The Scotsman, a newspaper and news website based in Edinburgh, has announced the next round of winners for its Fringe First Awards. The awards are one of the most coveted to earn at the Edinburgh Fringe as it recognizes the best new writing at the festival.

The final five winners of this year's festival include Ben Target’s solo show Lorenzo and Miriam Battye’s two-hander Strategic Love Play (both of which played at Summerhall), Mandi Chivasa’s solo show Beasts (Why Girls Shouldn’t Fear the Dark) at Zoo Playground, Danish writer Anna Skov Jensen’s one-person play The Insider at Zoo Southside, and American duo Chloe Rice and Natasha Roland’s show What If They Ate the Baby? at TheSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall. 

Playbill previously wrote features on Lorenzo, Strategic Love Play, and What If They Ate the Baby?

This year, a total of 18 productions were given a Fringe First prize. Previous rounds of this year's Fringe First Awards recognized Playbill Picks England and Son at the Roundabout @Summerhall, Gunter at Summerhall's Anatomy Lecture Theatre, JM Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K at Assembly Hall, Everything Under the Sun at Army @ The Fringe's Drill Hall, Funeral at Zoo Southside, and A Funeral For My Friend Who Is Still Alive at theSpace @ Niddry Street

The prizes also recogized Choo Choo! (Or... Have You Ever Thought About ****** **** *****? (Cos I Have)) at Pleasance Dome's JackDome, The Last of the Soviets at ZOO Playground's Playground 1, Blue at Assembly George Square's The Box, Club Life at Summerhall's TechCube 0, Square Peg at Paradise in Augustines's The Studio, and The Grand Old Opera House Hotel and Heaven, both of which play Traverse Theatre.

The Fringe First awards are the oldest at the Fringe, and celebrate their 50th anniversary this year. Launched in 1973, the awards are given to new writing debuting at Fringe. Scotsman arts editor Allen Wright and Fringe administrator John Milligan came up with the idea of the Fringe First Awards to help revive new work at the festival 25 years after the festival was founded.

Since then, the awards have become a driver of crowds at the festival—many Fringe First winners immediately sell out their runs. The Fringe First is a good indicator of seeing important work before it grows (Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, for example, was a Fringe First winner). Winners are announced in three rounds over the course of the festival as The Scotsman's team of critics, led by the newspaper's chief theatre critic and chair of the awards Joyce McMillan, pack in seeing as many of the eligible shows as possible. According to the Fringe website, there are 291 registered shows tagged as new writing this festival. A show must have been seen by three Scotsman critics before it is eligible for a Fringe First.

The University of Edinburgh sponsors the Fringe First Awards.

Follow Playbill's exhaustive on-the-ground coverage of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe here.