The Magazine
brighton · 11 Aug 2026

The Brighton culture diary

Festival season, Pride, the Fringe, and the small rooms that carry the city for the other ten months of the year.

By About Town, Brighton

The big three

Brighton Festival, May. Three weeks of theatre, music and a guest director who reliably programmes one thing nobody understands. Book the strange one.

The Fringe, alongside it. Hundreds of shows in pubs, front rooms and one shipping container. The hit rate is a coin flip and that is the point.

Pride, summer. The city stops. Kemptown becomes the centre of the world. Plan your travel, not your outfit.

The other ten months

The small venues do the real work: a Trafalgar Street basement for new bands, a Kemptown theatre for cabaret, the Pavilion gardens for the free stuff, and half a dozen pubs with a piano and no cover charge.

How we cover it

If it is worth leaving the house for, it lands in the feed the week it happens. Save the ones you want and we will remind you.