Atlanta’s largest-ever Fringe Festival brings on the bold, weird and wonderful 

With a record-breaking number of artist applications, Atlanta Fringe gets ready for its most ambitious year yet.

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If offbeat, genre-defying performance is your love language, the Atlanta Fringe Festival just might be your soulmate.

With more than 60 artist groups, new and returning venues across the metro and the return of the Audio Fringe series, Atlanta Fringe 2025 runs May 28 to June 8. The two full weeks of high-energy performances promise to live up to the Fringe mission: providing a platform for adventurous artists and entertaining Atlanta with diverse voices and unique perspectives.

Fringe traces its roots back to 1947, when a group of artists not invited to the Edinburgh International Festival staged their own shows around its margins — literally on the fringe. That rebellious act launched a global movement. Today, Fringe festivals are held in more than 200 cities around the world, offering low-cost, low-barrier platforms for independent artists to self-produce new work.

Built on an open-access model — no curation, just a lottery — Atlanta Fringe has grown into a fixture of the city’s alternative performance scene since its beginning in 2012. The inclusive ethos makes it a proving ground for emerging artists and a playground for adventurous viewers. 

Now in its 13th year, the organization is entering a new chapter of growth and experimentation. With a record-breaking number of applications and the largest artist lineup yet, the 2025 festival spans 10 venues across the city — including several new spaces — and offers an open invitation to experience the diverse world of DIY performance. That world includes plays, dance, comedy, magic, solo shows, puppet theater, immersive experiments and Audio Fringe, a podcast-style series of 23 shows available to stream at home.

“It’s like we’re on the cusp of adulthood,” said Director Diana Brown of the festival’s 13th year. Brown helped start Atlanta’s iteration of Fringe back in 2012. Although Atlanta’s version was the ‘new kid on the block’ for a while, the festival has now entered its teenage years, she said, marking the beginning of a more mature and sustainable phase of growth. “It’s a turning point for us. We’re expanding from five days to 11 this year.”

While numerous performers come from the Atlanta area, the festival also attracts visiting acts from across the country, many of whom travel regularly to various Fringe festivals. This year sees acts traveling to Atlanta from as far away as Alaska.

“There’s a sort of a Fringe festival uprising going on all over the world,” said Connecticut-based performer and Fringe veteran Daniel Gerroll. “People are realizing that the classic, curated arts festivals aren’t very supportive of new work . . . but the Fringe movement is vibrant.” 

Gerroll debuted his one-man show, Dr. Glas, based on a classic and controversial Swedish suspense novel, at the inaugural Ukraine Fringe Festival in war-torn Kyiv in September 2023, and he then took it to the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He says Fringe festivals are crucial for developing new work, and he was interested in performing his one-man show in Atlanta next because of the city’s burgeoning theater and film communities. 

“Bringing our production to the Atlanta Fringe Festival is an exhilarating step for us,” agreed Danielle Wirsansky, founding artistic director of White Mouse Productions, a student theater group based out of Tallahassee’s Florida State University. “It’s the freedom and creativity of Fringe that really drew us in. The stories that might never make it to mainstream stages get a spotlight.” 

The company will bring its new show, Moo Deng vs. Pesto, to Atlanta Fringe for the first time. The musical comedy about the friendship between a penguin and a hippo was inspired by the antics of real-life zoo animals and delves into themes of self-worth, social media and the power of friendship. 

At the center of Atlanta Fringe is 7 Stages Theatre, serving as the festival hub. The Little Five Points venue will host artist check-ins, mainstage performances and two of the festival’s marquee events: the pay-what-you-can Preview Party (where local artists give lightning-fast previews of their shows) and the Five/Fifths Fundraiser, a festival tradition where five performance groups each re-interpret one-fifth of a film before handing off the story to the next group. This year’s target? Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi cult classic The Fifth Element.

Other venues for 2025 include The Supermarket, an experimental gallery and studio space in Poncey-Highland; and Limelight, a flexible black box space in downtown’s Pencil Factory complex. Site-specific and outdoor performances will also pop up around Little Five Points and beyond, including at the Criminal Records Busking Plot and Edgewood Avenue performance strip, where free, open-air shows will create a street-fair atmosphere.

New this year is Kids Fringe, a family-friendly weekend of performances and hands-on activities created in partnership with East Atlanta Kids Club. Alongside sensory-friendly programming, it features a Baby Rave Room and two ticketed children’s shows — one involving bubble wands the other a giant squid puppet.

If you’re unsure where to start, Atlanta Fringe makes entry easy. Every show is under an hour, tickets hover around $18, and the vibe is laid-back and unpretentious. Most of the money from ticket sales goes back to the artists.

Where & When

Atlanta Fringe Festival 2025 runs May 28 through June 8 at venues across Atlanta.
Tickets and full schedule available at atlantafringe.org.

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Andrew Alexander is an Atlanta-based writer.