Who's ready for the artistic experience of a lifetime?!

More than 1,300 shows have been announced for the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The arts festival is absolutely massive; in 2023, more than 3,500 different shows from 67 countries sold over 2.4 million tickets. Those numbers make it one of the most popular ticketed events in the world, with only the biannual Olympics competitions and quadrennial World Cup tournament garnering a larger response.

This year is on track to potentially overtake 2023 in total productions, with today's 1,373 shows joining the steadily growing list of productions that were previously announced by individual venue operators. More shows are set to be announced May 9, with the official program launch June 12.

The Fringe is a modern artistic melting pot, featuring cabaret and variety, children’s shows, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, music, musicals and opera, spoken word, and theatre. The following is just a small portion of the productions that have been newly announced.

In the cabaret and variety vein, Laughing Horse will host Yes-Ya-Yebo!, celebrating South Africa's 12 official languages; La Clique will return to Underbelly with its classic mix of circus, cabaret and comedy; and The Burlesque Show at Hill Street Theatre will bring some of the best burlesque artists in the world together for a fierce competition.

For families, there will be the Amazing Prize Family Comedy Bingo, The Comedy Games, How to Catch a Book Witch, and a trilogy of shows from Dragon Song Productions. 

Tony winner Alan Cumming’s stories will come to the stage in Dragonory: Magic and Music at Hootenannies, promoting love and acceptance, while the Newbury Youth Theatre will present The Fantastical World of My Uncle Arly at Paradise Green, exploring the absurdist world of Edward Lear.

Aha! Doggy Poo will reimagine a beloved Korean tale by Jung-saeng Kwon for Bedlam Theatre by incorporating dance, magic, and Korean music to embody the philosophy that nothing in the world is useless, while the similarly titled Plague, Poo 'n' Punishment will bring Edinburgh’s gruesome past to life at Greenside.

Comedy remains a mainstay at the Fringe, with a number of familiar faces returning to this year’s festival, including David O'Doherty, Flo & Joan, Reginald D Hunter, Milton Jones, Adam Hills, Dara Ó Briain, Adam Kay, Bobby Davro, Andrew Maxwell, Craig Hill, Lucy Porter and Patrick Monahan, Raul Kohli, Sian Davis, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar and Glenn Moore, Ahir Shah, Kieran Hodgson, Nina Conti, Rose Matafeo, Sophie Duker, Jordan Brookes, Paul Merton and Suki Webster, and Mark Thomas.

In the dance, physical theatre, and circus arena, HuXi / Breath at Paradise Green will blend traditional rhythms with modern dance to explore the divine connection of Qi, while the contemporary Yunhee company paints various pictures on stage using the traditional Korean hat (called a sangmo) in Korean Painter at theSpaceUK.

Award-winning choreographer Aparna Ramaswamy will weave body, memory, desire, and devotion together to explore the relationship between deity and the devotee in Ananta, the Eternal at Assembly. Meanwhile, at the Edinburgh New Town Church, Flamenco in Scotland will be directed and choreographed by Inma Montero and performed by top flamenco professional artists.

Music lovers will have plenty to enjoy this year, with Dean Friedman, Sandi Thom, Valery Ponomarev, Jo Carley, and The Old Dry Skulls presenting their cross-genre work.

At Paradise Green, the multimedia concert The Seas Are Rising: Stories of a Climate in Crisis will call attention to the urgency of the climate crisis through original songs by American songwriter Dan Sheehan, and audiences will join Delhi maestro Manmohan Dogra for a journey through Hindustani classical music, featuring vocal ragas and a tabla solo in Banares style, in Raag Rang: A Journey Through Indian Musical Traditions at Arthur Conan Doyle Centre.

Theatre remains at the forefront of the Fringe in 2024, with a wide range of new musicals, including The Wellbrick Centre on Roswell Drive and the historical murder musicals Deacon Brodie and Flesh. Classics are also up for reinterpretation, with Beowulf the Musical at Greyfriars Kirk, and Macbeth at Saint Stephen's Theatre offering a new take on Shakespeare, mixing original and modern text with songs by Foo Fighters, The Prodigy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Dire Straits.

This year's plays look to be particularly hard hitting. At Edinburgh Palette, a Pan-Africanist painter, Eda, is the center of an art heist in Who Tiff Monalisa?, Jeremy McClain will star in Rat Tails (WIP) at Fruitmarket, and The Good Iranian will make its Edinburgh Fringe debut. In the play William Kite Has Memory Issues, a man with early-onset Alzheimer's explores his changing reality, and in Divided, a mother struggles with her own internalized bias after decades of considering herself liberal.

Passing Likeness at Virgin Hotels Roof Terrace, a historical satire championing one of Edinburgh's unsung artists, John Kay, will lean into the decadently grotesque, and Do This One Thing for Me at Bedlam Theatre will tackle questions of Holocaust remembrance and how we move forward through a deeply personal portrait of an artist's relationship with her father, a Greek Holocaust survivor.

Lastly, in the spoken word category, poetry and prose fans will have plenty to celebrate. At Hill Street Theatre, writer Gigi Bella will present Big Feelings, and poets Christine De Luca and Elspeth Murray, in combination with Katharine Wake on the flute, will return to the Fringe with their reflections on home and homelessness. The Festival of the Sacred Arts will host Sacred Arts Festival Poetry at Church of the Sacred Heart, promising work ranging "from masterpieces of the Middle Ages, through ballads and hymns of the Reformation, to satirical and meditative poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries."

For more information on these pieces, as well as the hundreds of other shows programmed for this summer, visit EdFringe.com.

Ready to join in on the fun? Playbill is keeping an eye on all of the pre-festival news in the lead up to our boots-on-the-ground coverage of the summer's festivities over at Playbill Goes Fringe. Whether you're coming to Bonnie Scotland or observing from afar, you don't want to miss the flurry of news surrounding the world's largest arts festival.

If you're diving into the experience yourself, don't forget to check out the Playbill FringeShip, our floating hotel for the 2024 Fringe, which will be docked in Edinburgh and will provide easy transportation to the Fringe (as well as exclusive on-ship entertainment). Let us take the logistics out of your once-in-a-lifetime experience.