By Gazette Staff
November 25th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Burlington, on
Hamilton Fringe announces – the team just came back from the annual Conference (held at Saskatoon this year), and now we’re back with the biggest announcement of this season yet: the Hamilton Fringe Festival main series lottery applications are now open!
Got an idea for a 20-, 60-, or 90-minute play? We want to see it on stage at the Hamilton Fringe Festival, taking place July 15-26, 2026.
We’re accepting lottery applications for the following categories:
Main Lottery – Ontario 60-Minute (including Hamilton 60-Minute), National 60-Minute, International 60-Minute, General 90-Minute.
FringeXchange BIPGM Artist (Black, Indigenous, Person of the Global Majority) – lottery winners receive a FREE performance slot!
FringeXchange Disability Justice Artist – lottery winners receive a FREE performance slot!
Fringe Mini Bar Series – 20-minute shows in a lively bar/café environment
Submit your lottery applications by January 11, 2026 at 11:59 PM, then mark your calendars for the Lottery Party on January 15 at Staircase Theatre (27 Dundurn St N, Hamilton ON), where we’ll announce the drawn artists and companies!
Learn more & apply to Hamilton Fringe!>Don’t forget—there’s less than a week left to submit your script to Hamilton Fringe’s New Play Contest! More detail HERE
The New Play Contest is a great opportunity to share your work with this awesome panel of theatre professionals: Mercedes Isaza Clunie (2024 New Play Contest winner!), Sungwon Cho, and Patrick Teed.
All contest submissions are anonymized for the jury, so it doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started as a writer or you’re a GG winner—the jury is going on your submission alone! And the winning script gets a FREE 60-minute production slot in the 2026 Hamilton Fringe Festival plus a $300.00 cash prize. Second and third place winners each receive a Fringe Binge 6-Show Pass for the festival.
In the words of the last year’s New Play Contest winner, Alexa Higgins: “Take a chance and submit your script—you never know where it could lead!”Submit your script by November 20!Last thing—we just closed the ALERT Junior Producer applications, and just LAUNCHED the search for the 2026 ALERT Resident Company!
The ALERT Resident Company program is a customized training program perfect for emerging performance companies or collectives to get the support they need to grow their company, refine their skills, and expand their artistic network by producing a show at the Hamilton Fringe Festival!
Applying is FREE! Applications close on December 8, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET.
Learn more & apply to the ALERT Resident Company program
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