Top 5 Queer Shows at Edinburgh Fringe 2025

This year’s Fringe is packed with queer stories that are bold, strange and full of heart. From pop musicals to drag mayhem to feminist history reimagined, these five shows stood out for their creativity and emotional punch. If you’re heading to Edinburgh this August, make room in your schedule for these.

JEEZUS!

JEEZUS is a queer Latinx musical about a teenage altar boy who finds himself falling dangerously in love with Jesus Christ. Equal parts shocking, sincere and darkly funny, this is a show that doesn’t play it safe. It’s about faith, guilt, lust and salvation, with original songs and moments that swing from absurd to unexpectedly moving. A bold, sweaty, slightly sacrilegious coming-of-age story that feels like nothing else on the programme this year. Unholy in all the right ways.

Venue: Underbelly Cowgate

Dates: 31 July to 25 August (not 12 August)

Time: 4.40pm

Tickets: Book JEEZUS!

A STAN IS BORN

A STAN IS BORN is a solo musical from Alexis Sakellaris about growing up queer, isolated and totally devoted to the pop divas who made everything bearable. With original songs, wicked humour and a big, sparkly heart, the show explores what it means to build an identity out of Beyoncé lyrics and high-note fantasy. It’s both hilarious and genuinely touching, celebrating queer joy, childhood nostalgia and the icons who gave us permission to be loud. One man, one keyboard, endless charisma.

Venue: Gilded Balloon Patter House (Blether)

Dates: 30 July to 25 August (not 11 August)

Time: 3.00pm

Tickets: Book A STAN IS BORN

KINDER

Drag clown Goody Prostate turns up for a children’s reading hour and completely loses the plot. KINDER is part slapstick meltdown, part raw queer reckoning, a show that mixes drag, clowning and storytelling into something chaotic and beautiful. It’s sharp, political and unafraid to get messy, exploring censorship, queer childhood and the strange act of remembering who you used to be. The result is unlike anything else at the Fringe this year: furious, funny and incredibly heartfelt underneath all the glitter.

Venue: Underbelly Cowgate (Big Belly

)Dates: 31 July to 24 August (not 6, 13 or 20 August)

Time: 6.40pm

Tickets: Book KINDER

The City for Incurable Women

In 1880s Paris, women were institutionalised for hysteria and forced to perform their madness for medical study. The City for Incurable Women takes that history and reframes it through a powerful queer and feminist lens. It’s eerie, intelligent and theatrically inventive, with a cast that brings beauty and brutality to the stage in equal measure. A show that asks what happens when women reclaim the stories told about their bodies, and what it means to resist being cured in the first place.

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs)

Dates: 30 July to 25 August (not 12 August)

Time: 1.35pm

Tickets: Book The City for Incurable Women

Pigs Fly Easy Ryan

This is not a metaphor. Two queer fetishists actually board a flight disguised as cabin crew in this surreal, late-night theatre piece that goes full throttle into erotic chaos. Pigs Fly Easy Ryan is playful, filthy, and deliberately disorienting, a kind of queer turbulence at 30,000 feet. It’s packed with nudity, kink, movement and unexpected tenderness, asking where performance ends and real vulnerability begins. Utterly unique, completely unfiltered and guaranteed to leave your brain spinning in the best possible way.

Venue: Underbelly Cowgate

Dates: 31 July to 25 August (not 13 August

)Time: 10.50pm

Tickets: Book Pigs Fly Easy Ryan

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More to Come

I’ll be covering more shows throughout the month with reviews, interviews and new Fringe picks. These five are just the beginning and the programme is full of theatre that’s messy, moving and gloriously queer.