Vancouver Fringe Festival has revealed its Best of the Fest and other award winners, with multiple shows honoured by patrons and volunteers.
The Story
The Vancouver Fringe Festival wrapped up this weekend, and the Vancouver Fringe Theatre Society has released its major winners from this year’s event, highlighting standout performances and audience favourites. The society announced the awards on Friday night, naming productions recognized for both artistic achievement and public choice voting. The festival’s top honour, Best of the Fest, went to Popurri by Plastik Theatriks.
Popurri is a PG-rated comedy show described as a physical theatre piece built from a mix of clowning, puppetry, masks and opera. Rather than following a single continuous story, Fringe said the production uses a series of short vignettes, offering multiple brief scenes designed to work together as a collage of performance styles. The show has been described as surreal and strange, reflecting its offbeat blend of theatrical techniques and presentation.
Fringe also said Popurri was developed through workshops and performances across Victoria, B.C. That development approach points to the production’s roots beyond a single city run, with the festival framework allowing creators to refine material through staged work before presenting it through Fringe.
Alongside the Best of the Fest announcement, the society listed runners-up, including MoonSwine: To-Dance-To-Dream-To-Poem-To-Pig by Maria Yanagisawa; Coming of Rage by Cosmic Theatre; and The Grown-ups by Lexacon. These selections broaden the picture of what the festival’s jury and programming leadership identified as strong across categories, not only the top-winning production.
The festival’s award slate also included recognition for creative risk. The Artistic Risk Award is sponsored by the society and carries a $450 prize, intended for the show that takes the biggest risks in content, form, structure or financial commitment. This year, the winners named for the Artistic Risk Award included MoonSwine and My Big Break on Broadway by Joni Summerton, indicating that at least two productions were seen as particularly bold in approach.
Audience voting formed a separate part of this year’s announcements through the festival’s Popular Choice Awards. In this category, Coming of Rage was named the Patrons’ Pick, while BRUNCH: The Musical by C. + M. MacEwan earned the Volunteer Choice. The split between patrons and volunteers reflects Fringe’s structure, where different groups of audience members participate in voting rather than relying on a single consolidated audience result.
The society also identified this year’s recipient of the Kathleen Flaherty Prize. Female Listeria, written by Dorothy Droste and directed by Amélia Simard, won the prize, which Fringe said will be presented at the 2027 festival. That means the winning production will reappear in a future Fringe season, extending its visibility beyond the current wrap-up.
For Vancouver readers looking to plan around the final performances, Fringe also announced six holdover productions scheduled for the festival’s best-selling shows. All six are set to take place on the final night, Sunday, Sept. 20, with specific performance times: Matt and Ben by Veenu Sandhu and Missy Cross at 9 p.m.; The Lucky Life of a Black Cat by Lobo-Guara Productions at 9:15 p.m.; Colonial Circus by Two2Mango at 9:15 p.m.; Solovela by Diane Jorge at 9:40 p.m.; Ickoholics Anonymous by Lucy Lucia at 9:45 p.m.; and The Truth and Dares by Ginko and Co. at 10 p.m.
For those deciding whether to attend another Fringe show this weekend, the winners’ details offer a quick guide to the range of formats showcased this year. Popurri’s mix of physical theatre elements and short vignettes contrasts with the festival’s other recognized productions, such as the audience-tied Coming of Rage and BRUNCH: The Musical, and the risk-focused work connected to MoonSwine and My Big Break on Broadway. The holdover lineup also suggests strong demand across a variety of performance styles, given the multiple shows added for the Sunday schedule.
With the awards now announced and a concentrated set of end-of-festival performances still to come on Sept. 20, the practical significance for Vancouver theatre-goers is clear: the final night offers several chances to catch productions that drew enough interest to remain in the festival’s best-selling slot. The announced winners and holdovers also provide a direct way to choose where to spend limited time, with each honoured show tied to either top judging, audience picks or a focus on theatrical risk within the Fringe framework. Information on the remaining shows is available through the Fringe website.
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