2026 Tony Awards: Predicting the Likely Winners, from ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ to ‘Ragtime’

Only once in Tonys history, in 2005, have three different new musicals split the awards for best musical (Monty Python’s Spamalot), book (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), and score (The Light in the Piazza) when all three winners were eligible in each category. This year, that landmark split may well happen again since none of the three front-runners in those categories have a clear advantage.

The common refrain this season has been one of despair, of theatrical death by dearth, as there were only six new Broadway musicals. (Last year, there were 14.) But I liked five of the six (including the ill-fated Beaches), and cried at emotional scenes of children embracing their mothers in three of them (Beaches also included). And if none of the new musicals are runaway successes like last year’s Maybe Happy Ending, that’ll make for a more suspenseful night.

The lack of new musicals will also refocus the Tonys on the riches abounding in new plays and play revivals, plus the fiery excellence of both Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Ragtime, the two superb musical revivals locked in three separate battles on Tony night.

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play

Will Harrison, Punch
Nathan Lane, Death of a Salesman
John Lithgow, Giant
Daniel Radcliffe, Every Brilliant Thing
Mark Strong, Oedipus

John Lithgow has brought New York audiences the U.K.-born Giant, a searing character study of Roald Dahl in the midst of a self-combusting antisemitic firestorm. Nathan Lane upends expectations for the kind of performance he can give by shape-shifting into the despairingly aspiring Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Both performances are gripping portraits of self-destruction. What makes this Salesman so effective, though, is the taut chemistry among its four leads: You leave Salesman singing the praises of the ensemble more so than the star alone. For that reason, Lithgow, so explosive as the appalling Dahl, should inch past.

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play

Rose Byrne, Fallen Angels
Carrie Coon, Bug
Susannah Flood, Liberation
Lesley Manville, Oedipus
Kelli O’Hara, Fallen Angels

Conventional wisdom has Lesley Manville out way ahead for her reimagining of Jocasta in the searing Oedipus. But there’s a lot of love for Susannah Flood. One of the best actors in New York, she’s rarely worked on Broadway, and Liberation hit as hard as it did because of her wry, gentle guiding of the audience experience and her character’s affecting quest to understand her mother. Manville’s shattered majesty should secure her the award, but I’d go for Flood and wouldn’t be surprised if many Tony voters do the same.

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

Christopher Abbott, Death of a Salesman
Danny Burstein, Marjorie Prime
Brandon J. Dirden, Waiting for Godot
Alden Ehrenreich, Becky Shaw
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Richard Thomas, The Balusters

This is perhaps the most competitive acting award. Four of these performers—Christopher Abbott, Danny Burstein (now the most-nominated male actor in Tonys history), Alden Ehrenreich, and Ruben Santiago-Hudson—have a serious shot at the trophy. Marjorie Prime is the only closed show, so recency bias will hurt Burstein’s campaign (he’d be my pick). Alden Ehrenreich won the New York Drama Critics Circle’s award for any performance of any size in a play or a musical this season, and the gentle category fraud should benefit him given the size of the role (his character, Max, is clearly the lead as Becky Shaw’s acidic antihero). If voters want to honor Santiago-Hudson’s history as one of the foremost August Wilson interpreters, he could still take it, but it’s Ehrenreich and his caustic Max with the momentum.

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

Betsy Aidem, Liberation
Marylouise Burke, The Balusters
Aya Cash, Giant
Laurie Metcalf, Death of a Salesman
June Squibb, Marjorie Prime

Laurie Metcalf’s tough-nut Linda seems way out in front here, though Aya Cash goes toe to toe with John Lithgow in a thunderous Broadway debut. Given the presence of a trio of veteran luminaries in this category, including the 96-year-old June Squibb, there’s no clear runner-up. Squibb could sneak in on a train of goodwill (“I’m thrilled with what this nomination will do for my career,” she recently joked to Playbill), but I think this one is all but engraved.

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical

Nicholas Christopher, Chess
Luke Evans, The Rocky Horror Show
Joshua Henry, Ragtime
Sam Tutty, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Brandon Uranowitz, Ragtime

This one’s been locked and loaded since November: Joshua Henry has no real competition to secure his first Tony on his fourth nomination for his stunningly sung Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime. If he weren’t in the race, it would be anybody’s game (Henry’s co-star Brandon Uranowitz is doing my favorite musical theater work of the season as the striving immigrant Tateh). But the battle for second place doesn’t matter at the Tonys.

