Ontario’s largest performing arts festival, Toronto Fringe, returns! This annual, 12-day event welcomes over 120 independent productions that are bursting with creativity, bold innovations, hilarious antics, and adventure for all ages.

With Toronto Fringe Festival’s Lottery System still in place, all artists have an equal chance to showcase their work. This grassroots festival has consistently been a launching pad for the performing arts community — to foster their own creative skills, connect with other artists, and see a myriad of shows of multiple genres.  

Spanning from June 30 to July 12 across 27 iconic Toronto venues, audiences can enjoy a wide range of live performances, including musicals, dramas, comedies, dance, clown, storytelling, interactive shows, children’s shows, and much more. General tickets start at $19, with many shows offering Pay-What-You-Can tickets, multi-ticket passes, discounted preview tickets, daily discounted tickets, and relaxed performances. In addition, 100% of ticket revenue is returned directly to the artists, making it an extremely supportive platform for independent and emerging creators.

With over 120 shows programmed at this year’s festival, we wanted to help kickstart your Toronto Fringe to-do list by highlighting 15 shows that caught our eye.

Courtesy of Toronto Fringe Festival

Aliya Kanani: A Comedian’s Guide to Enlightenment 

Award-winning comedian and Canadian Academy-nominated actress Aliya Kanani returns with a high-energy, heart-on-sleeve adventure, with stories from studying meditation in India to accidentally joining a cult in Texas.  With mischievous charm, an uplifting take on life’s challenges and delightfully chaotic ADHD energy, she turns awkward confessions and societal dread into cathartic, unforgettable laughter. Think Julia Roberts on her Eat Pray Love journey, but brown, funny and poor. More info.

Courtesy of Toronto Fringe Festival

Belly Button 

Step through the portal and into the strange, soaring world of Belly Button, written and produced by emerging playwright Hemali Sankalya Ratnaweera, directed by Shaharah “Gaz” Gaznabbi (Best of Toronto Fringe 2025), and featuring SheDoesTheCity’s own Trinity Lloyd. In this weird, wild, and chorally-driven story, Q leaves home by crawling through a portal in their stomach — their Belly Button. There, they meet famous Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil who challenges Q’s perspectives towards family, immigration, culture, and community. More info.

Photo by Cathy Ord

Book of Ooka: The Immaculate Misconception 

Following their triumphant 2025 Fringe run of Very Shady Arab Ladies, the Juno-nominated duo Maryem Tollar and Roula Said return with Book of Ooka: The Immaculate Misconception. Fusing traditional Arabic melodies with slapstick comedy, this narrative centres on “Hag Energy”—the visionary power of older women of colour. When 78-year-old Auntie Ooka miraculously becomes pregnant and speaks only in divine gibberish, the duo is catapulted from a Toronto shawarma shop to the River Jordan. More info.

Photo by Stefi Kopp

CAMP!

From the Dora nominated team behind Iris (says goodbye) and Killing Time: A Game Show Musical, Mixtape Projects premieres their newest musical CAMP! Nova and August have been best friends since their first summer at Camp Clover, but something has snapped within their friendship. Now, back at camp as seventeen-year-olds, they are not speaking, and they seem to have it out for each other. Through games of capture the flag, bonfires and the end-of-summer dance, we learn about how friendships come to be and what happens when they grow apart. More info.

Photo by Martin Butterworth

Celine & Cher: Divine Divas

Join in this celebration of life’s lessons, powered by the wisdom, music and fabulousness of Celine Dion and Cher. Expect storytelling and soul-stirring singalongs in this manual for living fiercely, delivered through the songs of two of pop’s most iconic goddesses. Leave uplifted, with your inner Divine Diva fully ignited. More info.

Photo by Graeme Jokic

Clowns Reading Shakespeare

In this show, programmed for Fringe’s KidsFest but guaranteed fun for all, a troupe of eager clowns has arrived at the theatre to audition for a Shakespeare play. Can these Clowns handle Hamlet, the famous drama about a grief-stricken son? Or how about Romeo & Juliet, the beloved tale of star-crossed romance? Or maybe Macbeth, Shakespeare’s spooky play about witches and kings? Can this intrepid group choose a play in time? The show must go on! More info.

