One of the most popular summer festivals in the UK is the Edinburgh Festival. It isn’t actually one festival; eight festivals are held in the city simultaneously, including the Art Festival, the Book Festival, the International Festival, the Fringe and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

The Edinburgh Festival has happened in August every year since 1947, except for 2020. The idea for a festival came from Rudolf Bing, an Austrian who loved and sponsored the arts. Bing was the general manager of the famous Opera House at Glyndebourne in the South of England. He wanted to organise an international festival of music and opera to help fund the Opera House. Different cities were considered, including Oxford, but finally, Edinburgh, which already had a long history of festivals, was chosen.