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical

Sara Chase, Schmigadoon!
Caissie Levy, Ragtime
Stephanie Hsu, The Rocky Horror Show
Marla Mindelle, Titanique
Christiani Pitts, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

If Ragtime wants to sweep the four acting categories—the first show to do so since South Pacific in 1950—this category poses the biggest hurdle. Caissie Levy has the toughest responsibility in the cast, playing the role originated by, and closely associated with, the late Marin Mazzie in the first fully staged New York revival since her death. Neither Mazzie nor Christiane Noll (for the 2009 revival) won the Tony; the character of Mother recedes for long stretches of the show, making it an unconventional leading role. And there’s nothing recessive about Marla Mindelle’s omnipresent Céline Dion in Titanique. Is it a parodic impression without dramatic depth? Sure, but Mindelle is also the 56-carat diamond at the heart of a very silly show, and she also improvises the musical’s funniest bit freshly every night. If bettors are into, to quote Céline, taking chances, pick Mindelle to sail this one safely into harbor.

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

Ali Louis Bourzgui, The Lost Boys
André De Shields, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Bryce Pinkham, Chess
Ben Levi Ross, Ragtime
Layton Williams, Titanique

André De Shields deserves the Tony for stage presence in a musical. But Old Deuteronomy mainly presides wordlessly over the Jellicle Ball. And while Layton Williams’s Olivier-winning turn as the ship-sinking iceberg (which is also somehow Tina Turner) in Titanique is that show’s most delirious performance, voters are more likely to choose between Ali Louis Bourzgui’s seductively commanding vampire in The Lost Boys and Ben Levi Ross’s tortured WASP with a revolutionary’s heart in Ragtime. Ross has already won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and he’s likely to keep rolling through the Tonys.

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Shoshana Bean, The Lost Boys
Hannah Cruz, Chess
Rachel Dratch, The Rocky Horror Show
Ana Gasteyer, Schmigadoon!
Nichelle Lewis, Ragtime

Ana Gasteyer had the most entertaining Tony campaign in recent memory, having created, killed off, and then resurrected the social media alter ego September L. Davis, a Broadway diva feuding with Gasteyer over the casting of this role. (In the last few days, Davis has had a change of heart and is now campaigning for Gasteyer to win.) That delightful character aside, this race probably comes down to Shoshana Bean and Nichelle Lewis, though Hannah Cruz is doing terrific, impassioned work in Chess. Lewis stars in the one Ragtime role that’s won a Tony before (for Audra McDonald) in the show’s prior iterations, and as she paves her own powerful path in the part, look for Lewis to join her castmates in triumph.

Best Direction of a Play

Nicholas Hytner, Giant
Robert Icke, Oedipus
Kenny Leon, The Balusters
Joe Mantello, Death of a Salesman
Whitney White, Liberation

I spent most of the season convinced this was Robert Icke’s to lose, as making Oedipus pulsate with suspense when everyone knows how it ends seemed like a magic trick. But the seas seem to be parting for Joe Mantello, who’s picked up most of the precursor awards, even if his otherwise gorgeous production of Death of a Salesman is ever so slightly distracting from the actors in its first-act abstractions. If Mantello loses—which would most likely be a product of voters anxious not to over-reward the disgraced producer Scott Rudin’s comeback season—that could benefit the terrific Whitney White, poised to become the first Black woman to win a Tony for directing.

Best Direction of a Musical

Michael Arden, The Lost Boys
Lear deBessonet, Ragtime
Christopher Gattelli, Schmigadoon!
Tim Jackson, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Brilliantly expansive and expressive as I found Lear deBessonet’s negative space staging of Ragtime, Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch somehow made one of Broadway’s creepiest, cringiest strays, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, into a queer masterpiece founded on an ebullient community of color that springs to joyful life on the runway. Levingston and Rauch make the act of directing a revival look like something closer to transmogrification. That will be rewarded. Two years ago, Danya Taymor (The Outsiders) beat out the sure revival favorite Maria Friedman (Merrily We Roll Along) in a surprise portent of what was to come later on that night. So if Michael Arden does manage to slip through here, for his utterly thrilling mega-staging of The Lost Boys, then consider the best musical race done and dusted.

Best Original Score

Steve Bargonetti, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Cinco Paul, Schmigadoon!
The Rescues, The Lost Boys
Caroline Shaw, Death of a Salesman

No shade to Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw’s effective underscoring for Death of a Salesman, or to Steve Bargonetti’s blues guitar interludes in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, but this is the rare case of an actual deliberate snub: Nominators went out of their way to include the minutes-long instrumental scores for two plays over the two full-length excluded scores for The Queen of Versailles and Beaches. That’s pretty insulting, especially for Stephen Schwartz, whose songs for The Queen of Versailles, while not always dramatically sharp, more than hold their own against the other nominees. Schmigadoon! will raise some eyebrows for voters who consider the score, mainly written for the TV show, not bona fide stage work. I’d pick The Lost Boys, even if the Rescues’s music is more vibes than vampiric character development, but voters will stick with Two Strangers, the ballot’s most conventional candidate.

Best Book of a Musical

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Tye Blue, Marla Mindelle, and Constantine Rousouli, Titanique
Chris Hoch and David Hornsby, The Lost Boys
Cinco Paul, Schmigadoon!