Photo by @denny_photographs

In Search Of…

In Search Of… is a comedic, surrealist play that follows a Black girl navigating her sexuality and discovering her own power. A chorus of boys shapes the world around her, guiding her journey from submission toward self-acceptance and empowerment. More info.

Photo by Jack Creaghan

Ladies’ Day

Fresh off a four-nomination 2026 Dora Mavor Moore Award haul for their hit Romeo Pimp, 1East Productions returns with the world premiere of Ladies’ Day. In Windsor, 1966, every Thursday, a group of suburban housewives trade their aprons for cold beers, cigarettes, and dirty jokes at the neighbourhood’s first backyard pool. Ladies’ Day is a riotous, booze-fueled escape from domesticity— but also look at how the ladies navigate alcoholism, hidden desires, and the quiet suffocation of lives lived for everyone else. This is a play about what “the good old days” really looked like on the inside, and what happens when women stop performing happiness long enough to find each other. More info.

Courtesy of Toronto Fringe Festival

Six Trees

As the trees are disappearing, elderly eco-activist Frances feels like she is disappearing as well. This theatre dance piece puts an ancient tree stump at the centre of a journey, as Frances crosses in and out of a world where both magic and science prevail. More info.

Photo by Ashley Loyst

Snacey!

Snacey! returns to Toronto Fringe for another year, and this time as a musical! Snacey has not been the kindest snake and is afraid no one will show up to her birthday party! When her past behaviour slithers back to haunt her, Snacey must shed her evil ways and grow into a new version of herself. Will her animal pals (and mom) accept that she is capable of change? This campy musical highlights mother-daughter relationships, the power of an apology, and growing into your own person (or snake). More info.

Courtesy of Angeline Castrejo

Stupid Cupid

In Cupid’s matchmaking offices in Mount Olympus, chaos ensues when an overworked and underappreciated angel finally goes rogue in her workplace. Come and watch Debora Itimibién’s Stupid Cupid, a heartfelt, funny, and thought-provoking play presented by Soulprint Productions. More info.

Photo by Audrey Persaud

The Astros

What happens when a high school hockey instigator punches the rival team’s captain at an underage bar fight the night before their final championship game? Tensions rise in dressing room four of the Bay Arena, as the Ascension Astros prepare to face off against their rivals, the Carbonear Cardinals, in the final championship game of their high school careers. Following a group of young men with everything to lose, The Astros is a cautionary tale of small-town cycles of abuse, Canadian hockey culture, and the violence of masculinity. More info.

Courtesy of Toronto Fringe Festival

Three Descending Notes

In this new musical, Odelia, lost on the subway system and in the early stages of dementia, embarks on a fantastical odyssey to find her way home. Experience hope, fear, wonder, and music, as Odelia’s imagination comes to life on the stage. Combining live acting and singing with otherworldly apparitions that appear and disappear, transform and enchant, Odelia’s story will captivate you! More info.

Photo by David Leyes

You Choose: An Improvised Murder Mystery

After earning 10 Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations, multi-award-winning theatre company The Howland Company is returning to the Toronto Fringe Festival with You Choose: An Improvised Murder Mystery. In this new improvised whodunit, you’re in control. In You Choose, the audience decides who the murderer is while our improvisers remain in the dark! This star-studded cast of improvisers will create a brand new murder mystery each performance. With the audience in charge and a few curveballs along the way, the improvisers will not only have to weave a captivating story from scratch, but also figure out who did it before it’s too late! More info.

Courtesy of Scott Cavalheiro

2% of Condoms

In this semi-autobiographical, sardonic two-hander, two best friends born from broken condoms and raised without fathers become really, really good at not dealing with their baggage. Having nothing but each other, co-creators and comics Nikki Bon and Claire Cavalheiro careen through time — from their own accidental conceptions, to Y2K adolescence, to the chaotic territory of their twenties and eventually the harrowing torture that is parenthood and thirties. More info.

See the full lineup of shows at the 2026 Toronto Fringe Festival.