The Offies Awards
The Offies family of awards recognise and celebrate the excellence, innovation and ingenuity of independent, alternative & fringe theatres. The current Offies awards are listed below:
- The full-run Offies – our flagship awards, for shows with 10 performances or more over 2 or more weeks – these cover plays, musicals, cabaret, opera, IDEA (shows which are Immersive / Devised / Experimental / Atypical), TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences) and online shows
- The OffComm, which is an Offies Commendation for short run shows – with a minimum of 3-4 performances. The OffComm is an award in itself.
- The OffFest, which is an Offies Commendation for theatre in festivals – for example, the Brighton Fringe, Camden Festival, Greater Manchester Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe and the Voila Europe festival. Announcements regarding any finalists or winners will be made in co-ordination with the festival organiser.
- The OneOff, which recognises outstanding achievements in independent, fringe & alternative theatre. The OneOff award is announced as and when throughout the year, with occasional additional OneOffs announced at the annual awards ceremony.
- The Offies People’s Vote, for audiences to recognise their favourite theatre venue
The point of these awards – as with everything we do at OffWestEnd.com – is to help raise the profile and status of independent, alternative & fringe theatres & companies by giving them greater power to promote their work individually and collectively and to reward the new talent that they nurture and that is essential to the future of our theatre industry.
Offies Awards Ceremony
All Offies awards cover a calendar year. For the Offies and some of the OffFest events, finalists will be selected from the nominees and announced in the January immediately following the end of the calendar year, and then the winners will be announced at the Offies awards ceremony, which is held in February or March each year. All other nominations in the past year are also acknowledged at the awards ceremony.
You can watch a clip of an excerpt from the most recent annual Offies Awards Ceremony held in February 2023 – passionate words about the importance of OffWestEnd and the Offies. You can watch the clip at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPAwYI3cP6E
www.offies.london
This is the separate website for all the Offies awards – which includes:
- For the Offies: a database of all nominations since 2010; images (on the homepage) of the most recent nominations; a listing of the nominations for the current year (and for previous years). There is also detailed information on how to submit a show, including eligibility criteria, a list of eligible venues and details of all Offies categories.
- Separate pages for all the other awards: OffComm, OffFest, OnComm, OneOff and the People’s Vote, with information on eligibility criteria, and winners to date.
- Information on the annual Offies Awards ceremony, including images from previous events
- Information about becoming an Offies assessor.
For more information on the various Offies awards, please click on the relevant link below – all of the awards pages also provide info about how to submit your show:
- About the full run Offies (for shows with 10+ perfs over 2+ weeks) – covering plays, musicals, cabaret, opera, IDEA, TYA and online shows
- About the OffComm (for short run shows and independent theatre outside London)
- About the OffFest (for shows under the umbrella of a theatre or arts festival)
- About the OneOff (occasional special awards for outstanding achievement)
- About the People’s Vote (where the public can vote for their favourite venue)
- About the Offies awards ceremonies (held annually in February / March)
- About becoming an assessor (for the Offies awards)
If you have any queries about any of the Offies awards, please contact Geoffrey Brown on info@offwestend.com