Dublin Fringe Festival is back in 2025, with a programme full of queer highlights ready to disrupt and delight audiences across the city. Running from September 6 to 21, expect daring, wild and wonderful events that champion artistry and defy expectations.
The programme for the festival’s 31st edition features an array of LGBTQ+ talent among the 85 listings. With 492 performances across 36 venues, encompassing world, Irish and Dublin premieres, it’s not too late to plan your Fringe fortnight now!
Pea Dinneen: Raising Her Voice
Winner of The Next Stage Wild Card Award at the 2023 Dublin Fringe Festival, Pea Dinneen is back with the world premiere of her new show. Exploring contemporary Irish womanhood through the journey of a trans woman, join the niche cabaret legend and her fabulous band as she sings her way through this powerful story. Tickets here.
TESTO
UK-based performance company Wet Mess is coming to Dublin for a live art/drag show using lived experience and verbatim text to explore experiences of taking testosterone. Combining movement with pre-recorded interviews, expect surreal spectacles, dykey desires and choreography of guttural sexuality. Tickets here.
Genesis
Join Shaqira Knightly on a journey to find herself through her drag persona. Expect dance and lip syncing as the performer embraces the power of self-belief through the art of becoming someone else. Tickets here.
Change
From Croí Glan, this dance show speaks to disability, environmental change and immigration. The ground-breaking performance weaves a powerful call to climate action through movement, music and diverse bodies in motion. Tickets here.
Lessons on Revolution
This documentary theatre piece follows the 1968 student movement and its legacy. It connects student politics to queer liberation, and the housing crisis to migrant rights, while exploring the different ways in which identities intersect and afford opportunities for activist solidarity. Tickets here.
CHOP
Fresh from touring THISISPOPBABY’s RIOT, Cian Kinsella, aka Lords of Strut, is hitting Dublin Fringe Festival. His bad ass new solo show is a laugh-out-loud, axe-wielding comedy tackling climate chaos and performative masculinity. Tickets here.
Attention
This experimental new theatre production uses the formal structure of sport to tell a queer love story. It explores why and how we choose to pay attention, about the effort and sweat needed to build a life with someone and whether love is enough to save us. Tickets here.
don’t copy me (copy)
Gift Horse Theatre presents a brand new play they stole from someone else. This tongue-in-cheek, queer, female-led response to the work and world of Samuel Beckett asks: What does it mean to adapt a text you love, to work with ideas from someone you hate? Tickets here.
dublinitgirl_vs_dartlinediva
What happens when two messy queens turn on one another? Find out in this rap battle royal between retired 365 party girl and genderqueer icon dublinitgirl and stun-hun extraordinaire dartlinediva. Shouldn’t they know by now to never fight over a man? Tickets here.
Hungry Grass/Stray Sod
Join Wandering Stories Theatre for a night of f*cked up folklore and heartrending true stories. When an Irish bisexual and a Ugandan lesbian meet in a foreign land and share stories from their past and cultures, strange parallels emerge. Tickets here.
Apocalypse HOW?
Another drag extravaganza, join Donna Fella, Annie Queeries and Laylah Beattie, aka the Doomslayers, in an apocalyptic bunker. This must-see cabaret combines queer camaraderie with the ultimate survival guide for the doom and gloom of our dystopian present. Tickets here.
CIRQUE DU HONEYPOT
Get your freak on at HONEYPOT’s queer, circus-themed extravaganza. Encompassing music, visuals, performance and interactivity with collaboration from local creatives, there’ll be special guest DJs, face painting and hypnotic dancefloor energy. Tickets here.
Itch
Belfast-based queer artist Christopher McAuley is presenting his debut aerial show this September. The performance takes audiences on an emotional adventure towards radical self-acceptance as he shares his lifelong experience with chronic eczema and growing up queer in the North of Ireland. Tickets here.
Octopus Children
Poet and performer Felispeaks tells their coming-of-age story as a queer “Black Irish midlands culchie” grappling with their identity. Led by a wise guide, The Octopus, the show marries spellbinding spoken word with choreography, music and stunning visual design. Tickets here.
Don’t Tell Dad About Diana
Packed with comedy, courage and coming-of-age chaos, this show from Conor Murray and Hannah Power follows two friends as they prepare to compete for Alternative Miss Ireland with their Princess Diana drag act. However, as they race through the city towards competition night, Diana’s death sparks the unravelling of their secret, their friendship and their plans to leave Ireland. This show is sold out.
The Future is EGG
EGG returns to Dublin Fringe Festival in 2025, this time transporting audiences to the year 3000, where the future of Ireland is a dazzling DIY cabaret spectacular for the queers of tomorrow. Look ahead to a time worth celebrating in all its gooey glory, featuring performances from some of the fiercest cabaret stars the galaxy has to offer. This show is sold out.
Diary of a Dublin Drag Diva
Friend of GCN Davina Devine is making her Dublin Fringe debut this year, with a glitter-soaked show that takes crowds on a high-heeled rollercoaster ride through her life and legacy. Expect an hour of humour, heart and hard-won wisdom from one of Ireland’s most beloved queens. This show is sold out.
Who’s a Big Boy?
Dublin darling Shane Daniel Byrne is back! In his new show, he explores the boy he was at school, who could always do better. Expect rapid-fire craic and big-hearted feelings in this special production about bellies and bullies. This show is sold out.
For more information on all of these queer listings and the 2025 Dublin Fringe Festival, click here.
© 2025 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
This post is sponsored by Dublin Fringe Festival
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