The 2012 Adelaide Fringe program featured a record-breaking 4,000 artists in 923 events, including 250 comedy acts, 130 theatre shows, 170 concerts, 100 cabaret shows and 110 art and design exhibitions. Additional categories included circus, dance, special events, film and puppetry.

Adelaide Fringe Director and Chief Executive Greg Clarke said, “The city was literally engulfed by the festival as over 325 venues popped up in parks, warehouses, lane-ways and empty buildings as well as by established venues such as theatres, hotels, art galleries and cafes”.

This year Mr Clarke launched Adelaide Fringe not only in Adelaide but at the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne’s Federation Square. Going on sale a month earlier, before the printed guide came out in January, is already proving a huge success. By 7 January FringeTIX had sold 15,000 tickets worth almost half a million dollars. 

Adelaide Fringe 2012 kicked off on the evening of Friday 24 February and was a massive celebration of the unexpected. This year’s opening night celebrations were different to previous years. There were two very exciting new changes. The first is that the Parade ran down the centre of the city along King William Street and the second is that the celebrations before, during and afterwards were not just in the East End, but in Fringe venues everywhere. 

As well as Parade, the Adelaide Fringe  2012 produced and supported a number of large-scale free outdoor events throughout the festival including: the Adelaide Fringe Street Theatre Festival at which international street performers take over the city for four days and nights; Fringe in the Mall featuring a 1960‘s caravan converted into a stage showcasing Fringe acts daily; and The Spirit Festival, a 4 day event celebrating the very best in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.

New in 2012 was the introduction of the Tour of the Unexpected. Free buses ran loops around the city with performers on board to guide and entertain passengers on their way to one of the many venues around the CBD.

Also new in 2012 was the Art Gallery of South Australia’s outdoor screening on opening night of AES+F’s Allegoria Sacra, a monumental moving image work from Russia.