Southport Comedy Festival 2026: Six of 18 Shows Already Gone

The Southport Comedy Festival runs from Friday 2 to Sunday 18 October 2026, its fifteenth year, in a heated and seated marquee in Victoria Park. Eighteen shows across seventeen days, from an £8 new-act final to a £30 Jason Byrne anniversary show. (Southport Comedy Festival)

Coverage in August reported three shows sold out. Checked against the festival’s own booking page on 3 September 2026, it is now six. The rest were still selling.

Every show, price and start time

Prices are the festival’s own, quoted before the booking fee. “Waiting list” means the festival has replaced the buy button with a waiting-list link, which is how it marks a show that has gone.

Two shows do not start at 8pm. The evening Jason Manford show and Adam Kay both open the doors at 6pm and start at 7pm. The festival flags the Manford one on its own page because it breaks the pattern; the Adam Kay time is easy to miss.

The marquee is dark on both Mondays. Nothing is scheduled on 5 or 12 October. Saturday 3 October, Sunday 4 October and Sunday 18 October each carry two shows.

The cheap end is the strong end

The three cheapest tickets are the ones a casual visitor is most likely to skip:

• £8, the Southport New Comedian of the Year grand final, Saturday 3 October. It is in its sixteenth year, eight acts compete, and Brendan Riley hosts. Entries opened at 10am on Monday 31 August.
• £10, Comedy Bingo: Back To The 90’s, Saturday 17 October.
• £15, Best of the Fest on Friday 16 October, a triple bill of Steve Gribbin, Clayton Jones and Brennan Reece with Brendan Riley hosting. Three headliners for half the price of most single-name nights.

At the other end, Jason Byrne’s thirtieth-anniversary show on the opening Friday is the dearest ticket of the run at £30, and it is one of the six already on a waiting list.

The travel problem nobody has flagged

Merseyrail closes part of the Northern Line for four weeks from Sunday 11 October to Friday 6 November, for a £3.5m job strengthening and waterproofing four tunnels into Liverpool. That closure lands squarely on the back half of this festival, and it does not work the way most people assume.

• Monday to Saturday, trains still run between Liverpool Central and Southport, but to a different timetable. The closed section is Hunts Cross to Liverpool Central, with replacement buses to Moorfields, not Central.
• On Sundays, the closure extends to Hunts Cross to Sandhills. Southport trains terminate at Sandhills, not Liverpool Central.

That hits Sunday 11 October (Adam Kay) and Sunday 18 October (Mick Miller and Seann Walsh). If you are coming from Liverpool on either of those days, your train starts at Sandhills. (Merseyrail)

The first nine days of the festival, 2 to 10 October, are before the works start and are unaffected. Our Southport train times page has the normal service pattern.

Driving. Victoria Park is off Rotten Row, PR8 2BZ. The festival publishes no dedicated event car park for the marquee. Sefton’s Dunes Leisure and Splashworld car park on The Esplanade is the cheap one nearby at £5.50 all day, against £6.00 for two hours on the Esplanade itself; the full tariff list is on our parking in Southport page. For anything happening on the roads that fortnight, see roadworks and travel.

What it means for you

If one of the six waiting-list shows is the one you wanted, the festival is still selling twelve others. Six gone with a month to run means the pattern from previous years is holding, and the mid-week shows are the ones with room.

If you are bringing someone under 16, check the age column before you book. Eleven of the eighteen shows are 16+ or 18+. Only six are 14+: both Jason Manford shows, Mike Wozniak, Scott Bennett, Laura Smyth and Seann Walsh. Paul Merton’s improv night sits on its own at 15+.

If you are travelling from Liverpool on a Sunday after 11 October, plan for the train to terminate at Sandhills. That is a change of the whole journey, not a delay.