Broadway’s greatest night of the year has come and gone — and what a night it was. The 79th Annual Tony Awards, hosted by P!NK at Radio City Music Hall on the evening of Sunday 7 June 2026, delivered drama, history, surprises and standing ovations in roughly equal measure. The ceremony, broadcast live on CBS and streamed on Paramount+, honoured the best productions from the 2025–26 Broadway season — a season of roughly 30 eligible productions that proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the Great White Way is firing on all cylinders.

When the final curtain fell on the evening, the headline story was clear: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman led all productions with six Tony wins — the most of any show this season. Schmigadoon! claimed the all-important Best Musical prize. Liberation took Best Play. Ragtime won Best Revival of a Musical. And in one of the most significant moments in Tony Awards history, costume designer Qween Jean became the first openly transgender person ever to win a Tony Award in any category — for their dazzling work on Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Here is the complete story of the night, category by category, winner by winner.

Wins by Production at a Glance

The Complete 79th Tony Awards Winners List

🎭 New Plays & Musicals

🎤 Acting — Leading Roles

🌟 Acting — Featured Roles

🎬 Direction & Choreography

🎨 Design — Scenic, Costume, Lighting, Sound

The Big Stories of the Night

Death of a Salesman — Broadway’s Biggest Winner

No production dominated the 79th Tony Awards like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Going into the evening with nine nominations — the most of any play in the 2025–26 season — Joe Mantello’s production at the Winter Garden Theatre collected six Tonys in total: Best Revival of a Play, Best Direction of a Play (Mantello), Best Featured Actress in a Play (Laurie Metcalf), Best Scenic Design of a Play (Chloe Lamford), Best Lighting Design of a Play (Jack Knowles), and Best Sound Design of a Play (Mikaal Sulaiman). It was the biggest haul of any production this season, a comprehensive sweep of the play revival and design categories that confirmed this as one of the most acclaimed Broadway revivals in years.

Laurie Metcalf‘s win for Best Featured Actress in a Play was her third Tony Award — placing her in the rarefied company of Broadway’s most decorated performers. Her performance as Linda Loman has been praised throughout the season as one of the bravest and most emotionally committed interpretations of the role in decades. And while Nathan Lane — nominated for Best Actor in a Play for his turn as Willy Loman — did not take home the award, losing to John Lithgow, his performance and the production around him swept the technical and design categories with impressive totality.

John Lithgow Edges Nathan Lane — The Best Actor Upset

The most talked-about moment of the acting categories was the Best Actor in a Play result. John Lithgow won the award for his portrayal of Roald Dahl in Giant — his third Tony Award — edging out Nathan Lane, who was considered by many forecasters to be the favourite for his Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Lithgow’s win was his third Tony ever, and his work in Giant carries with it a significant cultural resonance — the play, about Dahl’s complicated legacy and the accusations of antisemitism against him, arrived on Broadway carrying its Olivier Award pedigree from the West End. Lithgow’s acceptance speech was widely reported as one of the most moving of the evening, paying tribute to playwright Mark Rosenblatt and the production’s New York cast.

Schmigadoon! Claims Best Musical

The Best Musical race was, as predicted, one of the closest contests of the evening. In the end, Schmigadoon! — the Apple TV+ series-turned-Broadway-sensation produced by Lorne Michaels — claimed the top prize, along with Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score (both for Cinco Paul) and Best Orchestrations (Doug Besterman and Mike Morris). Schmigadoon! continues at the Nederlander Theatre, and the Best Musical win is expected to drive significant box office uplift in the weeks ahead.

The result left The Lost Boys — which shared the nomination lead with Schmigadoon! at 12 apiece — empty-handed in the musical categories but richly rewarded in the design and featured acting sections: four Tonys in total, for Scenic Design (Dane Laffrey), Lighting Design (Jen Schriever and Michael Arden), Featured Actor in a Musical (Ali Louis Bourzgui), and Featured Actress in a Musical (Shoshana Bean). Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), the intimate British import that many critics had tipped as an upset winner, went home empty-handed.

