Fringe festival sees highestattendance since 2019

Theatregoers made this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival the best-attended edition since before the pandemic.

Marking a 3.4 per cent increase over 2025’s festival, this year’s fringe welcomed 87,832 attendees to 31 venues across the city. That translated to $879,522 in box office revenue, each dollar of which goes to performers from the festival’s 160 companies.

This year’s festival — the 39th — marked an upward climb in both attendance and revenue, though there is still some way to go before the fringe reaches the heights of its final pre-pandemic edition in 2019: that year, ticketed attendance totalled 98,673.

Executive fringe producer Chuck McEwen said in a release that the festival “remains one of the most vibrant celebrations of theatre in Canada and North America.”

More than 150 productions were greeted by sell-out crowds, including several performances of this year’s Harry S. Rintoul Award honourees.

Winning the award for top new Manitoban work, named for the late founder of Theatre Projects Manitoba, was Debbie Patterson for her solo performance, Happy Valley.

The performance was met with stellar reception for its blend of empathetic storytelling, Patterson’s comedic touch and her deft command of its subject matter, which included themes such as resource extraction, disability and reconciliation.

The award comes with a $750 cash prize for Patterson, the founder of the Winnipeg theatre collective Sick + Twisted.

The runner-up for the Rintoul Award was playwright Ethan Stark for Our Father, an end-of-life story about family, Christianity and human rights.

Other playwrights on the six-show shortlist were Logan Stefanson for The Ghost of a Flea, Kevin Reid for Unzipping the Cat, Sonya Ballantyne for How Bono Saved My Life (Three Times), and Monique Gauthier, Ian Ingram and Connor and Cuinn Joseph for Dead Chef.

The fringe also announced Monday that next year’s festival — the 40th in the city — will run July 14-25, 2027.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com