Adelaide’s biggest festival season is beginning to take shape, with the official 2027 Adelaide Fringe poster unveiled, bringing a colourful cast of quirky clay characters to life ahead of next year’s celebrations.
The playful new artwork has been created by Adelaide-based artist Cécile Gariépy, originally from Montréal, who has been named the winner of the 2027 poster competition.
Her design features a collection of hand-shaped clay figures, each with its own personality, celebrating different bodies, individuality and the connections that make Fringe such a special part of Adelaide’s cultural calendar.
The artwork ties into the festival’s 2027 theme, ‘Fringe for everyBODY’, celebrating everyone who brings the festival to life, from performers and creatives to audiences, families and friends.
For Cécile, working with clay was a natural choice for bringing the theme to life.
“When reading the brief for the 2027 Fringe poster, my immediate thoughts went to building something with clay.”
“There was something about the material that felt right straight away: it’s tactile, imperfect, and shaped entirely by hand, qualities that helped me create figures reflecting the diversity of real bodies.”
“I’ve always loved making characters that feel wonky and human, and clay let me take that desire further. All the characters carry the marks of being pressed and pinched into form.
“Their imperfections aren’t flaws; they’re the point! They make each of them feel like an individual person, with their own personality and presence.”
Her design was selected from an impressive 360 entries, including 281 from South Australia and 24 international submissions representing 13 countries.
As the winning artist, Cécile receives a $10,000 cash prize supported by Adelaide University, along with free artist registration to use for the 2028 festival.
Adelaide Fringe CEO Marc Carnes said the unveiling marked an exciting milestone in the countdown to next year’s festival.
“Cécile’s work finds so much personality in people and the ways we connect. That’s a lovely starting point for ‘Fringe for everyBODY’, because Fringe is made by all of us, whether we’re on stage, behind the scenes or in the audience. We’re delighted to welcome her into this much-loved tradition.”
The announcement follows another extraordinary year for Adelaide Fringe, which recorded more than six million attendances across free and ticketed events in 2026.
More than 1.08 million tickets were sold, while the festival generated $238.3 million in total expenditure, including $165.8 million in new money for South Australia.
Artists also benefited from more than $25 million in box office revenue, highlighting the festival’s importance to the state’s creative community.
Now, attention turns to 2027, when Adelaide’s streets, parks, theatres and performance spaces will once again come alive with entertainment across five weeks.
Adelaide Fringe 2027 will run from Friday 19 February to Sunday 21 March, with tickets going on sale Friday 4 December 2026.
The full program is set to launch next month, giving South Australians the chance to start planning their Fringe adventures.
For more information, visit their website.
Related
Previous articleTheatre Review: Come Alive! The Greatest Showman Circus Spectacular
