Fringe Festival Schedule Across Multiple Venues
A guide for festival directors coordinating dozens of performance runs across separate rooms with strict capacities on a small budget.
To run a fringe festival schedule across multiple venues, group your physical stages into sub-schedules and set room capacities directly on each performance time slot. This gives your audience a filterable master calendar while keeping door headcounts strictly within local fire safety limits.
Most commercial festival ticketing systems demand expensive setup contracts or per-ticket fees that eat into box office revenue. You can manage multi-room listings, recurring showtimes, and ticket scanning without dedicated box office hardware by using the right calendar architecture.
In this post
Organize rooms and stages into sub-schedules
When an audience views a festival calendar with 30 different productions, a single chronological list becomes hard to read. Grouping shows by venue or room lets people see what is playing nearby and plan their evening without jumping between separate websites.
In Event Schedule, create your festival as a single main schedule, then use sub-schedules to represent each physical space, such as "Upstairs Gallery", "Basement Studio", "Main Stage", or "Community Hall". Each production is assigned to its specific room.
Visitors viewing the master festival listing can click filters to view one room at a time or browse everything in order of start time. You can also embed the calendar on your website across pages dedicated to each individual venue, keeping individual room listings synchronized automatically with the master program.
Build a five-day theatre run with recurring rules
A fringe production usually runs for three to seven consecutive days. Setting up every single performance as a separate event clutters your administration and invites copy-paste errors in show descriptions, cast bios, and content notices.
Instead, create the production once as a recurring event on the Event tab beside Date & Time. Choose the repeat frequency that matches the run:
- Daily: For productions running every day from opening night through closing night.
- Weekly with selected days: For shows running Thursday through Sunday over a multi-week run.
- End on date: Choose On Date under Recurring End so the production stops after the closing performance.
A recurring event keeps one start time and duration for its pattern. If a Saturday matinee begins at 2:00 PM while evening performances begin at 8:00 PM, create the matinee as a separate event, or use Exclude Dates to remove the Saturday evening slot if times shift. Use Include Dates to add an extra opening gala performance that falls outside the regular pattern.
Enforce strict room capacity per performance
Independent fringe venues often operate in community halls, converted storefronts, or small black box spaces where local fire codes enforce strict occupancy limits. If a room holds 50 people, an event listing must prevent the 51st ticket from being issued.
How you cap attendance depends on whether the run is free or ticketed:
| Ticket type | How to set the cap | Cost and plan |
|---|---|---|
| Free shows and workshops | Choose Free registration on the Tickets tab, then enter an optional capacity limit per date. | Free plan ($0) |
| Paid productions | Choose Sell tickets on the Tickets tab, add ticket tiers, and enter the maximum quantity available. | Pro plan ($5 a month or $50 a year) |
| Zero-dollar ticket tiers | Choose Sell tickets, set the ticket price to 0, and enter the tier quantity cap. | Free plan ($0) |
Once sales or registrations hit the room capacity for a specific performance date, that time slot automatically marks itself as full. If your festival sells tickets, Event Schedule takes no platform fee or per-ticket fee on any plan, though payment processors such as Stripe or PayPal still charge their own processing fees. Note that while Event Schedule manages room limits, it does not manage performer contracts, artist payout splits, or volunteer rotas.
Scan tickets and track live door counts on a mobile phone
Fringe festivals rarely have budget for laser barcode guns or dedicated box office terminals at every venue entrance. Door staff can check guests in using the smartphones in their pockets.
Every ticket or registration issued includes an individual QR code sent to the attendee by email. Here is the operational workflow for your front-of-house staff at each room:
- Open the phone's web browser, go to Admin Panel, and choose Sales.
- Open the door scanner within the browser interface.
- Point the camera at the attendee's digital or printed QR code as they walk in.
- Each ticket admits once, and a second scan warns that the ticket was already used.
Festival organizers running paid shows on the Pro plan can also monitor the live check-in dashboard under Admin Panel → Sales to see who has arrived, by ticket type. This makes it clear how many empty seats remain before curtain call so door staff can admit walk-up patrons without exceeding room capacity.
To explore the festival setup workflow in detail, see the festival schedule guide.
Questions people ask
How do we handle shows with multiple start times on the same day?
A recurring event series maintains a single start time and duration. If a production plays at both 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM on the same date, set up two separate listings for the two showtimes so each performance tracks its own independent room capacity.
Can we run free admission and paid tickets within the same fringe festival?
Yes. Free registration with an attendance cap is unlimited on every plan, and ticket types priced at zero can be offered on every plan. Selling priced ticket tiers requires the Pro plan ($5 a month or $50 a year).
What happens if a patron tries to reuse a ticket for another performance?
Each ticket QR code is valid for one check-in. When scanned at the door, the system admits the ticket once, and any second scan warns that the ticket was already used.
Can door staff scan tickets without dedicated barcode hardware?
Yes. Door staff can scan the QR code on any ticket or registration directly with a phone camera in the web browser. The scanner runs under Admin Panel → Sales on every plan.