Four new venues as festival rolls out expansion plans

The festival will break out from its traditional Charlotte Square Gardens home into four new venues – with around 200 more events being staged in its biggest ever programme.

Two pop-up venues will be created on George Street as part of an experiment to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Edinburgh as a festival city.

The King’s Theatre, a key Edinburgh International Festival venue, and St Mary’s Cathedral, a Fringe venue in the west end, also host events.

However festival director Nick Barley insisted there was no question of scaling back events in the gardens.

He added: “We are not reducing our activities there. There will be eight venues again.

“We are adding new venues to George Street as an explicit way of reaching out to the city during the 70th anniversary and to attract new audiences who may not have come into the gardens.

“We will also have the King’s Theatre and St Mary’s Cathedral for showcase performances. We regard all this as an important experiment in how we can cope with the increasing demand we’ve been experiencing for a number of years now. We hope it’ll lead to new things”