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Comedy awards

Find out about the awards available to comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, and who won them last time.

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The Comedians' Choice Awards, presented by British Comedy Guide

Best Show, Best Newcomer and Best Person, as determined by those involved in comedy shows.

All comedy shows and performers are automatically eligible for Best Show and Best Newcomer – no need to do anything to put yourself forward. Best Person tends to be for someone who works behind the scenes at the festival, eg a venue manager, flyerer or agent. Each comedy show in the brochure is invited to vote once for their favourite show, performer and person. You can't vote for anyone in your own show.

Cash prizes sponsored by Angel Comedy and The Museum Of Comedy will be given to the winners to help them with their accommodation costs.

Visit comedy.co.uk for more information.

2024 award winners

  • Best Show
    Elf Lyons: Horses

  • Best Newcomer
    Ian Lockwood

  • Best Person
    Alex Petty (Free Festival director)

The Comedy Poster Awards, presented by British Comedy Guide

Recognising the best artwork related to comedy shows at the festival. Any poster related to a comedy show performing at the festival can be entered. The winner of the Audience Award is whichever poster gets the most votes on the website. The Panel Award is determined by a jury of industry professionals. Prizes include cash and placements from poster distributors Out Of Hand.

For more information please visit comedy.co.uk/posters.

2024 award winners

  • Audience Award Winner
    Abi Clarke: (Role) Model
  • Panel Award Winner
    Deep Fried in Patter!

Edinburgh Comedy Awards

Established in 1981 the UK’s premier awards are now in their 42nd year. There are two awards:

Best Comic / Comedy Show: For the funniest, most outstanding, up-and-coming comic / comedy show / act at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The prize is £10,000.

Best Newcomer: For the performer or act who is performing their first full-length show (50 minutes or more) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The prize is £5,000. Please note that newcomers are eligible for the Best Comedy Show Award, if that is the Panel’s decision, but no act can appear on both shortlists in the same year.

The Shortlist will be announced on Wednesday 21 August 2024. The 42nd Edinburgh Comedy Awards ceremony will take place on Saturday 24 August 2024.

For further information on the awards, please see comedyawards.co.uk.

2024 award winners

  • Don and Eleanor Taffner Best Comedy Show award
    Amy Gledhill: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster
  • DLT Entertainment Best Newcomer award
    Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!
  • The Victoria Wood Award 2024
    Rob Copland

Panel Prize: Like the Fringe itself, there are no rules. Everyone is eligible. It is entirely in the gift of the Panel and Award Director and may not be awarded at all. The prize is £5,000.

All shows listed in the comedy and cabaret section of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe brochure are automatically checked for eligibility. Shows needed to be playing the dates as outlined in the eligibility rules in order to be judged.

For further information on eligibility, please visit comedyawards.co.uk.

All eligible shows are seen by the judging panel, awards administration team and scouts, who start covering shows from the first day of the festival. The judging panel consists of comedy critics, industry professionals (TV and live) and punter judges. The scouts are previous members of the panel.

For further information on the judging process, please visit: comedyawards.co.uk/how-the-awards-are-judged.

The First European Comedy and Edinburgh Fringe Awards

The aim of this award is to showcase comedic talent within the European comedy scene to expose them to more performance opportunities around the world – in the UK, Europe and beyond. There are two awards:

  • Best European Comedy Performer of the Fringe
  • Best European Comedy Show of the Fringe

Award winners will received:

  • paid performance opportunities in Barcelona in conjunction with the Comedy Clubhouse (flights and lodging included)
  • feature article and interview on the Comedy Confession Booth
  • performance slot at the first Barcelona Fringe Festival
  • laurel for future promotional materials.

This award is open to any shows in the comedy genre, as long as the performer fulfils one of the following criteria:

  • Started comedy in Europe (for more than two years)
  • based in Europe while performing (for more than two years)
  • currently based in Europe (for more than one year).

More information: europeancomedy.com/european-comedy-edinburgh-fringe-award

2024 award winners

  • Best Performer
    George Zacharopoulos
  • Best Show
    • Abby Wambaugh: The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows
    • Terence Hartnett: 1 Lung Run

Jones Bootmaker ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards

Established in 2023, the ISH Awards now have a new sponsor, Jones Bootmaker. Run entirely by volunteers, 100% of whatever sponsorship is received will always be given to the artists in prizes, this year there are the following three prizes:

  • Best Show: The comedy show that the judges / audience thought was the funniest. The prize for 2024 is £5,000.
  • Best Newcomer: The show that the judges / audience thought was the funniest from performers doing their first full-length show (above 45 mins) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The prize for 2024 is £5,000.
  • Panel Prize: This prize is awarded to any individual or group that have done something amazing at the Edinburgh Fringe. This could be absolutely anything, but we do have a particular focus on supporting artists. The prize for 2024 is £5,000.

To be eligible for the Best Show and Newcomer awards, the show must have the primary category of comedy and compilation shows are not eligible. For further information on the awards and full eligibility criteria, please see edinburghcomedyawards.com.

2024 award winners

  • Best show
    Elf Lyons: Horses
  • Best newcomer
    Abby Wambaugh: The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows
  • Panel prize – joint winners:
    • Alex Petty
    • Best in Class
    • Dion Owen
    • Elaine Robertson
    • Funny Women Glitter Project

Malcolm Hardee Awards

Malcolm Hardee (1950–2005) was a British comic, agent, manager, club-owner and anarchic prankster. The Malcolm Hardee Awards were initiated at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005, the year of his death, to celebrate and promote the spirit of madcap, anything-goes comedy anarchy that he personified.

