The Edinburgh Festival Fringe began in 1947 when eight theatre companies arrived in Edinburgh without invitations to the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival. These groups performed in smaller spaces like church halls and basements because they could not use the city's major venues reserved for the official festival.
Robert Kemp wrote about the unofficial gatherings during the second Edinburgh International Festival in 1948 and described how private enterprise flourished round the fringe of official drama. A critic had used the phrase on the fringe of the Festival earlier that year regarding a review of Everyman before the word gained traction through the early 1950s.
Formal organisation progressed in 1959 when Michael Imison led the formation of the Festival Fringe Society. The society drew up a constitution that established the policy of not vetting or censoring shows which allowed any venue large enough to hold an audience to become fair game.
Comedy finally surpassed theatre as the biggest section of the programme in 2008 with 660 comedy entries compared to 599 theatre shows. Alexei Sayle and Tony Allen arrived with stand-up comedy to change the landscape from university revues and plays into the dominant category by 2008.
The 2008 festival faced its biggest crisis when the computerised ticketing system failed completely leading to the resignation of Fringe Director Jon Morgan after only one full year in post. Kath Mainland became the first Chief Executive in February 2009 to stabilise the situation following financial losses estimated between £300,000 and £900,000.
The 2025 festival ran for 25 days selling over 2.6 million tickets across 301 venues. This marked a return close to pre-pandemic levels after the planned 2020 event was suspended due to the COVID-19 outbreak.