider how societal expectations affect the course of our lives – sometimes with unexpectedly dark consequences. No matter what happens – the show must go on!
“Brilliant solo choreographer and performer Becca Hoback delivers another section of her powerful dance-theater works … bold, sensual, satirical, and playfully rebellious while featuring Hoback’s virtuosic choreographic style. With overtures to old Hollywood and cabaret acts, the lively performance invites audiences into a journey through one character’s hard-earned realizations about her upbringing in conservative Christian purity culture. Among the devices Hoback employs to complete her storytelling are highly-stylized narration, puppetry, interactive props, beautiful costumes, and even a Judy Garland-inspired musical number.” – Kindling Arts
Mellow Drama has roots in Gothenburg! Hoback created the prequel – Initial Dissent – at Teater Trixter in 2023, and it was featured at Gothenburg Fringe in 2024. She is thrilled to return to share this follow up performance with the Fringe community!
Who will love this show?
Women, ex-evangelicals, LGBTQIA+ individuals, fringe-goers who want to laugh and cry.
Fakespeare
By Patchwork Theatre (USA)
Fakespeare condenses a Shakespearean tragedy of the audiences choosing and uses storytelling, vaudeville & improv comedy ,audience interaction and modern layman’s english to make it accessible to all audiences.
Who will love this show?
Fans of Shakespeare and fast engergtic comedy theatre
Hot Death Theatre: POWERsuit
By Hot Death Theatre (Scotland)
POWERsuit is a genre-bending, pitch black piece of cosmic-body-horror comedy-theatre by Scotland’s multi-award winning purveyors of high quality troubling imagery, Hot Death Theatre.
Staged as a nightmarish parody of mutli-level-marketing, business, sales and self-help seminars, the show sees Seb – a hapless, out of touch and increasingly frantic salesman – along with his enigmatic, silent assistant, Nelly, take the audience on a slick, fast-paced corporate journey through the various perks, boons and benefits of working for their sinister and brutal parent-company, Infinilife – as their own lives spiral desperately out of control.
Described as “hilarious, sardonic and – somehow – deeply moving”, POWERsuit is a cutting satire of corporate dehumanisation and the commodification of life, equal parts horrifying, trenchant and wilfully and gloriously stupid.
“Best Alternative Act” – Reykjavik Fringe, 2025
“Fringe of the Fringe” – Reykjavik Fringe 2024/Goteborg Fringe 2025 (for ‘b i r d’)
Who will love this show?
Fans of dark comedy, engaging storytelling, horror and anyone who has ever felt crushed under the relentless weight of the ever more prevalent corporatisation and commodification of modern life.
Bumbled
By Tir Na Theatre (Ireland)
Life is short, especially if you’re a bee. Not long to make honey, prop up the human food chain, and fall in love. Bumbled follows Pascal, an Irish honeybee, as he embarks on a hilarious and poignant journey to tell the world about the importance of bees, save the planet, and find true happiness with his French girlfriend, the epic Marion. All the while trying to avoid his balls exploding, his manhood falling off and certain death.
Who will love this show?
Anyone who likes the sound of a “bee twerking, Irish slowdancing, sexdodging odyssey”, the play balances big laughs with environmental resonance and is suitable for anyone over the age of 12.
