The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon! lead 2026 Tony Awards race

The nominations for the 79th Tony Awards have been announced, with The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon! emerging as two of the major contenders in a Broadway season that ranges from cult screen adaptations to intimate new writing.

This year’s Tony Awards will be held on June 7 at Radio City Music Hall, with Pink set to host the ceremony. The awards will be broadcast on CBS and Paramount+.

In the Best Musical category, the nominees are The Lost Boys, Schmigadoon!, Titanique and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). The Best Play nominees are The Balusters, Giant, Liberation and Little Bear Ridge Road.

The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon! lead the field overall, with 12 nominations each, followed by the revival of Ragtimewith 11 nominations.

Based on the 1987 vampire film, The Lost Boys brings the cult teen horror story to Broadway in musical form. The production follows earlier Broadway attempts to turn vampire mythology into musical theatre, including Dance of the Vampires, Lestat and Dracula. The new show shifts its focus toward the youthful appeal of the source material, with a rock-influenced score by The Rescues.

Schmigadoon! arrives as a stage adaptation of the Apple TV+ musical comedy series, drawing heavily on the language, style and affectionate parody of Golden Age Broadway. The musical is aimed squarely at audiences with deep affection for classic cast albums, old-school theatrical conventions and the heightened world of characters who burst into song.

Titanique, already a cult favourite, takes a sharply different route. The show parodies James Cameron’s Titanic through the music of Celine Dion, reimagining the famous film through a camp, comic and deliberately chaotic theatrical lens. The musical has built its reputation on irreverence, pop vocals and a devoted fan following.

The fourth Best Musical nominee, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), offers a smaller-scale alternative to Broadway spectacle. Written by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, the two-hander follows a pair of strangers as they navigate New York with a wedding cake, using a modest premise to build a romantic comedy driven by performance, charm and emotional intimacy.

In the Best Play race, The Balusters by David Lindsay-Abaire has been recognised for its comic look at conflict inside a suburban neighbourhood association. The play uses the apparently harmless world of community meetings to explore social friction, embarrassment and public confrontation.

Giant, Mark Rosenblatt’s bio-drama about Roald Dahl, is also nominated for Best Play. The Broadway production, which followed acclaim in London, stars John Lithgow as the celebrated children’s author, presenting a portrait of a complex and often difficult public figure.

Bess Wohl’s Liberation, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is another major contender. Presented by Roundabout Theatre Company, the play explores the feminist movement of the early 1970s through a memory-play structure, looking at idealism, frustration and generational inheritance.

Rounding out the Best Play nominees is Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road, a quiet and emotionally restrained work centred on the relationship between a man in his thirties and his paternal aunt. The play has been noted for its spare theatrical language and intimate focus on loneliness, family connection and emotional survival.

Beyond the top categories, the nominations also include major revivals. Best Revival of a Play nominees include Death of a Salesman, Becky Shaw, Every Brilliant Thing, Fallen Angels and Oedipus, while Best Revival of a Musical features Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Ragtime and The Rocky Horror Show.

The 2026 nominations reflect a Broadway landscape split between recognisable screen properties, musical comedy, intimate new writing and artistically ambitious revivals. With The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon! tied at the front of the nominations count, this year’s Tony race is likely to centre on whether voters favour large-scale adaptation, nostalgic musical pastiche, cult comedy or smaller emotional storytelling.