The Edinburgh Fringe has revealed its funniest jokes of 2026, with The Guardian selecting ten one-liners from this year's festival. Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel, who lives in Luton, tops the list with his piranha boomerang joke, which also won the separate (Some Guy Called) Dave Joke of the Fringe 2026 competition.
Amanda Knox debuts comedy show
This year's festival features hundreds of comedians performing across Edinburgh, from established names to newcomers. Amanda Knox debuted her first-ever one-woman comedy show, Cartwheel, 15 years after her murder conviction was overturned and she was released from an Italian prison. Her jokes did not make the top ten list.
Other jokes in the rundown cover topics including dating, artificial intelligence, Donald Trump, magicians and margarine.
The top 10 jokes in full
- Olaf Falafel: "I remember thinking, as I taped a piranha to my boomerang, this could come back to bite me."
- Richard Stott: "To the person who stole my bank card and spent all my money on ancestry.com – you know who you are."
- Scout Boxall: "I like my men like I like my passwords – weak, easily compromised, barely distinguishable from each other."
- Li Jin Hao: "A friend said to me: ‘The last thing I wanna be is racist,’ and I was like: 'Oh, so it’s on your list?'"
- Jenny Gorelick: "I dated a magician – I was seeing him, now I don’t."
- Adele Cliff: "I hate AI because it keeps trying to steal the jobs I love, like creative writing and being confidently wrong."
- Chris Grace: "The Trump administration is like the movie Oppenheimer – it’s full of weird white guys and halfway through you wish it would end early."
- Anna Thomas: "I’m having an awful time at the moment. The back of my car fell off and you’ll never guess what you can’t buy at a car boot sale."
- Bella Hull: "I lost my nail file, so I’ve just been using the pavement. As a method, it’s concrete."
- Alex Kitson: "I spent all day writing a joke about margarine and I can’t believe it’s not better."
Olaf's double triumph
Olaf's piranha joke also won the (Some Guy Called) Dave Joke of the Fringe 2026 competition. Comedians submitted their best gags, with one-liner specialists Gary Delaney, Mark Simmons, Darren Walsh and Milton Jones presenting the contenders for judging.
Three of Olaf's jokes made that competition's top ten, including: "My paper manufacturing business has folded seven times so I’m pretty sure it can’t happen again." He also joked: "I suffer from FOMO. Fear of messing up acronyms."
Reacting to his victory, Olaf said: "I’ve just released a children’s book called Dave, Don’t Give Up! and the synchronicity of now winning the Dave award is astonishing." The comedian previously won UKTV's Dave Joke of the Fringe in 2019 and takes home £500 and a trophy for his latest victory.