Ragtime’s Triple Crown — And Two Leads Win

Ragtime, Lincoln Center Theater’s sweeping revival that opened to some of the most emotional audience responses of the entire Broadway season, won three Tony Awards: Best Revival of a Musical, Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Caissie Levy, and Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for Joshua Henry. The double acting win for a single show is an unusually powerful result, and Levy’s and Henry’s wins confirm what audiences and critics have been saying all season: that Ragtime’s central performances are among the finest on any Broadway stage this year. Joshua Henry won for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, defeating a field that included Luke Evans in Rocky Horror and Sam Tutty in Two Strangers.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball Wins Three — Including History

Cats: The Jellicle Ball — the radical reimagining of the Lloyd Webber classic by directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch — won three Tony Awards: Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography (Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons), and Best Costume Design in a Musical. That last award was the most significant moment of the entire technical pre-show. Qween Jean, who won for Best Costume Design for Cats: The Jellicle Ball, is the first openly transgender woman to win a Tony in any category — a landmark in the history of the awards, and a moment that drew the loudest applause of the pre-show broadcast. Qween Jean’s acceptance speech, by multiple reports, was passionate, joyful, and entirely worthy of a night that demanded historic acknowledgement.

Liberation and the Pulitzer-to-Tony Pipeline

Liberation, Bess Wohl’s play about the feminist movement in the 1970s — which closed its limited Broadway engagement earlier in the season — claimed Best Play, completing what may be the most remarkable awards double in Broadway this year: the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (announced the day before Tony nominations) and the Tony Award for Best Play. The former continues at the Nederlander, while Wohl’s drama, which also won the Pulitzer Prize, ended its limited engagement earlier in the season.

Wohl’s play faced stiff competition from Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant — which earned its own Tony glory through John Lithgow’s Best Actor win — but the combined force of the Pulitzer and the critical momentum behind Liberation proved decisive with Tony voters. The win is a significant validation of the show’s ambition and a reminder that, in Tony voting, plays do not need to still be running to win the top prize.

The Ceremony: P!NK, Chicago’s 30th and a Night to Remember

P!NK was, by broad critical consensus, an inspired and fully committed host. Her opening number — a roof-raising performance of “Lady Marmalade” featuring Megan Thee Stallion and others — set the evening’s energy at a level it barely dipped from. P!NK brought genuine warmth and anarchic humour to her presenting duties, and was repeatedly praised by social media for avoiding the awkward detachment that can afflict celebrity hosts unfamiliar with Broadway culture.

The evening also featured a spectacular special performance to celebrate Chicago’s 30th anniversary on Broadway — one of the most enduring and beloved runs in Broadway history. The celebration brought together Queen Latifah, P!NK herself, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Alex Newell, Adrienne Warren, Julianne Hough, Whitney Leavitt, Dylan Mulvaney, and more for a number that had the Radio City audience on its feet. The performance was one of the most jubilant moments of an already jubilant evening.

The ceremony was produced by Raj Kapoor, Sarah Levine Hall, and Jack Sussman — a new production team taking over from White Cherry Entertainment — and directed by Liz Clare. The design awards were presented in a pre-show broadcast ahead of the main CBS telecast, following the format established in recent seasons. The main broadcast ran from 8 to 11 p.m. ET, and by all accounts it was, as Playbill described it, “one of the greatest Tony telecasts in recent memory.”

The Season in Review: A Vintage Year for Broadway

The 2025–26 Broadway season may not have been the largest in recent memory — approximately 30 eligible productions, compared to the peak seasons of recent years — but the Tony results confirm what audiences and critics have been saying all year: it was one of the most qualitatively rich. The season produced six Tony-winning productions across the main categories, with wins spread across ten shows in total. No single show dominated to an embarrassing degree. The competition was fierce, the talent was extraordinary, and the winners — while not always the ones every forecaster predicted — each feel genuinely deserving.

The 79th Tony Awards also delivered something beyond theatrical excellence: cultural significance. Qween Jean’s historic win. John Lithgow’s third lifetime Tony. The Pulitzer-plus-Tony double for Liberation. Laurie Metcalf’s third Tony from a production that swept the technical categories. These are moments that will be cited in Broadway histories for years to come. The Great White Way had a very, very good year — and on 7 June 2026 at Radio City Music Hall, it celebrated accordingly.