Funny Birds and Where To Find Them: 2026 Edition

Welcome to a break from my usual improv programming to publish the data of my annual gender survey of the NZ International Comedy Festival. I'm not going to send this out as a newsletter, but I did want it on this website somewhere.

For context: I run a social networking group for women and non-binary people who work in and around the comedy industry. It is called Funny Birds. I am a big nerd about our representation in the NZ International Comedy Festival and every year I count the shows and make graphs.

Here are this year's graphs, carefully updated with the 13th festival's data since I started. You can find my raw data in this spreadsheet, if anything is unclear please hit me up.

Auckland

• >1 Woman: 34 (30% of shows), 8 less than 2025
• >1 Trans/Non-binary person: 5 (4%), same as 2025
• Only men: 57 (50%), 4 more than 2025
• Lineups: 19 (17%), 9 less than 2025
• 115 shows total, 13 less than 2025

Wellington

• >1 Woman: 23 (33% of shows), 4 less than 2025
• >1 Trans/Non-binary person: 3 (4%), 3 less than 2025
• Only men: 35 (50%), 1 less than 2025
• Lineups: 9 (13%),1 less than 2025
• 70 shows total, 9 less than 2025

Whole Festival

• >1 Woman: 57 (31% of shows), 12 less than 2025
• >1 Trans/Non-binary person: 8 (4%), 3 less than 2025
• Only men: 92 (50%), 3 more than 2025
• Lineups: 28 (15%), 10 less than 2025
• 185 shows total, 22 less than 2025

Observations

• Overall a drop in both the number of shows in both cities and in the number/percentage of shows with women and trans/non-binary performers in starring or co-starring roles.
• There's something interesting happening with the distribution/ percentages across the last few festivals, where 2024 and 2026 have a lower number of shows compared to the year before, but a higher number of shows starring men. I'm wondering if the factors that influence the size of the festival are also influencing the women and trans/non-binary comedians. Further research needed...

Further comments and questions welcome!

Notes on my methodology

Since 2013 (the year I started the Funny Birds group on Facebook) I have gone through the programme and done a rough count of the gender representation across the festival. The first time, I only counted shows that had at least one woman visibly featured and nothing else. In later years I also counted how many featured only men, were lineup shows (+3 comedians), or had at least one openly trans/non-binary person. There are definitely flaws in this approach, but as the years have gone on I've tried to keep the same process so it can be a fair comparison. Think of it like the Bechdel test - it's not a science or a rule that all things have to follow, it's just an indicator of a bare minimum being met.

Additional notes:

• If any trans or non-binary comedians would like to talk to me about the data on those shows, I have the list of shows and performers and will gladly take advice.
• The data for 2020 is based on what would have gone ahead if not cancelled.
• I don't have information on the 2022 festival programme-that-would-have-been (cancelled due to Covid); I am happy to include this one day if NZICF shares it.

Thank you for reading - this is a real labour of love for my industry and my funny birds. Please feel free to share or to get in touch if you'd like to discuss further - contact@jenniferosullivan.com.