The Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF) is an international body that promotes and safeguards the ideals and principles of fringe theatre in North America.
The 1982 Edmonton International Fringe Festival, modelled after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was the first successful instance of Fringe theatre in North America. Based on its success, an informal network of other Canadian and American Fringe festivals arose. Concerned about the growth of festivals that might claim the "Fringe" title without being aligned with the original spirit of Fringe Theatre, festival directors from this network founded the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals in 1990. The organization was incorporated as a non-profit in 1994. In 1998, CAFF successfully trademarked the terms "Fringe" and "Fringe Festival" in Canada to ensure that any theatre festival wishing to refer to itself as a "Fringe" would agree to abide by both CAFF's guiding principles and the CAFF mandate.
At the time of its formation, CAFF defined four minimum guiding principles for Fringe Festivals:
The mandate of CAFF is as follows:
As of October 2023, CAFF consisted of 30 festivals from across North America.[1]
While individual festivals are mostly programmed independently, CAFF reserves spots in each member festival's lineup for the winners of its annual touring lottery. Winning artists are permitted to enter any of the festivals instead of going through each individual festival's lottery process.[2]
In 2012, CAFF engaged the Canadian federal government to request a parity negotiation in the treatment of American performers entering Canada and Canadian performers entering the United States.[3]