2026 Tony Awards winners include Schmigadoon! and major acting upsets

Broadway’s biggest night ended up reading less like a single-title coronation than a snapshot of an industry leaning hard on familiar names, rebuilt classics and star-driven revivals. Schmigadoon! won Best Musical, but Death of a Salesman dominated the evening with six Tony Awards, while Ragtime and Cats: The Jellicle Ball each collected three, a spread that said as much about Broadway’s commercial instincts as its artistic ones.

The 79th Annual Tony Awards were held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and aired live on CBS and streamed on Paramount+, with the pre-show, The Tony Awards: Act One, running on CBS and Pluto TV. P!NK hosted for the first time, bringing a pop-culture jolt to a ceremony that remained anchored in Broadway’s old guard. The awards came from a crowded field: 24 shows were nominated out of 30 eligible productions, with 857 designated Tony voters weighing in across 26 competitive categories.

That mix of winners and nominees pointed to a season where revivals and reinterpretations carried enormous weight. Death of a Salesman won Best Revival of a Play and finished as the night’s most awarded production, while Liberation won Best Play and made Bess Wohl the fourth woman to take that prize. The result was a reminder that the Tony race, even in a year with multiple new works, still rewards established material that can be reframed for a contemporary audience.

The acting categories added their own flashes of drama. John Lithgow won Best Lead Actor in a Play for Giant, and Laurie Metcalf earned her third acting Tony for Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Those wins reinforced a familiar Broadway pattern: when the field is tight, the theater’s most recognizable names often rise to the top. The season’s 62 first-time nominees, though, showed that a new generation is still forcing its way into the conversation.

The broader picture extended beyond the stage-to-stage competition. The League of Resident Theatres, which includes 82 member theatres across 30 states and the District of Columbia, received a Special Tony Award. With nearly 400 Broadway productions developed at LORT member theatres, the honor underscored how much of Broadway’s pipeline still depends on the regional theater ecosystem, even as the commercial spotlight remains trained on marquee revivals and proven titles.

The Tony Awards began in 1947 with just eight categories at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Nearly eight decades later, the ceremony still measures Broadway’s health, and the 2026 results suggested an industry balancing nostalgia, star power and risk, with revivals and recognizable properties still holding the upper hand.