Theatregold Box Office Report

Broadway Grosses, Week Ending July 19, 2026

Proof takes its final bow to a standing-room-only house, Hamilton and Death of a Salesman keep Broadway’s top tier crowded, and the countdown clock starts ticking on Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Broadway’s 31 currently running productions brought in a combined $30,989,768 for the week ending Sunday, July 19, 2026, a dip of roughly 5.8% from the previous frame’s $32.9 million, as the Main Stem settled from one show to 31 following the closure of Dog Day Afternoon the week prior. Attendance slipped 6.2% week over week, though the average ticket price held firm at a healthy $121.26, and houses across the board played to a collective 87% capacity, a number that still leaves room for growth as New York settles into the heart of its summer tourist season.

The headline of the week, though, belonged to a play rather than a musical. The revival of Proof, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, played its emotional final performance at the Booth Theatre on July 19, capping a Thomas Kail-directed run that went out at the very top of its game. Meanwhile, the shockwaves from Cats: The Jellicle Ball‘s surprise closing announcement earlier this month continued to ripple through the box office, with curious and nostalgic ticket buyers pushing the Tony-winning revival’s grosses upward even as its own clock winds down toward an August 8 finale.

Closing Spotlight: Proof Goes Out Standing Room Only

Few closings in recent Broadway memory have gone out on quite as strong a note as Proof. Over its final eight performances at the Booth Theatre, the revival played to 101.83% of the house’s capacity, a standing-room-only figure that made it, by a wide margin, the best-attended production on Broadway last week. A total of 6,289 people saw the play in its closing frame, edging out the attendance record the production had set just seven days earlier by 58 tickets.

The financial numbers followed suit. Proof grossed $934,472.69 in its final week, just shy of the production’s all-time single-week high of $976,807, set back in the week ending April 26 immediately after the Thomas Kail-directed revival officially opened. Week over week, Proof posted the single largest gain of any of Broadway’s 31 running shows, adding close to six figures compared to the week before, a remarkable send-off for a play that leaned entirely on word of mouth and reviews rather than stunt casting or a pre-existing brand name to fill the Booth Theatre night after night.

The Cats: The Jellicle Ball Countdown Continues

If Proof‘s farewell was expected, the exit now underway for Cats: The Jellicle Ball is anything but. The Broadhurst Theatre production, a ballroom-culture reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, stunned the industry on July 13 when producers announced the show would play its final Broadway performance on Saturday, August 8, 2026, despite having been extended just weeks earlier through January 17, 2027.

The numbers for the week ending July 19 suggest audiences have taken notice of the ticking clock. Cats: The Jellicle Ball climbed by $57,163 week over week to a gross of $823,971, one of the larger week-over-week gains on the board, even as the increase still leaves the show well short of what would be needed to justify an open-ended run. The production, which will have played 143 regular performances and 21 previews by the time it closes, opened at the Broadhurst on April 7 following a sold-out Off-Broadway engagement at the Perelman Performing Arts Center. It went on to earn nine 2026 Tony Award nominations and took home three: Best Direction of a Musical for Levingston and Rauch, Best Choreography for Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles, and Best Costume Design of a Musical for Qween Jean, who became the first openly trans woman to win a Tony in that category.

Producers Michael Harrison and Mike Bosner framed the closing as a reflection of the show’s high running costs rather than a failure to connect with audiences, praising the creative team’s work in reimagining a familiar title through the lens of New York’s ballroom scene. The cast, led by André De Shields as Old Deuteronomy and “Tempress” Chasity Moore as Grizabella, will be filmed later this month by the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, ensuring the production is preserved even after the Broadhurst goes dark on its run. Fans hoping for a last-minute reprieve should not expect one: even with the bump, the show’s grosses remain far short of the pace that would be required to sustain a large musical’s overhead on Broadway.

Atop the Charts: Hamilton and Death of a Salesman Hold Firm

Hamilton retained its position as Broadway’s highest grosser for the week, bringing in $2.21 million at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, while the Winter Garden’s revival of Death of a Salesman followed close behind at $2.06 million, keeping both productions comfortably inside Broadway’s exclusive $2 Million Club. Notably, the Tony-winning Death of a Salesman revival hit that mark while playing one fewer performance than most of its Main Stem peers, underscoring just how in-demand tickets to the production have become as it nears its own closing date of August 9.

