Fringe benefits
The annual Hong Kong Fringe Festival is back, riding the crest of a successful relaunch in 2025. Rob Garratt looks back on the legacy of an event that shaped the Western-music sensibilities of a generation and finds out about the highlights of its ongoing edition.
Unlike the countless "fringe" festivals scattered across the globe — artistic upstarts originally established on the sidelines of more-legitimate happenings, to give edgier, progressive performers a spotlight not afforded by the mainstream — the Hong Kong Fringe Festival (HKFF) is named for the Hong Kong Fringe Club (HKFC). Founded in 1983, a year after the venue's opening, HKFF was rebranded as the City Festival in 1999, and continued to be staged annually until 2011. In 2025, the festival made a surprise return to the city after 14 years. Following the travails of the pandemic, and the establishment of a "totally new team", the board decided to revive the festival to "really showcase the new image of the Fringe Club," says guest festival curator Sheeta Ng, who has previously presented work for Tai Kwun and the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK).
The festival is back this week. Over the next six weeks, the city's culturally inclined people can look forward to more than 100 performances, from over 300 artists, across eight different disciplines — from music and dance to family entertainment and art tech.
The Fringe Club harbors four distinct event spaces at a single address at the intersection of Lower Albert Road and Wyndham Street."It's really unusual to have such a specific venue right at the center of a city," Ng says.
