Here are the must-watch Philadelphia Fringe Festival shows this year

Three weeks, over 330 shows, across 100 venues throughout Philadelphia. That’s right, it’s September and time for the annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The festival runs from Sept. 8-27, and we know choosing among the number of shows can be a little overwhelming.

Read more Blood, flags, and fear: 25 years later, looking back on how Philadelphians reacted to 9/11

So we reached out to artists involved to get some suggestions on what to see and how best to navigate the festival.

Founding member of Theatre Contra, and co-director of its 2026 Fringe production The Whole F**king Twilight Saga…in 60 Minutes.

“We are taking all five Twilight movies and attempting to perform them in one hour; it’s the definition of our ‘low-stakes, high-fun’ mentality,” Edwards says of the show, which plays at the Hamilton Family Arts Center on Sept. 25, 26.

Try NEW things. The shows are much more affordable than “traditional” theatre, and each and every performance is filled with so much heart. It really is the best time to push your boundaries and experience art you may not have considered in the past. And don’t forget to tell your friends about the festival and anything you see!

Founder and artistic director of Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths, presenting Lunar Retreat, which is an interactive, multi-sensory performance playing at the Pearlstein Gallery Sept. 9-22.

Take a risk! Check out a show or a venue that you’ve never heard of before. The city is bursting with creativity.

Artistic director of the Bearded Ladies, which is presenting Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle. Rose describes it as “a large-scale immersive art installation and an unasked for retrospective of the first 16 years of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret.”

“Whether you know us well or just wandered in off the street, we’re exploring themes of legacy, grief, and owning our own queer history while we’re still around, so there’s something for everyone,” she said.

It is on view from Sept. 10-27, with live events called “Now Hoarding: An In-flight Entertainment Series” scheduled on Sept. 12, 19, 26.

Read more See what $1 million can buy you in Medford, the New Hope area, and Queen Village | The Price Point

Pace yourself, drink water, and talk to the artists. If you loved what you saw or even if you only loved one part of it, tell them. A little encouragement pays dividends along the way. See how you can be involved. I hear Fringe is looking for volunteers.

Associate artistic director at People’s Light. This is Watring’s first Fringe as a performer. They are presenting their interactive solo-show The Adoption Game! with Upstream Performance Collaborative. It runs Sept. 25-27 the Asian Arts Initiative Third Floor.

See everything! While it’s fun to go to the show that everyone is seeing, it’s also so worthwhile to be in an audience of five people seeing something that you’d never experience otherwise. Fringe is the theatrical equivalent of a streaming service…start flipping through and turning on as many options as you can.

Co-founder of Headlong Dance Theater, Brick is making his return to performance in The Holy Fool. The Ninth Planet show also features his daughter Zephyr Saffron Brick. It runs from Sept. 10-19 at the Gym at Impact Services.

The best experimental work blows pixie dust on the hidden mechanisms of the world. It makes visible things that the culture has not acknowledged or reached consensus on, [things] that are not already digested and content-delivered to you in a thousand ways. With that in mind, see anything that seems to tickle your interest and if it’s great, enjoy! But if it’s not automatically wonderful on first blush, take some time to think about what may be trying to be born from the vast unknown and let [that] thinking be the treasure you take home. Feel free to despise the work you see but understand why. That is a gift as well.

Read more Bob Brooks releases first TV ad of the general campaign