From Edinburgh to Nottingham: is the rising cost of comedy changing Britain’s festival map?

On 31 August, after more than three weeks of performances, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe will draw to a close. On the same day, another international comedy festival the – Robin Hood International Improv Festival – will get underway in Nottingham.

Robin Hood picks up the baton and runs from 31 August to 6 September, bringing more than 120 performers to the city for a week of completely improvised comedy. Teachers and performers are already confirmed from at least 19 countries, including the USA, Canada, India, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam, with further nationalities expected to visit what organisers describe ‘as the UK’s largest improv comedy festival’. This year, the festival has been supported by Arts Council England as it expands to a week-long event at the Squire Performing Arts Centre.

The festival will bring together international names and Nottingham talent. Olivier Award-winning Showstopper! The Improvised Musical heads to Nottingham on 5 September, following its August run at the Edinburgh Fringe, while the line-up also includes acclaimed Japanese clown Oshow. Local performers feature strongly too, including Nottingham Playhouse’s Making It Up Ensemble, Tales From The Darkive, described as “Nottingham’s favourite horror comedy show”, and The Secret Show, a regular fixture at Fisher Gate Point which will perform as part of the festival’s press night. Nottingham is also represented by Brand New Musical, featuring festival director Lloydie James Lloyd, and StarTurn, Naomi’s completely improvised concert where the audience creates the set list.

The two are not competing – Edinburgh is longer established and bigger. Its 2026 programme contains 4,206 shows across 299 venues, with performers from 74 countries and more than 60,000 performances. Around 25,000 artists travel to the Fringe each year (The Fringe Society has frozen registration fees and supported affordable accommodation schemes).

For Robin Hood’s Co-Director, Lloydie James Lloyd, and Co-Artistic Director, Liam Webber, the opportunity was to create a different kind of stop on the international comedy calendar: one where performers can meet each other and try new work, rather than try to rival Edinburgh.

Both organisers are Nottingham locals. Liam is based in the Arboretum area, while Lloydie lives in The Park, and the festival has grown out of the city’s long-established improv community.

They’re providing an alternative that matters right now, given how tough things are financially for live comedy. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society has said artists and venues are facing costs ‘at an all-time high’. Meanwhile, the 2025 UK Live Comedy Sector Survey found that average annual earnings among responding comedians had fallen from £26,778 to £21,143 in a year. The average number of gigs dropped from 3.2 to 2.5 a week and 74% said they needed additional income outside live comedy, up from 62%.

Robin Hood has deliberately built accessibility into its model. It aims to keep shows and workshops affordable, offers volunteer positions in exchange for tickets, and provides free coaching and performance opportunities through festival ensembles. For visiting performers, it has negotiated a 10% discount at Nottingham’s Igloo Hybrid Hostel, where prices start at around £23 per night after the discount.

On published 2026 prices, a five-person team staying for a week at Robin Hood could pay about £805 for festival-rate hostel accommodation, with no compulsory application fee. At Edinburgh, a comparable team would pay £1,750 for a week in Queen Margaret University’s official Fringe Village plus £204 to register a show of three to five performances: £1,954 before venue hire, travel, food, marketing or production. On those baseline costs, Nottingham is around 59% cheaper.

Lloyd said: “Edinburgh is an incredible festival and hugely important to the comedy world, so this isn’t about trying to compete with it or replace it. But the reality is that taking work to a major festival can be expensive, particularly for emerging performers in emerging art forms. The industry benefits from having different kinds of festivals and different routes for people to perform. A festival like ours helps them develop their work and meet other improvisers. What we want to do in Nottingham is build something international and ambitious, but that people can actually afford to be part of.”

International pull has built up fast. 120 performers travelled to Nottingham for the inaugural festival in 2022 and by 2024, the festival was bringing nearly 150 improvisers into the city and could accept only around 10 to 15% of applications. In 2025, 96 people applied to teach, competing for around a dozen teaching positions.

The festival features more than 120 performers from around the world – this year at least 19 countries are represented – and it receives more applications from performing teams than it has slots available.

The festival is built on a local scene that predates it by decades. Improvised comedy has been part of Nottingham’s comedy landscape for almost 25 years, with groups performing at venues including Nottingham Playhouse and The Glee Club.

The idea for Robin Hood itself began thousands of miles away, in a bar at iO Chicago, when improviser Stacey Smith asked Lloyd and Webber when they were going to start their own festival. The pandemic delayed their plans, but the first event eventually took place in September 2022. The festival has returned annually and reaches its fifth edition in 2026.

Liam Webber said: “When we started in 2022, we knew there was a strong improv community in Nottingham, but we couldn’t really have predicted how quickly the festival would develop. Nottingham is becoming a destination in its own right for improv, rather than simply somewhere that happens to host a festival. Something really meaningful is taking shape here.”

The wider backdrop remains challenging. This summer, the Big Difference Company, which had organised Leicester Comedy Festival for more than 30 years, became insolvent and ceased trading, although Leicester City Council has said it is committed to ensuring the festival continues.

For Nottingham, Robin Hood believes there is a growing local economic dividend. The festival estimates that it brings nearly £100,000 into the local economy each year, with that figure likely to exceed £150,000 this year.¹

The festival actively encourages visiting performers to stay in Nottingham and use local accommodation, restaurants, pubs and attractions, with its main venues concentrated around the city centre.

B Kristiansen, owner of Igloo Hybrid Hostel, said: “Events like Robin Hood are hugely valuable for Nottingham. People stay for several days, they eat and drink locally, they explore what else the city has to offer. We see first-hand just how international it’s become, with performers travelling here from all over the world. For an independent business like ours that matters, but it also lifts the atmosphere of the city and shows visitors that Nottingham has a strong creative scene of its own.”

For established acts such as Showstopper!, Nottingham offers something Edinburgh cannot replicate – a festival focused entirely on improv. The company has a long relationship with Edinburgh, describing itself as having enjoyed 11 sell-out years at the Fringe, and will perform at Robin Hood immediately afterwards.

That combination of an established local scene, international performers and growing demand is what Lloyd and Webber hope will make Nottingham a permanent fixture on the improv map. Their ambition is ‘to showcase the best of the world’s improv to Nottingham and the best of Nottingham’s improv to the world.’

Find out more and buy tickets at https://www.robinhoodimprov.co.uk