Minnesota Fringe

MINNESOTA FRINGE

Minnesota Fringe connects adventurous artists with adventurous audiences by creating open, supportive forums for free and diverse artistic expression.
Through our summer festival and dynamic year-round programming, Minnesota Fringe is an artistic disruptor for local and national artists — to take bold risks, develop new ideas, and hoist themselves to the next rung of their artistic ladder. As the producer of the largest performing arts festival in the Midwest, our annual Minnesota Fringe Festival event fills tens-of-thousands of seats with audiences viewing dozens of works at hundreds of performances by more than 1,000 artists on a variety of stages in late summer. Amidst many changes over the past quarter century, Minnesota Fringe remains steadfastly committed to its core principles of providingproducing opportunities for artists of a wide variety of backgrounds, abilities and experience levels; and creating novel ways of engaging with the performing arts; and continued accessibility to the arts for all.

MINNESOTA FRINGE WEBSITE

Logo for Fringe

Festival Overview

Type of Festival

The 2025 Minnesota Fringe Festival will include 8 Fringe-managed venues in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood as well as Independently Produced shows in theaters and spaces across the Twin Cities.

About our Audience

Festival patrons fill over 25,000 seats each year and represent the full spectrum of age, race, ethnicity, gender identification, ability, and geography. Attendees are loyal and passionate, which is no surprise in a region known for its performing arts scene. Minnesota Fringe takes place in a metropolitan area often ranked in the top 3 nationally for seats per capita and in a state that is home to more than 300 theaters with citizens that consistently demonstrate their support for the arts.

Festival Stats

Ticket prices to the 2025 Festival are $25 for a single show. Patrons will also have the option to purchase limited discount admission packages in 5 and 10 show increments and purchase a Festival Button for $10 that offers $5 off the admission price. Minnesota Fringe pays festival artists 70% of their box office receipts.

Artist Information

How Artists are Accepted

In the interest of fairness, Fringe Festival artists are selected by random luck of the draw through a lottery process. Anyone can apply to be a festival artist and, if the application is chosen in the lottery, they have a guaranteed slot that year. If their lottery number isn't chosen, artists are placed on a waiting list for openings in case other selected performers need to drop out.

There are seven different types of lotteries for the 2025 Minnesota Fringe Festival. See the application information page for more details.

Independent Producers need only to register on the Minnesota Fringe website at any time between March 1 and May 15. A venue, insurance, and small producing fee are due at time of registration.

Benefits of Applying

Producers in Minnesota Fringe benefit from venue rental, workshops, unified auditions, publicity, professional technicians, house managers, and access to an artist liaison. Additionally, artists receive unlimited access to the entire festival plus comps to give out for their own show. Artists can opt in to be selected for an encore performance at the Phipps Center in Hudson, WI, the weekend after the festival. All participants are eligible to win one of several Golden Lanyard Awards:

Audience Picks
'Spirit of the Fringe
Venue Picks
Fringe with Benefits Member Pick
Artist Picks
Underdog
Staff-driven Awards

Costs and Deals

Application fee for the Fringe Festival Lottery is graduated, starting $30 per tier in December and rising to $35 in January and $40 in February. Artists can receive a discount for applying to multiple tiers. Specialty lotteries are $35.

Production fees for Fringe lottery selected artists are based on tier (house size) and range from $450 - $850.

Independent Producers do not need to apply to the lottery. Registration is open March 1-May 15. Production fees for Fringe IP artists are based on timing and range from $220 -$440.

Tech Information

All Fringe managed venues are fully equipped theater spaces staffed with a lighting designer and sound technician as well as a complete front of house staff.

Performance Schedule

Weekday performances begin every 90 minutes starting at 5:30pm with the last performance ending at 11:00pm. Weekend performances run 1:00pm - 11:00pm.

Independent Producers can stage any length show they please, but must start on the typical Fringe grid show start times. The producer fee includes up to 11 performances.

Other

As our way of championing risk and lowering barriers for more producers, we offer producer funding opportunities to either defer or waive fees for selected producers! This initiative is stewarded by the Minnesota Fringe Artist Committee. More information on this initiative can be found on our Producer Funding Opportunities page. Applications for all funding opportunities open in December and close February 15.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

MINNESOTA FRINGE
79 - 13th Avenue NE Suite #112
Minneapolis, MN 55413

One visit to Minneapolis and you’ll quickly see we’re all about art—right from the nation’s first-ever sculpture garden to the world-class museums, and even the bizarre House of Balls. Don’t leave without catching a show on the Hennepin Theatre District, or seeing the five-story Kobra mural of Bob Dylan. Tour a glass factory in Northeast then ride over to Artcrank, the bike poster show put on by Minneapolis’s finest designers. This isn’t an art scene. It’s our creative community.