Applications now closed

HOW TO APPLY

Durham Fringe Festival in the historic City of Durham returns for 5 days from the 24th to the 28th July. It’s our fourth year, and we have grown to 7 venues with 8 performance spaces, including 2 brand new venues for 2024.

Thanks to everyone who applied. We were truly blown away by the amount of talent and creativity on show. We aim to start making offers from the first week of March.

Details of participating venues can be found here.

We’re encouraging everyone to keep up to date by signing up to our mailing list and watch this space for our full programme, which will be announced in May 2024.

HOW THE FRINGE WORKS

We are a small, “nearly new” festival in the beautiful and historic Durham City (a World Heritage site) , in the North East of England. 

Following a very successful start in 2021, we are returning for the fourth Durham Fringe Festival which will run from 24th to 28th July 2024.

We’re an open, curated festival and welcome applications from anywhere and anybody, from experienced artists and companies, to those just starting out on their creative career.

We love comedy, theatre, dance, musicals, children’s shows, spoken word, magic, music and mime! Indeed pretty much any “performing art”

We, the festival, take a central coordinating role. We both select and run the venues (7 this year) and set ticket prices…expected to be £9 for most shows in 2024. But the good news is that you get to keep 70% of the net ticket price…and we don’t charge you any fees at all. Not to apply or to be in our programme or for the use of our venues.

There’s no commitment to perform with us when you apply. If you subsequently accept an offer from us then we will ask you to sign a contract, and pay a fully refundable deposit (usually £100) against you not giving the performances you have agreed to. 

KEY DATES

DATE
JANUARY 2nd 2024 Applications Open
FEBRUARY 18th 2024 Applications Close
MARCH 4th 2024 First Offers Made (this process takes several weeks)
APRIL 16th 2024 Programming completed. Details of shows taking part finalised
MAY 1st 2024 Launch Event
MAY 1st 2024 Tickets go on sale
JULY 24th 2024 Festival commences
JULY 28th 2024 Festival ends

We endeavour to pay out to performers within 4 weeks of the festival ending. However, sometimes payments are delayed because we are waiting for information from them, particularly in relation to accurate bank details and their use or non-use of music.