Department of Cultural Affairs

Co-presented by Taipei City Government and Taipei Performing Arts Center, the 2025 Taipei Fringe Festival will take place from August 23 to September 7. This year continues in the spirit of the festival’s “no limits” approach and will feature an unprecedented 178 performance groups, 47 venues, and 866 performances. Over 16 days, creators from various fields will infuse the city with artistic energy, bringing art into every corner of urban life during this radiant summer.

“Don’t Think About the Pink Sheep!”: Entering the Creative Realm of Taipei Fringe 

The theme of this year’s festival is “Don’t Think About the Pink Sheep”, using a whimsical but striking pink sheep to disrupt the habitual perceptions of everyday life. The conceit draws on psychologist Daniel Wegner’s studies of the “white bear phenomenon”, which observed that the more we try to suppress a thought, the more frequently it occurs. 

Suppression is a kind of framework, but the Fringe Festival is the complete opposite: a boundaryless experiment where unrestrained freedom brings creativity into daily life, and everyone—whether or not they see themselves as an audience—is invited to become part of it and to rethink possible forms of resonance between art and existence.

From Cold Noodle Shops to Cloud Stages: Taipei Fringe Everywhere

This year, the festival’s stages extend beyond traditional theaters into every corner of the city. Performance sites span five districts—Shilin, Beitou, Datong, Zhongshan, and Xinyi—and cover 26 types of venue, including cafés, bookstores, restaurants, select shops, cold noodle and curry shops, and even sustainable department stores. This “bring-your-own-venue” trend reflects creators’ strong identification with the Fringe Festival ethos: no longer waiting to be assigned a stage, they actively scope out their own spaces, rooting art in familiar, emotionally resonant places.

Breaking Geographic Limits: Taipei Fringe Everywhere

Performance group Burn Theatre goes a step further by breaking physical limits and partnering with the Chito App to bring performances online. Audiences can access immersive, wall-less performances on their phones anywhere, anytime, allowing theater to flow freely between the digital world and the real world.

Apart from expanding venues and the “bring-your-own-venue” initiative, this year the festival also features greater international participation. Eight groups from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Russia will join to inject new cultural perspectives. The overseas creators not only bring a diversity of styles and performance languages but actively transcend geographical and institutional boundaries, embracing Taipei Fringe Festival 2025 as a free experimental space. Several Hong Kong–based groups are flying over to Taiwan to perform, demonstrating the festival’s growing magnetism for Asia’s creative communities.

“Pink Sheep Appears”: Fringe Festival Kickoff, a City Lighting Up

“Direct Hit! Pink Sheep Appears”, the hitoff event, will take place from 3 pm to 6 pm on August 16 at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park’s Creative Street (文創大街). Nearly 40 performance groups will collaborate in a formless, boundary-free flash mob, promising the most unmissable art spectacle of late summer!

Audiences can interact with creators while they discover the festival’s exciting lineup. The day will showcase a wide range of performance arts forms, encapsulating the festival’s spirit of freedom, vitality, and subversion, and liberating the entire city through creative performance.

Pre-Show Stick-Up 2025 TFF: Replays of Last Year’s Award-Winning Performances

This year, three outstanding performances return by popular demand: The Three Big Dippers (winners of the 2024 Best Work in Fringe Award) with The Sound of Silence, COVID-109 (winners of the Fringe Innovation Award) with LIVE!(Hopefully) THE LAST ANNUAL NEW-COMING-3P ACTRESS PAGEANT COMPETITION, and Tadzio Theatre (winners of the Fringe Choice Award) with A play as a way. These three remarkable works will be staged again from August 15 to 17, so viewers interested in these shows should not miss them!

Taipei Fringe Festival 2025 continues to be a place where creators are free to experiment. Each year brings more diverse forms, more voices, and more innovative approaches. Some perform in black box theaters, others in comic shops, chapels, museums, or even online—anywhere can become a stage! 

Tickets for all Taipei Fringe Festival 2025 performances go on sale July 1 at OPENTIX. Join the hidden corners of the city from August 23 to September 7 and experience “Don’t Think About the Pink Sheep”!