The full list of award-winners from the 2026 Scotsman Fringe Firsts have now been named as the Edinburgh Festival draws to a close.
One of the most sought-after prizes at the Edinburgh Fringe, the awards are the longest running at the festival having been established in 1973.
Sponsored this year by Queen Margaret University, our expert panel of judges recognise the best of new writing premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, with the final batch of winners named on Friday, August 28.
Past Fringe First winners include Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, and Billy Connolly, as well as the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge for the original stage version of Fleabag, and Richard Gadd for Baby Reindeer.
This year, an adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s acclaimed book Mayflies and a reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet have taken home prizes - as well as productions which are part audio drama and part installation, such as One Hundred Voices.
With the festival almost over, here is every Scotsman Fringe First award winner from 2026.
5. Little Animals
The debut play of writer and actor Paul Ready, Joyce McMillan gave Little Animals a five-star review for The Scotsman, ahead of it winning a Fringe First award. She wrote: “The scale of the climate crisis now facing humanity, and our overheating planet, is so huge that relatively few Fringe shows have the courage to tackle it head on. Stripped back to the barest theatrical essentials, Little Animals features just one performer, writer Paul Ready, and an audience of perhaps 30 souls, sitting in a double circle in the natural light of an otherwise empty Lyceum Studio. The occasion, the speaker tells us, is a memorial event for his best friend Richard, who has recently drowned while swimming in a local river; and as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Richard’s death may have been suicide. His monologue matures into a brilliant exploration of what constitutes sanity and rational behaviour, in a civilisation apparently bent, in its pursuit of money and economic growth, on destroying the natural abundance on which all life depends.” | Jennifer Forward-Hayter
6. Mayflies
Mayflies made its world premiere at the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe, with Grid Iron’s adaptation of Andrew O'Hagan's novel winning a Fringe First prize. Joyce McMillan writes: “Edinburgh’s brilliant site-specific theatre specialists Grid Iron tackle the subject of mortality in characteristic style, opening up a fabulous old warehouse space on The Shore for their new staging of Andrew O’Hagan’s acclaimed 2020 book Mayflies, a love story about the profound friendship between two men, Tully and Jimmy, who grew up together in a working-class Ayrshire town, and are bonded forever by their intense shared teenage experiences in music and culture. When, 30 years on, Tully calls Jimmy to say that he has had a terminal diagnosis, and that he wants help in arranging to end his own life, Jimmy feels compelled to step up. Mayflies offers an almost flawless evocation of O’Hagan’s beautifully told story about the gentler rhythms of male friendship, in an age when traditional masculinity is often viewed as toxic.” Mayflies is at Brown's of Leith (Venue 320) until August 30. | Scott Louden/The Scotsman
7. One Hundred Voices
Focusing on Scotland’s care system, One Hundred voices is an immersive piece of theatre which takes audiences on a journey alongside real people. Our critic Joyce McMillan wrote: “Part installation, and part audio drama based on real-life conversations with a group of care-experienced people in Scotland, the National Theatre of Scotland’s One Hundred Voices is a show where the element of live theatre is created by the audience members themselves, as they make their way through this guided immersive experience. What we experience is the sense of absolute powerlessness of which care experienced young people complain; the feeling of being caught up in a system that makes little sense, that is entangled in bureaucracy, that struggles even to keep siblings together when they need one another most, and that costs a fortune, while often failing to meet the most basic needs.” | NTS / Kirsty Anderson
8. Parasocial Activity
A week two Fringe First winner, Parasocial Activity is a dark comedy which tackles parasocial relationships in a modern world. Reviewer Fiona Shepherd writes: “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 spiral 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.” | Alan Rennie