August 2025: A Video Review
Edinburgh International Festival
The third Festival under the leadership of Festival Director and Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, this year’s bold programme challenged and rewarded audiences. The 2025 Festival saw the most international audience in recent years - 91 countries were represented in our concert halls and theatres. Drawn by more than 2,000 artists and participants from across 41 countries, audiences experienced the world’s greatest theatre, dance, music and opera, often in unconventional settings.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The world’s largest arts festival saw 301 venues host a diverse selection of work across 53,942 performances, with 62 countries were represented on Fringe stages and 17 international showcases at the forefront including Denmark, Australia, South Korea and Brazil. As the largest marketplace and expo for performing arts professional development in the world, this year’s Fringe attracted 1,770 accredited producers, programmers, bookers, talent agencies and festivals from 68 countries, who came to Edinburgh looking for talent.
Edinburgh International Book Festival
A two-week long ‘Repair’ themed programme of events for all ages and interests, saw conversations of global significance take place on stage, and connected both with existing audiences and a whole new generation of readers. The 2025 festival, which hosted over 650 authors and nearly 700 events, saw a remarkable 11% increase in ticket sales over the previous year, with the new home at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) welcoming a whopping 161,889 people to the site over 16 days (up 60% from 2024).
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
The spectacular 75th anniversary season, The Heroes Who Made Us, attracted sell-out crowds to the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade with over 220,000 spectators attended in total, travelling from across the world to experience one of Scotland’s most iconic cultural events. The 2025 Show was the first under new Creative Director Alan Lane, featured military bands from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Poland, Ukraine and the United States of America, with the production combining music, theatre and spectacle to deliver a show more immersive than ever before.
Edinburgh Art Festival
With exhibitions, projects, conversations, parties, performances and one-off events across all four corners of the city, the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art saw 150,000 people visiting exhibitions from major figures like Linder and Andy Goldsworthy to emerging voices. From the Festival Pavilion in a transformed office building to cavernous warehouses, magical woodlands to historic churches, vibrant billboards to civic museum tableaus and more, Edinburgh Art Festival brought unexpected spaces alive with art and performance.
Edinburgh International Film Festival
A seven-day programme of sold-out premieres, illuminating talks, retrospectives and well-received industry events, showcased new work from 36 countries including Scotland, UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Greece, Denmark, Croatia, France, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Iran, Argentina, South Africa and beyond – with 194 screenings, 300 filmakers, 43 new feature films, 18 of which were World Premieres including ten that competed for The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence - won by Abdolreza Kahani’s Mortican.