Edinburgh's festivals as their organisers describe them: the International Festival, the Fringe, the Tattoo and Hogmanay

The short answer

"The Edinburgh Festival" is not one event. August in Edinburgh is several festivals run by different organisations, and the clearest difference between the International Festival and the Fringe is who decides what is performed. The Edinburgh International Festival describes its programme as hand-picked.[1] The Edinburgh Festival Fringe says its organising society was constituted to take no part in vetting the programme.[3] The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is a separate show on the Castle Esplanade,[8] and Edinburgh's Hogmanay is the city's New Year festival, at the other end of the year.[10]

The International Festival: a curated programme

The International Festival calls itself "the original festival" and "the one that started it all", and says sister festivals have grown up around it. It was founded in 1947, and its About page credits the idea to Rudolf Bing, whom it describes as a cultural pioneer and a Jewish refugee from the Nazi regime. Its programme, in its own words, is a hand-picked selection of performers in dance, opera, music and theatre.[1]

The festival's history page is candid about its founding story. It repeats the "festival folklore" that the idea came to Bing and the soprano Audrey Mildmay on a walk along Princes Street in 1942, then says "the truth was more prosaic": Bing was Glyndebourne's General Manager, looking for a way out of a wartime financial squeeze. The plan was announced in November 1945, worked up by Bing with the Lord Provost, City of Edinburgh Council and the British Council. The same page lists the festival's directors from Bing onwards; the current director, since October 2022, is Nicola Benedetti.[2]

The Fringe: open to anyone with a venue

Both organisers tell the Fringe's origin the same way. The International Festival's history page says eight uninvited theatre groups turned up at the first festival in 1947, "spawning the Festival Fringe".[2] The Fringe Society's own history says the same eight groups, left out of the official programme, staged their shows "on the fringe of the Festival" anyway, which gave the Fringe its name.[3]

The Fringe describes itself as a three-week festival of performing arts that takes place in Edinburgh every August. The Festival Fringe Society was created in 1958 to formalise it: it gave information to artists, published the programme and created a central box office. Its constitution, the history page says, was written so that the Society would take no part in vetting the festival's programme, and that policy "remains at the core of our festival".[3] In XTOUR's reading, that is the practical difference from the International Festival: the Fringe Society publishes and sells what venues and performers put on, rather than choosing it.

The Fringe's overview page says venues range from theatres and concert halls to bars, parks, buses and shipping containers, that its street events are free of charge, and that the programme spans theatre, comedy, dance, circus, cabaret, children's shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word and exhibitions.[4] According to the Fringe Society's box office page, the Fringe Box Office sells tickets for every show at the Fringe, online and in person at 180 High Street. When XTOUR read it, that page's booking dates and its Half Price Hut details still referred to the 2026 season.[5]

The Book Festival

The Edinburgh International Book Festival describes itself as a charity that has brought writers and thinkers from around the world together with audiences for over forty years. Its About page says it is hosted at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, in a long-term partnership with the University of Edinburgh.[6] XTOUR has no Book Festival programme or dates; the joint festivals listing showed "Dates tbc" for it on 11 October 2026.[12]

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

The Tattoo is a ticketed show, not a street event. Its venue page names the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade as its home and says each performance runs for about 90 minutes.[8] The organiser describes the show as bringing together British military performers with international performances from a global cast.[7]

The Tattoo traces its roots to the International Festival. Its history page says a show called "Something About a Soldier" was performed at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens in 1949 as part of The Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama, that a military show was then informally agreed to take place annually during the Festival, and that the first Edinburgh Tattoo was held in 1950.[9]

Its venue page sets out its own rules: bags over A3 size are not allowed in, umbrellas may not be used in the arena, flash photography, tripods and monopods are forbidden, and there is no parking at the venue.[8] For Edinburgh Castle itself, its tickets and what is inside, see Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile.

Edinburgh's Hogmanay

Hogmanay is the New Year festival. Its official site describes the 2026/27 edition as four days of events, from a Torchlight Procession on 29 December 2026, through the Street Party and Hogmanay in the Gardens on 31 December, to First Footin', which it calls a free, unticketed live music trail on New Year's Day. The site's footer credits Unique Assembly as "Created & Produced by" and shows a "Principal Funding Partner" by logo only; XTOUR found no text on the pages it read naming which body commissions the festival.[10]

The joint listing, and what it shows

Festivals Edinburgh is a company the directors of Edinburgh's festivals set up together in 2007.[11] Its festivals page is the one place that lists them side by side, from the Storytelling Festival in October to the Science, Children's and Jazz & Blues festivals in spring and summer.[12]

Read on 11 October 2026, the listing mixed years. It labelled the Fringe and the Tattoo "2026" while showing their 2027 dates, 6 to 30 August 2027 and 6 to 28 August 2027.[12] Those dates match what the Fringe and the Tattoo publish themselves.[7][4] For the International Festival, the Book Festival, the Art Festival and the Film Festival it showed "Dates tbc".[12] XTOUR treats the organiser's own page as the authority for any date and the joint listing as a pointer.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not publish ticket prices, show times, programmes, venue accessibility or crowd information for any of these festivals, and it does not sell their tickets. Dates for 2027 beyond those quoted above had not been announced on the pages XTOUR read on 11 October 2026. For the city itself, see the Edinburgh destination page.