There are three categories: Comic Originality, Cunning Stunt and Act Most Likely To Make A Million Quid. There is no application process... judges will be scouring the festival automatically on the look out for nominees.

comedy.co.uk/hardees

2024 winners

  • Comic Originality
    Mark Dean Quinn: Oh No (That's Not Your Cheese), Banshee Labyrinth
  • Cunning Stunt
    Thom Tuck
    For performing at a different time and a different location every day, so the audience has to engage on social media to find out where and when the show is.
  • Act That Should Make a Million Quid
    Garry Starr

NextUp Biggest Award in Comedy

A competition by NextUp (the Netflix of UK stand-up) to find the best comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The winner receives the biggest award in comedy – a two-metre inflatable trophy – plus carry case, pump, £500 cash and the option to have their show recorded and distributed worldwide by NextUp.

NextUp users can vote for the winner via nextupcomedy.com. Voting closes on Thursday 22 August, with the winner announced on Saturday 24 August.

2024 winner

  • Colin Hoult: Colin

So You Think You’re Funny?

The So You Think You’re Funny? competition was created by the Gilded Balloon and Karen Koren in 1988 to discover, support and nurture new comic talent.

2024 winners

  • First prize
    Alana Jackson
  • Second prize
    Ciara O’Connor
  • Third prize
    Ayo Adenekan

The competition is the most successful of its kind in the UK and attracts over 500 applicants each year. Entrants must not have performed more than 15 stand-up spots (including open spots and virtual performances to live audiences) or gigged before 01 June 2021, and must be unsigned from any comedy agent or management company. For a full list of rules, please visit soyouthinkyourefunny.co.uk/essential-info.

Each competitor is given seven minutes to win over the judges; at the end of each heat a winner is announced and given a place in the Grand Final: a two-and-a-half-hour top bill of new comic talent. The winner will receive a cash prize, a run as part of Gilded Balloon's Fringe programme, paid performance slots at Latitude Festival, Glee Birmingham and the Boat Show in London, plus a complimentary headshot shoot by professional photographer to the stars Steve Ullathorne, and a complimentary filmed copy and professional photographs of their spot from the final to use in their show-reel.

As well as this, they will also win mentorship from Karen Koren and the So You Think You're Funny team, who are all committed to nurturing young comic talent with personal support and touring opportunities in the year following the Grand Final.

Previous So You Think You're Funny Award winners include Dylan Moran, Peter Kay, Lee Mack and Tommy Tiernan. Finalists include Johnny Vegas, Sarah Millican, Kevin Bridges, Rhod Gilbert, Rob Beckett, Russell Howard, Romesh Ranganathan, Jason Byrne, Lucy Porter, Mark Watson, Maisie Adam and Russell Kane.

For more information please visit soyouthinkyourefunny.co.uk/essential-info.

U&Dave's Joke of the Fringe

2024 award winner

  • "I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it." Mark Simmons.

Runners up

  • "I've been taking salsa lessons for months, but I just don't feel like I'm progressing. It's just one step forward... two steps back." Alec Snook.
  • "Ate horse at a restaurant once – wasn’t great. Starter was all right but the mane was dreadful." Alex Kitson.
  • "I sailed through my driving test. That’s why I failed it." Arthur Smith.
  • "I love the Olympics. My friend and I invented a new type of relay baton: well, he came up with the idea, I ran with it." Mark Simmons.
  • "My dad used to say to me 'Pints, gallons, litres' – which, I think, speaks volumes." Olaf Falafel.
  • "British etiquette is confusing. Why is it highbrow to look at boobs in an art gallery but lowbrow when I get them out in Spoons?" Chelsea Birkby.
  • "I wanted to know which came first the chicken or the egg so I bought a chicken and then I bought an egg and I think I've cracked it." Masai Graham.
  • "My partner told me that she’d never seen the film Gaslight. I told her that she definitely had." Zoë Coombs Marr.
  • "The conspiracy theory about the moon being made of cheese was started by the hallouminati." Olaf Falafel.
  • "I’m an extremely emotionally needy non-binary person: my pronouns are ‘there there’." Sarah Keyworth.
  • "I've got a girlfriend who never stops whining. I wish I'd never bought her that vineyard." Roger Swift.
  • "Gay people are very bad at maths. We don't naturally multiply." Lou Wall.
  • "Keir Starmer looks like an AI-generated image of a substitute teacher." Sophie Duker.
  • "Growing up rich is a hereditary condition. It affects 1% of people." Olga Koch.

Previous awards

The Amused Moose Comedy Awards seeks out breakthrough comedy talent that is yet to become well known but could be said to be 'almost television-ready', who have their own solo, sketch or multiple performer comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The Amused Moose Comedy Awards hope to return to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025.

2023 award winners

  • Amused Moose Comedy Award – Debut ShowLouise Atkinson: Mates (Gilded Balloon)
  • Amused Moose Comedy Award – Most Fun Edinburgh Fringe comedy show
    Dave Bibby: Baby Dinosaur (PBH's Free Fringe)
  • Amused Moose Comedy Award – Most Entertaining Edinburgh Fringe comedy show
    Simon David: Dead Dad Show (Underbelly)