Machynlleth was glowing with the return of the fifteenth annual Comedy Festival last weekend.

During the early May bank holiday the town of 2,000 ballooned to accommodate over 8,000 people attending comedy and entertainment across 20 venues.

School classrooms were turned into stages, the Y Plas lawn turned into a mainstage and bar, and the high street transformed with inventive shop fronts welcoming visitors and businesses spilling onto the streets with extended hours and menus.

Having started in 2010, the festival this year expanded with three new pop-up venues thanks to support from Powys County Council, hosting tents on the Machynlleth Football Club grounds.

The festival hosted over 200 shows, from family-friendly entertainment to local music and street performances.

Up-and-coming comedians like Aberystwyth’s own Mel Owen performed works-in-progress alongside comedic heavyweights like Stewart Lee and Kiri Pritchard-McLean, not to mention the late-night showcases featuring the weekend’s best talent.

Recognising their fifteenth year as a “landmark”, festival founder Henry Widdicombe said the 2026 weekend had arguably the best line-up the festival has ever seen: “We never underestimate what we’ve achieved in making Machynlleth Comedy Festival such a special event, or take for granted all the people who are involved in making it happen.

“Many of the people you see working at the event have been involved for many years, and a handful from the very beginning.

“All of them do so because they believe in what the event is, and how it has prioritised being a safe haven for artists to experiment, and even fail, in order to develop new and exciting work.

“It’s my personal belief that the energy within the room during the creation of new work is like at no other point during the creative process.

“And this is the energy that the event has always sought to thrive on.”