The nominations for the 79th Annual Tony Awards have landed, the dust has settled, and now — with exactly four weeks until the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall — the real game begins. The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon! share the nomination lead with 12 apiece, Ragtime sits just behind on 11, and a cluster of formidable plays and revivals are locked and loaded for the June 7 showdown hosted by P!NK. But who is actually going to win?

We’ve trawled through the predictions and analysis from Variety, Deadline Hollywood, Gold Derby, The Wrap, and a raft of New York theatre columnists and awards forecasters to build the most comprehensive picture of the race as it stands right now. One thing is immediately clear: this is one of the most genuinely competitive Tony seasons in years, with no single show steamrolling every category. Drama, surprises, and upset potential are everywhere. Let’s break it down category by category.

Best Musical: Schmigadoon! vs The Lost Boys vs Two Strangers

This is the race that every Broadway observer is watching most closely, and the honest answer right now is: nobody truly knows. Throughout the pre-nominations phase of the Tony race, the odds were evenly split over which of the four frontrunners would claim Best Musical, and that lack of consensus remains even after the nominations announcement.

Titanique earned just four nominations so it has fallen to last place, but Schmigadoon!, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), and The Lost Boys still appear to be within striking distance of snatching the award. All three musicals are nominated for directing, choreography, score, book, acting, and design. The surprise eligibility of the score for Schmigadoon! has likely given the charming Broadway love letter a slight edge in what remains a tight race.

The big question facing the Best Musical race is whether voters will ultimately embrace productions adapted from other sources — The Lost Boys gives fresh life to Joel Schumacher’s 1987 vampire film, while Schmigadoon! arrives from the Apple TV+ series — or whether the entirely original Two Strangers, the sweet British import, can carry the day. Tony voters have a long history of rewarding intimate, heartfelt musicals over big-budget spectacles. Hamilton aside, the industry tends to vote with its heart. Right now, that heart appears to be beating for Schmigadoon! — but barely.

Best Play: Liberation Leads — But Giant Is Right Behind

On the play side, the picture is slightly clearer — and it has a Pulitzer Prize stamped all over it. Liberation has immediately secured an overwhelming lead in the Best Play race. The show closed back in February, but that hasn’t stopped Bess Wohl’s acclaimed examination of the feminist movement in the 1970s from staying at the forefront of the conversation.

Wohl’s play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama on the very day before nominations were announced — a piece of timing that felt almost too perfect and has supercharged its Tony momentum. However, Giant, Mark Rosenblatt’s debut play anchored by veteran John Lithgow’s much-discussed turn as Roald Dahl, arrives on Broadway carrying its Olivier Award pedigree and a cultural conversation surrounding antisemitism that has only intensified since its London run.

That last point — Liberation closed in February — is the single biggest cloud over its frontrunner status. Tony voters are human beings, and recency bias is real. Plays that are still running at the time of the ceremony have an undeniable energy advantage. That could give Giant and even Little Bear Ridge Road — which won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play prize — a path to an upset.

The Critics’ Frontrunners: Category by Category

Based on the combined weight of critical opinion from Variety, Gold Derby, Deadline, The Wrap, and major awards forecasters, here are the current predicted winners in every major acting category.

Direction: Lear deBessonet vs the Field

In the Best Direction of a Musical race, Lear deBessonet‘s work on Ragtime is widely regarded as one of the artistic triumphs of the entire Broadway season. Critics across the board have praised the Lincoln Center production for the depth and emotional intelligence of its staging, and deBessonet is considered a strong favourite in this category. Her main competition comes from Michael Arden‘s spectacular work on The Lost Boys and Christopher Gattelli‘s direction and choreography on Schmigadoon!

On the play side, the Best Direction contest is one of the most tantalising of the evening. Robert Icke‘s production of Oedipus and Joe Mantello‘s take on Death of a Salesman are both considered serious candidates, while Whitney White‘s direction of Liberation has the benefit of riding the play’s Pulitzer wave. If Liberation wins Best Play, White is very likely to follow.

The Acting Races: Upsets Everywhere You Look

Nathan Lane vs John Lithgow — The Best Actor in a Play Clash

This is arguably the most electric individual acting race of the season. Nathan Lane returns to the Broadway stage in Death of a Salesman to enormous critical acclaim. Lane has not had a great track record recently with Tony nominators — he once joked from the stage that the Tonys were known as “Passover at my house” — but this performance appears to have definitively settled that old score. Most forecasters now have him as a slight favourite. But standing directly in his way is John Lithgow, whose Olivier Award-winning portrayal of Roald Dahl in Giant has drawn comparisons to the greatest stage work of his career. Daniel Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing is the wildcard — Tony voters love a solo performer who holds the stage alone, and Radcliffe is doing exactly that eight shows a week.

