After a record-breaking season, big stars and big revivals hope to lure in New York audiences over the next 12 months
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he year 2025 found Broadway at a major inflection point – New York theater finally fully rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, as the 2024-2025 season became the highest-grossing of all time, with $1.89bn in tickets sold thanks in part to a new generation of stars and fans. But with a record box office came record ticket prices, as Hollywood stars from Denzel Washington to George Clooney commanded sums pushing four figures for orchestra seating. This year feels relatively less Hollywood-y, though no less starry, with a healthy mix of revivals, new material and buzzy transfers on the calendar. Here are 12 of the most anticipated Broadway shows in 2026.
Broadway kicks off the season with a bang – or, well, a bug – with Tracy Letts’s 1996 cult classic, which began previews just before the new year and officially opens on 8 January. The new production, directed by David Cromer after an acclaimed run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 2021, reunites The White Lotus star (and Letts’s partner) Carrie Coon with Pass Over’s Namir Smallwood as two unexpected lovers – a lonely waitress and a mysterious drifter – whose motel room tryst devolves into something darker. With extremely strong word-of-mouth buzz and the arguably never-more-relevant theme of creeping paranoia, expect many to catch the bug this winter.
