Welcome back to the Festival, come and see us - Karen Koren

It’s less than a month until the biggest arts festival in the world starts in Edinburgh and the celebrations of the 75th anniversary begin.

A street entertainer performs on Edinburgh's Royal Mile during the city's Festival Fringe

What will it be like after nearly three years of next to no public performances. Will the audiences come, can we recreate the huge success of past Festivals?The shows are all booked and are on sale. There is an incredible breadth of curated programmes of shows on sale already despite the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society having only just launched their brochure today. This is a little later than in previous years and we were disappointed to see no Fringe sales app this year. The performers are growing anxious that sales are slow. Now is the time for all Fringe producers and particularly the Fringe Society to promote the biggest and best arts festival to ensure audiences come back and see this year's incredible shows. That's certainly our priority over the next few weeks is working alongside our venue colleagues to promote our own shows and our collective programmes on edfest.com too.This year of all years we need to sell tickets to recover from the couple of years of little to no income. It is the venues, performers and producers that take huge risk to bring shows to Edinburgh. The venues by building the venues from scratch, paying staff higher wages and suppliers higher rates. The producers paying inflated accommodation prices. Selected venues have had some Scottish Government help this year which means it will be affordable but what happens next year without any support of this kind. There is a lot to worry about, but it’s back and happening.

My feeling is that many have forgotten how great the atmosphere is during August, how lively Edinburgh becomes. It's the residents of Edinburgh who make it great and the visitors from Scotland, the UK and elsewhere help make the atmosphere. There are shows in every nook and cranny of the city, enthusiastic performers on the streets performing and selling their shows. Edinburgh is the perfect city for a Festival as you can walk around the centre as it’s not too big and there’s plenty to see. Once it’s back everyone will enjoy the best of what Edinburgh has to offer. We can’t wait to present the best Festival ever and prove that 2022 will be the resurgence of the greatest Fringe in the world!