Melbourne International Comedy Festival is one of the three largest comedy Festivals in the world, with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival. The Festival was launched in Melbourne in 1987 by Barry Humphries and Peter Cook. It was created to showcase the city’s abundant local comic talent, and to provide local audiences with access to the finest contemporary comedy from Australia and overseas. One of Melbourne’s most high-profile and well-attended cultural and tourism events, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival aspires to;

• showcase and celebrate the best of Australia’s comic artists,
• nurture and develop new comic performers and comedy works, and present the finest of overseas comedians to Australian audiences.

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival takes place annually, for a month in autumn. We present a huge program of stand up comedy, cabaret, theatre, street performance, film, television, radio and visual arts throughout the Australian city of Melbourne. Over 300 thousand people have attended the Festival each year for the past three years.

The Festival is very popular with 18 to 44 year-olds who make up 77% of the audience. Half of this group are aged between 25 and 34 years. Our audience are an open-minded, liberal-thinking bunch with progressive personal values for whom the social aspect of the Festival is highly important. The Festival is an open event and any artist or producer can participate provided that they have registered. Details for those interested in registering for the 2007 Festival should check back at this site after this year’s Festival is over. Producers and artists wishing to present overseas artists in the Festival should contact the Festival office before commencing negotiations as different conditions need to be considered.

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival organisation provides the environment and promotional activities that unite and support all events. The Comedy Festival creates and manages a large number of the venues used for the Festival, presents a program of the best contemporary comedy from overseas, and produces a significant number of special events for stage and screen.

Signature events produced by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival include;

• the highly-popular Gala - an evening of shameless showing off and killer laughs from a glittering line-up of local and overseas guest artists. One of the hottest comedy tickets around, the Gala is broadcast nationally on Network Ten
• Great Debate - now in its 17th year, this legendary battle of comedy wits is a highlight on the Comedy Festival calendar
• the Comedy Channel Short Film Festival - celebrating the art of comedy on film,
• UpFront - a sparkling celebration of women in comedy,
• Comedy Zone - featuring four of our brightest new comedy talents,
• Class Clowns - a national competition giving our classroom comedians a chance to shine,
• The Big Laugh Out - a free showcase of the finest local and overseas Festival artists,
• the Festival Club - a mini-Gala every night of the Festival except Mondays, where audience members can get up close and personal with Festival stars,
• Raw Comedy - our national search for Australia’s best new comedy stars, and
• The Comedy Festival Roadshow - taking the Festival on the road through out Australia.
• The Barry Awards - awarded to the Festival’s most outstanding shows and named after the founding Patron of the Festival, Barry Humphries.