Vancouver Fringe Festival announces 2026 Best of the Fest and award winners

The Vancouver Fringe Theatre Society announced the 2026 Vancouver Fringe Festival award winners Friday night as the festival heads into its final weekend. Its top honour, Best of the Fest, went to Popurri by Plastik Theatriks.

The PG-rated comedy is a physical-theatre work using clowning, puppetry, masks and opera in a series of short vignettes. Fringe says the show was developed through workshops and performances across Victoria and British Columbia, and has been described as surreal and strange.

Runners-up were MoonSwine: To-Dance-To-Dream-To-Poem-To-Pig by Maria Yanagisawa, Coming of Rage by Cosmic Theatre, and The Grown-ups by Lexacon. MoonSwine and My Big Break on Broadway by Joni Summerton received the Artistic Risk Award, a society-sponsored $450 prize for shows taking the greatest risks in content, form, structure or financial commitment.

Coming of Rage was named the Patrons’ Pick, while BRUNCH: The Musical by C. + M. MacEwan received the Volunteer Choice award. The Kathleen Flaherty Prize went to Female Listeria, written by Dorothy Droste and directed by Amélia Simard; it will be presented at the 2027 festival.

Vancouver Fringe also announced six holdover performances for its best-selling shows on the final night, Sunday, Sept. 20: Matt and Ben by Veenu Sandhu and Missy Cross at 9 p.m.; The Lucky Life of a Black Cat by Lobo-Guara Productions and Colonial Circus by Two2Mango at 9:15 p.m.; Solovela by Diane Jorge at 9:40 p.m.; Ickoholics Anonymous by Lucy Lucia at 9:45 p.m.; and The Truth and Dares by Ginko and Co. at 10 p.m.