Caissie Levy and the Best Actress Musical Race

Gold Derby has Caissie Levy far out front for her career-first Tony nomination for Ragtime, followed by Christiani Pitts as one excellent half of the cast of Two Strangers. Levy is playing a role — Mother in Ragtime — that previously won Marin Mazzie a Tony nomination, and she is receiving reviews of the highest order. But Deadline’s forecasters have been noting the unstoppable comedic force of Marla Mindelle in Titaníque, a performance so committed and so joyful that it is almost impossible not to vote for. Among predictions, it’s between Broadway favorite Levy and the impossibly endearing Mindelle — and it genuinely could go either way.

Shoshana Bean — The Featured Actress to Beat

Shoshana Bean could emerge as the favourite for Best Featured Actress in a Musical thanks to a dynamic matriarchal role in The Lost Boys which gives her several prominent songs to showcase her vocal range and acting chops. Bean is one of those Broadway performers who has been beloved by industry voters for years, and a win here would be enormously popular within the theatre community. Her main rivals are Nichelle Lewis of Ragtime — playing a role that won Audra McDonald a Tony — and Ana Gasteyer, whose patter song in Schmigadoon! has been singled out as one of the most impressive moments of the season.

The Revival Races: Ragtime vs Cats, Salesman vs The Field

In the Best Revival of a Musical category, the consensus is clear: Ragtime versus Cats: The Jellicle Ball. It’s going to be an equally close battle between Ragtime and Cats: The Jellicle Ball in the musical revival categories. The former show benefits from having more contending actors in its ensemble, but the latter is a popular reincarnation of an era-defining Broadway show. The original Cats opened in 1982 to downbeat reviews that required the now-legendary marketing tagline “now and forever” because there were no happy critics’ quotes. The fact that the 2026 revival is being discussed as a serious Tony contender would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago.

In the Best Revival of a Play race, Death of a Salesman with nine nominations is the dominant force. Death of a Salesman seems poised to dominate the Play Revival race, but Lane faces a formidable Best Actor opponent in the towering form of John Lithgow’s Olivier-winning performance as Roald Dahl in Giant. The prediction among most forecasters is that Salesman will take the revival prize but that Lane and Lithgow’s individual contest is too close to call with any confidence.

The Wider Picture: What the Numbers Tell Us

Gold Derby’s Tony odds, based on the combined forecasts of hundreds of people including experts polled from major media outlets, currently show Schmigadoon! and Liberation as early frontrunners for the top awards across both the musical and play categories. But the numbers also reveal something striking: Gold Derby currently predicts win totals of six for Cats: The Jellicle Ball, three each for The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon!, two for Ragtime, and one for Two Strangers among the musicals — suggesting an unusually spread result where no single show dominates the evening.

On the play side, Death of a Salesman leads with five predicted wins, followed by Oedipus with three and Giant with one, again suggesting that the revival’s dominance in nominations will not necessarily translate into a clean sweep on the night. This is a Tony season where the spoils are expected to be shared widely — which is exactly what makes it such compelling viewing.

One broader theme running through almost every critical analysis is the contrast between this season’s 30 eligible productions and last year’s 42. A thinner field, many forecasters note, has not produced a thinner quality of competition — quite the opposite. With fewer shows splitting the vote, the genuine quality of individual performances and productions has risen to the surface more clearly, making the races in the acting categories particularly fierce.

Our Final Word: A Season Too Close to Call

Four weeks is a long time in Tony politics. Shows still running will court voters at parties and special events. Critical reappraisals will emerge. The Pulitzer Prize behind Liberation adds gravitas; the sheer joy of Schmigadoon! adds momentum; the raw spectacle of The Lost Boys adds excitement; the quiet heartbreak of Two Strangers adds the emotional trump card that has won Best Musical before.

If we are pinning our colours to a mast right now: Schmigadoon! for Best Musical (narrowly), Liberation for Best Play (with a caveat about its closure), Nathan Lane for Best Actor in a Play, Caissie Levy for Best Actress in a Musical, Shoshana Bean for Featured Actress in a Musical, and Ragtime for Best Musical Revival. But in a season this competitive, every single one of those predictions could be wrong by the time P!NK walks onto that Radio City stage on June 7. And that is exactly what makes this Broadway season so thrillingly alive.