The Lost Boys’s script is perfectly adequate for setting up the action sequences and emotional ballads, but some critics have taken issue with its shifting tone. And Two Strangers, despite its cute banter, has a handful of plot holes that voters are likely to trip over en route to casting their ballots. This one, then, is probably between the two parodies, Titanique’s queerly absurdist reimagining of Titanic versus Schmigadoon!’s pastiche of Golden Age musicals. Titanique’s funniest bits are Marla Mindelle’s nightly improv section, though, and the show is also mercilessly unserious. It’s a lark, yes, but not one that can outsoar the genuine heartfeltness of Schmigadoon!’s final minutes when Cinco Paul’s wicked wit turns to warmth.

Best Orchestrations

Doug Besterman and Mike Morris, Schmigadoon!
Kyler England, Adrianne Gonzalez, Ethan Popp, and Gabriel Mann, The Lost Boys
Trevor Holder, Doug Schadt, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and David Wilson, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Lux Pyramid, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Brian Usifer, Chess

Finally a category that Cats: The Jellicle Ball can compete in without Ragtime breathing down its neck. I’m still unpersuaded that Cats’s orchestrations are fully new beyond the house beats that now throb under some of the songs. Voters don’t love awarding best orchestrations to a reimagined revival: In the 21 seasons when a revival’s been nominated, there have only been four revival winners. For careful listeners, some of Schmigadoon!’s funniest jokes are in the pit, where clever quotes from Golden Age scores abound. A Cats wave could include this category, but Schmigadoon! should pull this one out.

Best Choreography

Christopher Gattelli, Schmigadoon!
Christopher Cree Grant and Lauren Yalango-Grant, The Lost Boys
Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Ellenore Scott, Ragtime
Ani Taj, The Rocky Horror Show

I’d bet all nine lives that Cats: The Jellicle Ball takes this one. Do the vampires in The Lost Boys have airborne choreo? Yes. But do they do death drops or duck-walk across the stage? Not at the performance I reviewed. The Jellicle Ball is a celebration of a community that communicates through dance, and much like best costume design of a musical, this is one it just can’t lose.

Best Revival of a Play

Becky Shaw
Death of a Salesman
Every Brilliant Thing
Fallen Angels
Oedipus

The fight for the nomination slots for revival of a play felt especially contentious this year, since there were nine productions with a serious shot, including Marjorie Prime, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Bug. Death of a Salesman is going to walk away with this one. It’s not quite as ancient as Greek tragedy (by contrast, Oedipus bracingly modernizes a story that’s old and familiar), and this is the play’s fifth Broadway revival (the last was only three seasons ago). But this production is boldly staged and acted, with a high-tension second act that feels definitive. For a play we really thought we knew, it’s truly revivifying in the way revivals seldom are.

Best Play

The Balusters
Giant
Liberation
Little Bear Ridge Road

Giant, riding high off its West End triumph, has been a reminder that cultural context can transform a play’s reception: Although written years ago, the play’s deep dive into a thorny fight about the lines between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has proven more divisive in New York than in London, overshadowing the character study of Roald Dahl. But even so, it was probably always going to be Liberation, Bess Wohl’s structurally inventive, self-searching, and society-skewering epic about feminism in the 1970s through a contemporary lens.

Best Revival of a Musical

Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Ragtime
The Rocky Horror Show

Much like last year, this is the night’s most dramatic category. But while most theater commentators last year seemed to be ardently either team Gypsy or team Sunset Boulevard, both Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Ragtime have met with near-universal acclaim. That’s great news for audiences, two totally different, totally wonderful revivals running at once. Last year, the show with the worse material but the more reimagined production won. That will happen again, and, this time, it will be deserved: Ragtime reminds audience that the musical is one of the all-time greats, but The Jellicle Ball puts a tired, over-exposed score into the service of elevating the artistry of queer and trans ballroom performers of color. Both shows are effectively political, but Cats pounces with an activist streak I’d never have imagined to be possible.

Best Musical

The Lost Boys
Schmigadoon!
Titanique
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

The miniature new musical season still leaves us with two really stellar options here, one a joyfully satiric homage to the power of musicals and the other an eminently cool feast for the senses. Schmigadoon! does exactly what it sets out to do as a comedy in a way that Two Strangers, which wears out its welcome fairly quickly, cannot. (Titanique’s still as silly as it wants to be, but it was funnier off-Broadway when the surprise of it punching above its weight was the show’s best joke.) But The Lost Boys, even if flawed, is jaw-dropping like nothing else this season as a complete work of stagecraft and sung storytelling. It’s also the only musical this season that could deliver a long run, following in the footsteps of past adolescent-driven winners based on popular IP like The Outsiders, which will appeal to commercially focused voters. The show will have its detractors, but they won’t be numerous enough to stop this season’s most sensational showcase of theater magic from sinking its teeth in for the top prize.