BREAK OUT COMEDY

BREAK OUT COMEDY

Catch them on the way up.

Break Out Comedy is Sydney Comedy Festival’s development program for some of Australia’s most promising emerging stand-up comedians.

Each year, a hand-picked group of rising comedians is given the opportunity to work with an experienced professional mentor, develop their comedy and (most importantly) put it into practice on stage throughout Sydney Comedy Festival.

Because you can workshop a joke. You can rewrite it. You can talk about it. But eventually, you need an audience.

That’s where you come in.

SEE THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMEDY, NOW

Break Out isn’t just an artist development program. It’s a live comedy show — and your chance to discover some seriously exciting comedians before everyone else does.

During the Festival, the Break Out comedians perform together in a rotating stand-up showcase, putting new material and developing sets in front of real audiences as they hone their craft.

You don’t need to know their names yet. That’s kind of the point.

Come for a great night of stand-up. Leave with four comedians you can smugly tell everyone you saw before they were huge.

WHY BREAK OUT?

Sydney Comedy Festival brings hundreds of comedians and thousands of audience members together every year. We believe that platform should also help create opportunities for the next generation of Australian comedy.

Break Out gives emerging comedians something incredibly valuable: time with an experienced mentor, repeated opportunities to perform, access to Festival audiences and a platform to keep developing their voice.

For audiences, it offers something equally simple: a great way to take a chance on someone new.

We’ll find the comedians. You bring the laughs.

PREVIOUS ARTISTS

Our Break Out alumni of years gone by include:

2025: Alan Fang, Frankie Rowsthorn, Stella Wu & Toby Berowne.

2026: Josh Khoury, Kiyanosh Sahebi, Mariah Nickolas & Tarsh Jago.

The next Break Out Comedy lineup will be announced soon.

Want to be among the first to meet them? Sign up for Sydney Comedy Festival updates and we’ll let you know when the next Break Out lineup drops.

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