A rundown of the hottest shows at the Toronto Fringe Festival

As if the World Cup wasn’t enough of a ruckus, the city is about to be taken over by hordes of rowdy thespians. Toronto’s 38th annual Fringe Festival begins June 30 and runs until July 12, featuring 123 small-scale shows across 27 venues around the city.

For anyone unfamiliar, Fringe festivals are like regular theatre festivals’ rebellious cousins. All the shows in the Fringe lineup are selected at random, making for an eclectic mix of stand-up, improv comedy, dramas and musicals—plus all the shows odd enough to defy categorization. The set-up is designed for maximum discovery, helping audiences find shows and artists who might not get picked up by a curated festival. All the works are self-produced, with the majority of the ticket money going to the creators themselves.

The shows are short and the program is packed tight, perfect for venue-hopping all day and leaving your theatre experiences up to fate. But, for those who prefer a little guidance, here are nine shows we predict will be standouts in this year’s Toronto Fringe lineup.

Minimum

Venue: Factory Theatre Mainspace Runtime: 90 minutes

With Doug Ford’s approval rating plummeting across the province, it should come as little surprise that a group of comedians have come together to make an entire show satirizing the premier. The premise: What if Ford lost his six-figure government salary and had to live on the provincial minimum wage of $36,608 (before tax)? From Be Victorious Productions, Minimum won best in venue at Hamilton Fringe in 2025 and eight BroadwayWorld nominations.

By Popular Demand

Venue: Native Earth’s Minogitoon Workspace Giizis Studio Runtime: 55 minutes

By Popular Demand is a cabaret-style comedy show from Toronto-based comedian Janelle McGuiness, full of sketches, musical crowd work and jokes about living through the Great Depression 2.0. McGuinness took home Toronto’s best in Fringe award in 2019 with her show Carpe Into My DMs and has racked up millions of online views on her sketches. Her latest show also features direction from former Second City artistic director Carly Heffernan.

Evie and Alfie: A Very British Love Story

Venue: Soulpepper’s Michael Young Theatre Runtime: 60 minutes

A very British comedy duo have come together to make this very British show about a quintessential couple of retirees and their routine of puttering around the house, sipping tea and bird-watching. Alex Dallas and Jimmy Hogg are veterans of the comedy circuit—Hogg has won best in festival a staggering 18 times and also has a solo show in Toronto Fringe this year. Dallas has put in her time on the festival circuit and has also produced two one-woman shows, which aired on the CBC and Bravo.

Tortoise, the Hare and the Truth

Venue: Sweet Action Theatre Runtime: 60 minutes

The classic fable of the tortoise and the hare is retold by a group who describe themselves as “Toronto’s freakiest clown cult.” That’s pretty much the limit of the information available about this show, other than the content warnings: an 18A advisory and a note that there will be no fourth wall between the clowns and the audience—so be ready for some face time with the performers. The company has won a slate of awards for other Fringe shows, including patrons’ pick in Toronto and jury’s choice in Ottawa last year.

El Jefe

Venue: Sweet Action Theatre Runtime: 60 minutes

In El Jefe, former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding goes back in time to before he became a drug kingpin and one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted criminals in order to visit himself on the eve of his Team Canada debut. Wedding of the future is determined to change the past in this mostly fictional dramatic comedy from Toronto writer Nate Simpson.

Danse Macabre

Venue: Tarragon Theatre Mainspace Runtime: 90 minutes

This show from the Canadian-Caribbean Arts Network won the Toronto Fringe New Play Contest, which evaluates new productions for artistic merit and innovation. Danse Macabre follows Cisco, a queer Trini Canadian costume designer who creates a Carnival mas inspired by the histories of the Black diaspora. The costume unlocks ancestral memories spanning from the slave trade to the Haitian Revolution, leading Cisco to examine the history of anti-Black racism.

Many Happy Returns

Venue: Society Clubhouse Runtime: 90 minutes

Many Happy Returns landed the No Proscenium Audience Award at Toronto Fringe last year for its immersive production outside of a traditional theatre. The production is part play, part escape room: the audience enters a 30-minute cocktail reception only to find themselves transported back in time to a speakeasy on New Year’s Eve, 1926. They must work together to extract information from the Jazz Age partygoers and collect the artifacts that will let them escape the flapper time loop.

Tango After Midnight

Venue: Tarragon Theatre Mainspace Runtime: 55 minutes

Canadian tango champions Erin Scott-Kafadar and Alexander Richardson twist, kick and literally throw each other around the stage in this dance show, a blend of Argentine tango and classical ballet. The distinctive dance style has won their company, PointeTango, 15 festival awards across Canada’s Fringe circuit, including Patrons’ Pick in Toronto in 2019.

Assembly Süggested

Venue: Native Earth’s Minogitoon Workspace Giizis Studio Runtime: 55 minutes

Life is messy; what if there were an IKEA-style instruction manual to explain how it all works? That’s the premise of Assembly Süggested, in which Joule follows an increasingly absurd assembly guide for an IKEA chair, convinced that if she follows the steps and uses an Allen key just right, she can hold her life together and fix her relationship.