The New York Comedy Festival will return from 6 to 15 November with more than 200 comedians and over one hundred shows distributed in the five boroughs. The list presented on Monday, July 13th is only the first part of the program: it includes Marc Maron, Ilana Glazer, Ziwe, Daniel Sloss, Ms. Pat, Jesslarious, Jordan Jensen, Jordan Klepper and several shows of improvisation and live comedy. Other names and appointments will be announced in autumn.
The inaugural evening of 6 November will have three main shows. Ziwe will be at Town Hall, Ms. Pat will perform twice at The Venue on Music Row of the Hard Rock Hotel and Matt Rogers and Dave Mizzoni will take their Gayme Show! to the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The next day is the Pinotphile show from Irish Joanne McNally, while on Sunday, November 8 the Town Hall will host Sarah Sherman and Patti Harrison and the Beacon Theatre Marc Maron with the Yammering Into the Void tour.
The second weekend will focus most of the most known names. On Thursday, November 12, there will be Ben Bankas at Town Hall and Jordan Jensen at the Beacon Theatre. Friday Ilana Glazer, co-author and protagonist of Broad City, will be at Beacon, while Adam Friedland will perform at Town Hall and Jess Hilarious will hold two shows at the Hard Rock Hotel. The same evening the Kings Theatre of Brooklyn will host Dropout Improv, the platform show born from the experience of CollegeHumor, with improvised games and some of its usual performers.
The program confirms that the festival for a long time no longer coincides with a succession of stand-up shows. On November 14, Comic Relief and The Moth will join comics and personal stories in Funny Story, Jordan Klepper will lead the Sh&t Show at Town Hall and Daniel Sloss will take Bitter to the Beacon Theatre. The last evening, on Sunday, November 15, will be entrusted to Mojo Brookzz with the Outta Pocket Comedy Tour. There are also sketch shows, improvisation, podcast recordings, screenings and meetings with authors and interpreters.
For now the main events announced focus mainly in Manhattan, with the Kings Theatre as the first major venue confirmed in Brooklyn. The festival, however, claims to have events in all five boroughs and on its site lists dozens of theatres, comedy clubs and small spaces, from Carnegie Hall to Upright Citizens Brigade, from Comedy Cellar to QED in Astoria. The full calendar will also include new editions of Stand Up for Heroes, the charity evening dedicated to veterans, and the New York’s Funniest Stand-Ups competition.
That of 2026 will be the twenty-second edition of the New York Comedy Festival, founded in 2004 by Caroline Hirsch, owner of the historic Carolines on Broadway. Times Square closed at the end of 2022, after the decision not to renew the lease, but the festival continued and from 2023 it was extended from seven to ten days. The closure of the club has made its transformation even more evident: from extension of the Carolines sign to temporary network of large theatres and small clubs scattered around the city.
The pre-sales will begin on Wednesday, July 15 at 11 am, New York time, and will end on Sunday, July 19 at 22 pm. The general sale will leave Monday 20 July, always at 11 am, through the site of the festival. Show times will be reviewed before purchase: the official page already contains some updates regarding the first release, including those of appointments with Joanne McNally and Comic Relief with The Moth.
L’articolo The New York Comedy Festival has announced the first names of the 2026 edition proviene da IlNewyorkese.