Rounding out the top five were The Lion King and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, both of which saw modest week-over-week dips, alongside a surging MJ the Musical, which climbed nearly $75,000 to reach $1.8 million at the Neil Simon Theatre, good enough for the fourth-highest gross of the week. The Michael Jackson jukebox musical has been one of the steadiest earners on Broadway all summer, consistently playing to capacity houses even as ticket-buying patterns shift elsewhere on the Great White Way.

The $1 Million Club

Twelve of Broadway’s 31 currently running productions crossed the $1 million threshold for the week, a solid showing given the overall dip in grosses. The club included:

The presence of Ragtime, this year’s Tony winner for Best Revival of a Musical, is especially notable given its status as a strictly limited engagement at the Vivian Beaumont; the production played to 100% capacity for the week, one of only a handful of shows to hit that ceiling. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, August Wilson’s Tony-nominated drama at the Ethel Barrymore, also cracked the club in its second-to-last week of performances, a strong note to close on before its own run ends July 26.

The 90% Club: Broadway’s Fullest Houses

Fourteen productions played to 90% capacity or higher across the week, led by Proof‘s extraordinary 101.83% closing-week figure. Death of a Salesman (101.25%), Hamilton (100.68%), and Ragtime (100%) all played to more than full houses, factoring in standing-room and premium add-on seating. They were joined by MJ the Musical, Hadestown, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Schmigadoon!, The Lion King, The Outsiders, The Rocky Horror Show, Wicked, and Titaníque, rounding out a list that spans everything from long-running blockbusters to recent arrivals still building an audience.

Ragtime: A Champion Bows Out at the Beaumont

No production on this week’s list carries a more triumphant closing story than Ragtime. Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of the Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty musical, directed by Lear deBessonet, opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on October 16, 2025 as what was originally billed as a 14-week limited engagement. Strong reviews and stronger box office turned that into two separate extensions, first through August 2 and then, after the production swept the 2026 Tony Awards with four wins, including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Leading Actor and Actress in a Musical for Joshua Henry and Caissie Levy, and Best Sound Design for Kai Harada, into a final push through August 16.

Those four Tony wins tied Ragtime with The Lost Boys and Schmigadoon! for the most of any musical this season, and the production has continued to play to essentially full houses ever since, hitting exactly 100% capacity for the week ending July 19 on a gross of $1.55 million. Built around Joshua Henry’s Coalhouse Walker Jr., Caissie Levy’s Mother, and Brandon Uranowitz’s Tateh, alongside Nichelle Lewis as Sarah and Shaina Taub as Emma Goldman, the production traces its roots to a 2024 gala presentation at New York City Center’s Encores! series before transferring to Lincoln Center. A national tour is already set to launch in fall 2027, giving audiences outside New York a chance to catch the production once its Beaumont run ends.

Two More Tony Winners Head Toward the Exit

August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone continues to be one of the season’s genuine box office success stories in its final stretch at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The production climbed $272,183 week over week to a gross of $1.09 million, playing to 97.71% capacity, remarkable numbers for a straight play entering its final two weeks. When it closes July 26, it will do so as one of the best-attended dramas of the Broadway season, a fitting send-off for a work from one of American theatre’s most celebrated playwrights.

The Winter Garden’s revival of Death of a Salesman tells a similar story. Arthur Miller’s American classic has been playing to capacity or beyond for weeks now, and last week’s 101.25% figure and $2.06 million gross, achieved on one fewer performance than most of its peers, mean the production is on pace to close on August 9 as one of the highest-grossing play revivals of the year. Both productions underscore a trend running through this week’s report: several of Broadway’s biggest recent success stories are choosing to end their runs at their commercial peak rather than risk a slow fade, preserving the show’s reputation and freeing up prime real estate for the productions queuing up behind them.

Beyond the Top Five: Notable Movement Further Down the Board

Away from the very top of the chart, several productions posted meaningful week-over-week swings worth watching. The Lost Boys, the Palace Theatre’s Tony-winning musical adaptation, continued its strong summer with a gross well north of $1.3 million. The Rocky Horror Show at Studio 54 stayed comfortably inside the $1 million club as it builds on the all-time house record it set at that venue earlier in the summer. Wicked, still one of Broadway’s most dependable earners two decades into its run, and Aladdin, now well into its second decade at the New Amsterdam, both remained fixtures of the $1 million club as well, a reminder that Broadway’s long-running titles continue to anchor the box office even in a summer defined by high-profile arrivals and departures.

