By Bryan Alkemeyer

The 2026 Tony Awards® on Sunday, June 7, offer plenty of familiar touchpoints for audiences beyond Broadway. Many of this year’s nominated productions draw inspiration from popular films and television series, while several acting nominees are also well known for their work on screen. Humanity continues its relentless campaign to turn every medium into every other medium. Sometimes it even works!

Familiar titles include stage adaptations of Emmy®-winning television series Schmigadoon! and 1980s vampire film The Lost Boys, not to mention a revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, made famous by the cult classic starring Tim Curry. There is also a raucous yet loving spoof of James Cameron’s Titanic, narrated from the perspective of Céline Dion!

This season, Broadway audiences have applauded performers like recent Oscar® nominee Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Emmy® winner Nathan Lane (Only Murders in the Building), and Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, who appeared in a one-person play.

These are just a few of the creatives who will be celebrated on June 7. Here is (almost) everything else you need to know to be ready for the 79th Tonys®. Watch them live on CBS or Paramount+ at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET!

The Host

This year’s host is a popstar whose music has played in films, in clubs, and probably in your car. To date, she has had four No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100: “Lady Marmalade,” “So What,” “Raise Your Glass,” and “Just Give Me a Reason.” Of course, we’re talking about P!nk!

P!nk’s breakout year was 2000, when she released her first studio album, Can’t Take Me Home, and won a Grammy® for “Lady Marmalade,” featured on the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack. In 2004, her song “Trouble” won the Grammy® for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. P!nk won a third Grammy® for a cover of “Imagine” by John Lennon, in 2011.

In her role as Tonys® host, P!nk is most eager to impress her daughter and collaborator Willow Sage Hart (“Cover Me in Sunshine”), who happens to be a huge Broadway fan. As P!nk knows better than anyone, “[T]hat girl is a tough crowd!”

Guests of Honor

A producer, lighting designer, and writer-director will be honored with 2026 Special Tony Awards® for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. They have each left their marks on film history.

Producer André Bishop has nurtured emerging talents throughout his career. At the Off-Broadway theater Playwrights Horizons, Bishop produced three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: The Heidi Chronicles, Sunday in the Park with George, and Driving Miss Daisy, starring Morgan Freeman onstage and in the film adaptation. At the Lincoln Center Theater, Bishop oversaw 16 Tony®-winning productions and supported the talent incubator LCT3.

Lighting expert Jules Fisher has displayed his genius in virtually every visual artform. Besides winning nine Tonys®, Fisher designed the lighting for films including Chicago and Dreamgirls. He has worked with rockstars and stage musicians. Remarkably, his lighting company Fisher Marantz Stone created The Tribute in Light at the site of the former World Trade Center, as well as lighting for the Washington Monument and major art museums.

Last but not least, James Lapine directed and wrote the books to many hit musicals, collaborating with fellow luminaries Stephen Sondheim and William Finn. After receiving a Pulitzer for the play Sunday in the Park with George,Lapine won Tonys® for the books to Falsettos, Passion, and Into the Woods, which was adapted as a film starring Meryl Streep. Film lovers may be delighted to know that Lapine also worked on the Off-Broadway stage adaptation of the Oscar® winner Little Miss Sunshine.

Nominees

Eight musicals and 16 plays made the list of nominees. Some of the most-nominated productions count as revivals: Ragtime, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, and Rocky Horror among the musicals; Death of a Salesman and Oedipus among the plays. Wagering that you’re at least broadly familiar with those titles, we’ll focus on productions that have come to Broadway for the first time. Then, we’ll tell you about acting nominees from the musicals and plays.

Best Musical

Among the new musicals, Schmigadoon! appears to be leading in the competition – but only by a hair! It tied with The Lost Boys for most overall nominations (12), and both will compete in the marquee categories of best production, director, book, and score. But Schmigadoon! may have a slight edge, because it also earned a nomination in the prestigious lead actor/actress category.

In Schmigadoon!, married couple Josh and Melissa wander away from a couples’ retreat, only to become trapped in a musical. To escape, they must rekindle their romance – or leave each other for new partners.

This musical about musicals is directed by CreativeFuture friend Chris Gattelli, who earned Tony® nominations as both director and choreographer. Gattelli previously joined CreativeFuture in Washington, D.C., with some of his fellow team from the film Wonka. He won the Best Choreography Tony® for Newsies in 2012.

The Lost Boys brings the beloved vampire film to Broadway, resulting in wonderfully improbable songs like “My Brother Is a Vampire.” Michael cannot regain his humanity without slaying the vampire who sired him. Meanwhile, he and his younger brother, Sam, grow increasingly resentful of the local video store owner who romantically pursues their mother.

The adaptation is directed by Michael Arden, who has previously won Best Director Tonys® for Parade (2023) and Maybe Happy Ending (2025).

