Scotsman Fringe First awards: week two winners revealed

These five shows join our 2026 week one winners in being awarded the most prestigious and long-running theatre prize at the Edinburgh Fringe.

We can also reveal that Xhloe and Natasha will join us in Pleasance Grand for our final awards ceremony on Friday 28 August at 10am. You can book free tickets for the event here. The four-time Fringe First winners will perform an exclusive extract from this year’s sold out show Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It. And award-winning director and performer Cora Bissett will help present the final week’s Fringe Firsts.

The Scotsman Fringe Firsts were established in 1973 to encourage artists to premiere new shows at the festival. They have been hugely influential, with notable past winners ranging from Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, and Billy Connolly to Phoebe Waller-Bridge (with the original stage version of Fleabag) and Richard Gadd (for Baby Reindeer).

This year the awards are sponsored by Queen Margaret University Edinburgh, and we are very grateful to QMU for supporting us to continue seeing hundreds of eligible shows premiering across the Fringe’s many venues. We are also very grateful to the Pleasance for hosting our three weekly award ceremonies.

HOW IT WORKS

The Fringe Firsts recognise outstanding new writing premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe. Shows in the theatre, dance & physical theatre, and musicals & opera sections are eligible, and winners are announced on each Friday of the Fringe.

There is no set number of winners each week. Shows are nominated by The Scotsman’s team of critics, and winners are then decided on by a highly experienced judging panel consisting of, this year, our chief theatre critic Joyce McMillan (as chair) plus writers Susan Mansfield, Mark Fisher, Sally Stott, David Pollock, Fiona Shepherd, Jackie McGlone and Fergus Morgan.

This week’s winners are:

Amnesia (Pleasance Courtyard, 4.25pm, until 31 August)

What we said: “Kimberley Hart-Simpson, best known as Nicky Wheatley in Coronation Street, writes and performs this one-woman show about a dementia carer in Rhyl, the town where she grew up. Hart-Simpson has written a complex, fully rounded character, in a play about the people who don’t get out, who do vital work like caring for those with dementia, and are left with the lingering notion that their lives are somehow not enough.” (Susan Mansfield)

The Distance (Summerhall, 6pm, until 31 August)

What we said: “Ben Norris uses a treadmill not just to run on, but to glide across, leap through and clamber up onto the surrounding scaffolding frame. All of which would be an enjoyable visual spectacle, at least, were it not for the fact Norris also tells a very compelling and human tale, with the added poignancy of being drawn from personal experience. The Distance takes us inside the experience of driving towards physical perfection and then of finding yourself denied by chance and your body. The beauty of it is that it really feels like we’re with Chris every step of the way.” (David Pollock)

HAM (Summerhall, 7.30pm, until 30 August)

What we said: “To be or not to be vegan – that is the question,” especially when, as well as reducing the number of animals killed, it could also help to save the planet. In this reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mary Higgins and Ell Potter debate the issue with an arresting combination of humour and horror. It’s a concept that might fill any meat eaters with fear, but in true Shakespearian style, both sides of the argument are debated with equal flair, at least until the end, with the two likeable performers on their way to being massacred.” (Sally Stott)

Parasocial Activity (Gilded Balloon Teviot, 5.40pm, until 31 August)

What we said: “Briony Martha who has worked with writer/director Megan Brewer to mount her debut solo show. The skill of their stealthy script is in provoking pity before twisting the knife. Parasocial Activity starts as a vanilla stand-up routine about a chance meeting with actor James McAvoy in a Glasgow coffee shop, but slowly, innocuously the breadcrumbs are dropped. If it seems too good to be true, the clue is in the title yet Martha’s wide-eyed portrayal of an ordinary lass in a fairytale whirlwind is so convincing that the slowburn spriral into something much more troubling still comes with a slap of a revelation while the mental health maelstrom of the closing moments of the show unleash a performance to behold and no tidy answers for an unquiet mind.” (Fiona Shepherd)

Salty Brine: HOW STRANGE IT IS (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show). (Summerhall, 9.30pm, until 30 August)

What we said: “When Salty Brine commits, he commits. The New York cabaret performer has been building his Living Record Collection series for over a decade, pouring love, ingenuity and erudition into his idiosyncratic theatrical mash-ups of classic literature and cult albums. HOW STRANGE IT IS celebrates In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, which was inspired in its writing by The Diary of Anne Frank. Salty has his literary connection, and not just because he kept his own florid diary in his teens and twenties. The irrepressible Salty attacks every song with dramatic alacrity, performs with his whole body, communes with the audience and ends this 90-minute exultation sweat-drenched but far from spent.” (Fiona Shepherd)

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here