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The Smirnoff Underbelly is a venue used only during the span of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (every August).

The Underbelly is now one of the biggest and most popular venues at the largest arts festival in the world. They present a high quality programme of comedy, theatre and live music in a unique venue in the old bank vaults of Edinburgh's historic Old Town and, new to 2005, in the Caves on Niddry Street (Baby Belly). The spaces are wonderfully atmospheric and have the reputation for being one of the best places to catch a drink at the Festival continues to grow.

This years festival saw the Underbelly continue to grow in fame, with popular shows such as Stewart Lee's "90's Comedian" and the controversial "Terrorist: The Musical!"

The Underbelly is seperated into 10 different performance venues, the Big Belly, White Belly, Iron Belly, Belly Button, Belly Laugh, Delhi Belly and the Belly Dancer, as well as the seperate "cave" spaces at the Baby Belly.

The Underbelly was first opened in 2000 , as a small performance venue for five shows brought to the Fringe by the long running Fringe company, Double Edge Drama. The Double Edge directors, now directors of the Underbelly, had heard of the venue through a production of Gargantua, performed by acclaimed Scottish company, Grid Iron in the haunting vaults below the central library of Edinburgh. Whilst Grid Iron staged one show there, the vaults proved the perfect location for all five of Double Edge's shows with the company winning a Fringe First and sell-out houses for its critically-acclaimed productions of Bent and Marat Sade.

The next few years would see the Underbelly rapidly grow into one of the most popular and most written about venues on the Fringe. Its atmospheric setting in the former bank vaults under George IV Bridge presented performers and public alike with wonderfully atmospheric, site-specific spaces and a real Fringe experience. The combination of dilapidated crumbling walls, a challenging and often provocative programme of shows and a loyal following of Underbelly regulars drew many, including founder of the Traverse, Richard De Marco, to suggest that it was the first venue in years to sum up the true spirit of the Fringe.

The Underbelly is now very much at the forefront of the Fringe Festival, a major venue, but a venue that still retains its site-specific, intimate and unique atmosphere. Having started as a venue for five shows, the Underbelly in 2005 programmed over 130 shows into ten perfomance spaces with an emphasis on new writing and new talent. In the last two years it has played host to the winner of the Perrier Newcomer Comedy Award (2003), the winner of the Perrier Comedy Award (2004), Perrier Newcomer nominee (2004), 4 Fringe First Award winners and bands such as Keane, The Thrills and Athlete who are all now at the top of the British music scene.

The Underbelly continues to grow as a company with a new production/promotion wing of the company aimed at producing and developing innovative shows and offering the talent that the Underbelly finds, more of a life after the Festival. In 2005, the Underbelly toured the 2004 Perrier Award winner, Jackson's Way and is producing a number of the Fringe shows in the venue. They also have exciting plans in 2006 for the largest Fringe venue ever and an Underbelly in London. Watch this space!