Of course, Best Musical might go instead to Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), with eight total nominations,or to Titaníque, with four nominations. Two Strangers is a comedy in which people meeting for the first time try to save a wedding day. Titaníque is a parody in which Céline Dion (Marla Mindelle) tells the story of a ship’s fateful wreck against a singing iceberg (Layton Williams).

Best Play

Having won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Liberation is poised for success! At the Tonys®, it is competing for best new play, director, lead actress, featured actress, and costume design. No other new play surpassed Liberation in number of nominations, but Balusters, another Best Play contender,tied with five. Therefore, the competition therefore remains tight!

Liberation is the second Broadway production by playwright Bess Wohl, the screenwriter and director behind Baby Ruby (2022). The Pulitzer-winning drama compares the life of an early feminist from Ohio with that of her daughter, finding that precious little has changed from the 1970s to the present day. Wohl previously earned a Best Play nomination for Grand Horizons in 2020.

Balusters was written by Juilliard faculty member David Lindsay-Abaire, the lyricist and librettist for the musical adaptation of Shrek. Hilarity ensues when the Vernon Point Neighborhood Association becomes divided over a stop sign: While adding one could make the historic neighborhood safer, it would definitely make it less picturesque. Lindsay-Abaire won a Pulitzer for Rabbit Hole in 2007 and two Tonys® for Kimberly Akimbo in 2023.

After these frontrunners, the most likely candidate for Best Play is Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant, a biographical play about Roald Dahl, with four nominations. But impressively, Little Bear Ridge Road is competing for Best Play without any other nominations, which is a testament to the skill of playwright Samuel D. Hunter, the writer behind Oscar® winner The Whale.

Actor/Actress in a Musical

The musical with the most nominations for its cast is Ragtime, adapted from E. L. Doctorow’s novel about race relations in early 20th-century America. Marvelously, the actors portraying the three central characters each earned a lead actor/actress nomination: Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy, and Brandon Uranowitz. Meanwhile, Ben Levi Ross and Nichelle Lewis are up for featured actor/actress awards.

Two other musicals drew nominations for both lead actor and lead actress. Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) got nominations for Christiani Pitts as beleaguered sister of the bride and Sam Tutty as happy-go-lucky son of the groom. The Rocky Horror Picture Show got nods for Luke Evans in the unforgettable role of Frank-N-Furter and Stephanie Hsu as Janet Weiss.

The other nominees for lead roles in a musical are Nicholas Christopher from Chess, Marla Mindelle – as Céline Dion – from Titaníque, and Sara Chase from Schmigadoon! You may recognize Chase from the Tina Fey-produced series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

The remaining nominees for featured roles in a musical are Ali Louis Bourzgui and Shoshana Bean from Lost Boys, Bryce Pinkham and Hannah Cruz from Chess, Andre Dé Shields from Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Layton Williams from Titaníque, and two former Saturday Night Live comedians: Rachel Dratch as the narrator from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Ana Gasteyer from Schmigadoon!

Actor/Actress in a Play

Film lovers will recognize even more familiar faces among the nominees for acting in a play.

Nathan Lane (Only Murders in the Building, The Birdcage) plays the title role in Death of a Salesman. John Lithgow (Conclave) plays children’s book author Roald Dahl in Giant. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) played the only role in Every Brilliant Thing.

The other two competitors for the lead actor award are Mark Strong from Oedipus and Will Harrison from Punch.

Fans of The Gilded Age and The White Lotus may cheer on Carrie Coon, a candidate for best lead actress because of her performance in Bug. She was “ferocious,” according to The New York Times!

But Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) could follow her 2026 Oscar® nomination with a Tony® if voters choose to reward her performance as a dissolute socialite in Fallen Angels.

Coon and Byrne are competing for Best Leading Actress against a close colleague, Kelli O’Hara, who plays Aurora in The Gilded Age and stars alongside Byrne in Fallen Angels. The remaining contenders are Susannah Flood from Liberation and past Oscar® nominee Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) from Oedipus.

All of the candidates for Best Featured Actress in a Play have worked in film or television. They are Betsy Aidem (The Americans), Mary Louise Burke (Sideways), Aya Cash (The Wolf of Wall Street), and two past Oscar® nominees, Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird) and June Squibb (Nebraska). Notably, Squibb earned her first Tony® nomination this year, at the age of 96, making her the oldest acting nominee in Tony Awards® history.

Asked to comment on her age, Squibb told The New York Times, “I just keep working, and I don’t think that much about it.”

It’s a sentiment we can all relate to at CreativeFuture, where birthdays are celebrated with sarcastic cards and sympathetic cupcakes.

Break a Leg!

There’s a superstition against wishing theater professionals well, so we hope each of the Tony® nominees will “break a leg.” That goes double for CreativeFuture’s friend, director and choreographer Chris Gattelli!

It is impossible to include everything about this year’s Tonys® in one blog, so if you have been bitten by the Broadway bug, we encourage you to read more about the show!

Enjoy the 2026 Tonys® on Sunday, June 7 at 5 PM Pacific Time.