Further down the board, newer titles like Titaníque at the St. James continued building momentum, landing a spot in the 90% capacity club as it works to establish itself for the long haul, with a confirmed closing not scheduled until September 20. Shows still in earlier stages of their commercial life, including recent transfers and open-ended runs finding their footing after the initial promotional push of opening week has faded, remain the productions to watch most closely as the industry heads into the traditionally softer late-summer stretch before Labor Day.

More Broadway Closings on the Horizon

Broadway’s summer has already seen a wave of departures, and more are on the way. Death Becomes Her, Giant, and The Fear of 13 all concluded their runs on June 28, followed by Dog Day Afternoon on July 12 and now Proof on July 19. Next up is August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which plays its final Barrymore Theatre performance on July 26, followed in short order by Cats: The Jellicle Ball on August 8 and Death of a Salesman on August 9. Ragtime will bring its limited engagement to a close on August 16, closing out a summer that has reshuffled a significant portion of the Broadway map even as several of the departing titles, including Death of a Salesman, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, and Ragtime, are ending their runs at or near their commercial and artistic peak rather than fading out.

The pattern reflects a broader shift in how producers are approaching the current Broadway landscape: star-driven limited engagements and awards-season darlings are increasingly built to close on a high note rather than to chase an open-ended run, freeing up theatres for the wave of new productions already lining up for fall.

A Summer of Records, Then a Cooling Trend

This week’s numbers land at the tail end of an unusually volatile summer stretch for Broadway. The week ending June 15 produced a modest collective gross of $38.56 million across 39 productions, a figure lifted significantly by a record-breaking week for The Book of Mormon, which brought in $2.24 million while celebrating its 15th anniversary with a run of original cast cameos, the single highest weekly gross of the show’s entire run. Two weeks later, The Rocky Horror Show broke the all-time box office record at Studio 54 for the week ending June 29, and Oh, Mary! simultaneously set a new house record at the Lyceum Theatre while notching a Broadway-wide record average ticket price during Maya Rudolph’s farewell engagement in the role.

Those milestone weeks proved difficult to sustain. Grosses gradually cooled through late June and into July before a brief rebound: the week ending July 12 climbed to $32.9 million, a 12.2% jump from the week before, with attendance and capacity both rising in kind. The dip recorded for the week ending July 19, down to $30.99 million with a 6.2% attendance decline, reads less as a warning sign and more as the natural comedown after several weeks of record-chasing, particularly with one fewer production on the boards following Dog Day Afternoon’s closure. With New York hosting World Cup-related tourism and America’s 250th birthday festivities this summer, foot traffic into the theatre district has remained elevated even as individual show performance has fluctuated week to week.

The Economics Behind the Numbers

The week’s dip comes against a backdrop of real cost pressure on Broadway producers. New York City consumer prices were up 4.1% year over year in June, a squeeze that touches every corner of a production’s budget. Actors’ Equity Association’s standard 3% annual contractual raise has not kept pace with the broader cost of living, while materials costs have climbed even more sharply behind the scenes: costume fabric now runs roughly 53% more expensive than it did before the pandemic, and lumber costs for scenic construction have risen by around 34% over the same period. Those pressures help explain why even acclaimed, award-winning productions like Cats: The Jellicle Ball are opting for an early, dignified close rather than gambling on an extended run that may not cover its own overhead.

Star power continues to be one of the few reliable countermeasures to that inflationary pressure, with producers increasingly leaning on limited engagements built around a marquee name or a hot awards-season narrative to guarantee a strong opening months before facing the harder economics of a long-term run.

Looking Ahead to Fall 2026

Even as this summer’s wave of closings continues, Broadway is already looking toward its next chapter. The popular Broadway Week promotion, offering 2-for-1 ticket deals across participating shows, is set to run September 14 through 27, with sales expected to open around August 25. A fresh crop of star-driven productions is also on deck: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is set to headline Other Desert Cities, while Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will lead a new staging of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Billy Crystal returns to Broadway with his solo show 860, and the horror franchise adaptation Paranormal Activity begins previews on August 14, giving Broadway a busy runway into the fall season.

For now, though, the week ending July 19 will be remembered as much for its farewells as its grosses: a beloved play that filled every seat in the house on its way out the door, and a Tony-winning musical spending its final weeks proving, ticket by ticket, just how much Broadway will miss it.

Figures reflect data reported for the week ending July 19, 2026. Broadway box office data is compiled from industry reporting and is presented for informational purposes; individual show figures are subject to revision.