Shows in cars and on beaches, shows performed by the audience, shows from around the world – Melbourne Fringe Festival’s open program is brimming with the city’s most fearless independent art. From intimate one-on-one encounters to large-scale outdoor spectacles, the 2025 Melbourne Fringe Festival delivers unforgettable experiences that can only happen at Fringe.
Bursting with 500+ events taking over theatres, laneways, living rooms, beaches and carparks the Festival sees thousands of artists turning every corner of the city into a stage from 30 September–19 October 2025.
“Melbourne Fringe Festival is the city’s creative playground, a place where anyone can share their art, from first-time makers to some of Australia’s most celebrated artists,” said Melbourne Fringe Creative Director and CEO, Simon Abrahams. “It’s democracy in action: no invitation needed, no permission required. This is Melbourne’s independent arts scene in all its bold, brilliant, messy glory.”
A bold beginning to the city’s most fearless Festival. Beneath the glowing arches of Melbourne’s iconic Capitol Theatre, Melbourne Fringe’s Opening Night Gala pulses with life. A genre-defying premonition of what’s to come this Festival. A 90-minute spectacle of everything Fringe does best: bold ideas, high-voltage performances, and independent art that hits you differently.
Highlights of this year’s Festival includes two new musicals exploring Australian identity. Fiasco: A Burke & Wills Musical by award-winning comic mastermind and broadcaster Sammy J is a satirical retelling of the ill-fated Burke & Wills expedition as a raucous live concert, with Sammy backed by a five-piece band playing all the roles and all the instruments.
In The Lucky Country, Sonya Suares and star of Six and Hamilton Vidya Makan, are bringing their critically acclaimed original musical interrogating what it means to be Australian to Melbourne, blending powerful storytelling with a soaring score.
The Festival also features musicians from the West Village to West Java via Wagga Wagga. The legendary New York basement piano bar Marie’s Crisis, beloved by Broadway stars and locals alike, pops-up in Melbourne for three nights only. Broadway favourites Adam and Kenney lead a group showtune sing-along at full gusto.
Javanese singer and dancer Cahwati Sugiarto joins forces with award-winning Australian experimental musicians Aviva Endean and Matthias Schack-Arnott for Lung Swara – an intense, ritual-infused concert in the intimate surrounds of the Abbotsford Convent.
One of Australia’s most captivating world music ensembles MZAZA present The Birth and Death of Stars – a spellbinding collision of Balkan-French melodies, theatre and animated imagery that has dazzled audiences across Australia.
Following their recent success with their work POV, regroup performance collective bring AUTO-TUNE – a play that is written entirely using Silverchair lyrics. Set in Wagga Wagga in the early 2000s, this “gig theatre” work follows a teenage Silverchair fan who discovers he can time-hop to ‘autotune’ his life in in a story about power, regret and growing up.
The Festival is brimming with unique works that remind us that the most surprising stories often come from close to home. Controversial queer comedian Tom Ballard’s JKS: A Comedy? – Tom Ballard takes audiences backstage at a stand-up gig in a sharp new comic play based on his real-life experience when news broke that a comedy legend died. What follows is an irreverent, razor-edged war of words over to ask – what is comedy even for?
Following stints in Vegas and in London’s West End, Lilikoi Kaos returns home to Melbourne to share Too Much. It’s a one-woman cabaret blending circus, comedy and storytelling about her life growing up in the circus with her Hawaiian performer mother, carving her own path, embracing her Pasifika heritage, and navigating the contradictions of being told she’s never ‘enough’ yet always a little ‘too much’.
The camp darlings of world-famous cabaret YUMMY are ready to celebrate 10 years of excellence with you! Join this beloved ensemble in a wild night out of transformative drag, circus, and burlesque in a life-affirming, sexy, and joyful celebration in Decadence: 10 Years of YUMMY.
Welcome to the ultimate improvised variety game show! Tash York’s Chaos Cabaret is a wild mix of drag, cabaret, circus, & burlesque, turned on its head with surprises no one sees coming… not even the performers! Hosted by the grand dame of drag & cabaret, Tash York, each night pits three incredible artists against each other across 3 improvised rounds; from surprise interruptions to hilarious audience prompts and a lip-sync with a twist.
From cars to beaches to carparks, the Festival embraces the unexpected, transforming unlikely spaces into unforgettable stages. Boundary pushing circus outfit Oozing Future brings Strange Chaos to the Fringe as a punk-clown show is performed in the glow of car headlights. It transforms a Northcote car park into a fierce, funny, and poetic site-specific circus spectacle.
I’m Not Mad, I’m Just Disappointed is a performance for one audience member at a time, set entirely inside a car with the audience member taking the seat of a 13-year-old navigating a family grappling with grief. And Williamstown Beach at sunset becomes the stage for The Break by Zoë Bastin Dance, a mesmerising dance work featuring live music, ocean sounds, and the tide as backdrop.
Yalinguth Live Music Tour is a special one-off immersive musical tour along Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street celebrating the legacy of First Nations musicians from the 1930s to the 1990s and marking the launch of the Uncle Archie Roach and Aunty Ruby Hunter statue in Atherton Gardens, including a performance by Amos Roach, who will share a song at his parents’ statues.
Manes, meltdowns and masculinity collide in Men on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown – an unhinged equestrian brom-com road trip from award-winning playwright Adam Fawcett. This chaotic new comedy is for anyone who’s ever found themselves dumped, disappointed, or dangerously close to a breakdown in a paddock.
A wild wet story about coming out, coming clean & coming around the world, Stephanie Dogfoot presents Gold Star Bisexual. Growing up in Singapore in the 90s, Steph first realised they were different when they were when they were 12 and developed crushes on an altar boy and a netball captain at the same time. This is the story of what happened next…
Jen McAuliffe’s Chip On Her Shoulder is brutally honest, cheeky, and often uncomfortable one-woman show (performed by Vanessa Buckley) that drags you through the weird rituals of coping: crying in hospital toilets, spiralling mid-therapy, surviving a string of disastrous dates that feel like emotional minefields, wrestling with grief, and wondering if you should download that dating app one last time … just in case!
The three-time Edinburgh Fringe season sell-out finally returns to Melbourne in all its disrespectful glory. Steven Dawson’s outrageous tour-de-farce, The Importance of Being Earnest as Performed by Three F*cking Queens and a Duck, sees three talent-deprived thespians attempt the impossible in staging Mr Wilde’s classic in a frantic 50-minute lovey fest. Good taste and political correctness fly out the window as they take on the uber-theatricals in an all-out assault on those more talented.
work.txt by UK outfit Subject Object is a playful, participatory show about work, with no actors – just the audience reading together, building structures on stage, and performing scenes together from text projected on a screen.
Melbourne Fringe’s major public artwork and 2025 Civic Commission, Power Move by Quiet Riot, is a free, kinetic dancefloor that captures and stores energy generated by Melburnians’ movement. Every day of the festival, Fed Square will see cutting-edge technology embedded in a public dancefloor, celebrating the potential of human-powered energy through a program of daily dance activities, live music, DJs, cultural performances, and interactive arts.
The 2025 Melbourne Fringe Festival takes place across the city from 30 September–19 October. For more information and full program, visit: www.melbournefringe.com.au for details.
Images: Power Move by Quiet Riot – photo by Max Roux | The Lucky Country – photo by Phil Erbacher | Tom Ballard’s JKS: A Comedy? (supplied) | Mitch Jones in Strange Chaos – photo by Georgia Moloney | Stephanie Dogfoot stars in Gold Star Bisexual (supplied)