Trends that appeared on Broadway in the 2025-26 season

From broad common themes like true crime to specific details like scene-stealing kids, this season's plays and musicals had many fun similarities to spot.

Summary

• This article provides an overview of various trends seen among Broadway shows in the 2025-26 season
• They include family dramas; true-crime accounts; stories of friendship; parodies; LGBTQ-centric productions; and more

It’s showtime! Across Broadway stages, the curtain rose on nearly three dozen new productions this season. That meant a never-seen-before experience at each one of them. After all, no two shows — or even no two performances — are exactly alike. 

At the same time, shows often exhibit variations on similar themes, from big-picture to up-close connections. As the 2025-26 season concludes, New York Theatre Guide recaps the trends that wove Broadway plays and musicals together over the past year.

If a particular detail or theme appeals to you, the shows that share that theme might be next on your must-see list.

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The 2025-26 Broadway season: Facts and stats

What was your favorite new show? What story held a surprise you didn’t see coming? What tops your must-see list? Relive the season in a flash with these quick stats about the Broadway shows that premiered in the past season — starting with Call Me Izzy and ending with The Lost Boys — in a period that ran from April 28, 2025 to April 26, 2026.

34 shows opened on Broadway this season.

No matter your taste, Broadway has an option to match. Whether you’re into catchy tunes or intricate dramatic storylines, the Theatre District has you covered — many times over.

A total of 34 shows opened on Broadway in the 2025-2026 season. This number is on trend with past seasons, with an average of 35-40 shows. This season's tally includes:

• 6 new musicals
• 5 musical revivals
• 9 new plays
• 11 play revivals
• 3 specials

Shows had 6 different pathways to Broadway.

How does a show get to Broadway? There's no one-size-fits-all approach.

• 4 new shows made their world premieres on Broadway
• 10 revivals and specials debuted directly on Broadway
• 6 had a previous Off-Broadway run
• 6 had a pre-Broadway run elsewhere in North America
• 6 transferred from London’s West End, England’s theatre hub akin to Broadway
• 2 came to Broadway as part of their national tours

Over a dozen celebrities took their first Broadway bows.

Bank on stars to fill seats at Broadway shows. This season’s productions featured dozens of celebrities we’ve come to know from theatre, movies, and TV alike. New additions to the Broadway scene, making their debuts, include:

• Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Dog Day Afternoon)
• Madeline Brewer, Patrick Ball, and Alden Ehrenreich (Becky Shaw)
• Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson (The Fear of 13)
• Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle (Proof)
• Luke Evans, Harvey Guillén, Juliette Lewis, Josh Rivera, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez (The Rocky Horror Show)
• Mark Consuelos (Fallen Angels)
• Taraji P. Henson (Joe Turner's Come and Gone)
• Keanu Reeves (Waiting for Godot)
• Lesley Manville (Oedipus)

Discover more celebs currently on stage.

2025-26 Broadway trends

From broad themes like life-inspired dramas to granular commonalities like title cards on stage, this season’s Broadway plays and musicals (plus a few off Broadway) had many noteworthy similarities that stood out. Click the links on each show's title for tickets.

True stories on stage

Figures and events from history — from 1912 to the more recent past — appear in this season’s Broadway plays and musicals. Life shone through in dramatizations of stories about justice, bigotry, survival, and a voyage on a ship of dreams that became a nightmare.

• Every Brilliant Thing: Duncan Macmillan and Johnny Donahoe drew from personal experiences for this story of a person’s response to their mom’s dark depression.
• The Fear of 13: A Pennsylvania man’s wrongful conviction brought him to death row, where he spent 22 years before DNA evidence proved his innocence.
• Dog Day Afternoon: A botched Brooklyn bank heist became a media circus in the summer of 1972, inspiring the 1975 Al Pacino film and now this stage version.
• Titanique: The doomed maiden voyage of the ocean liner Titanic, and the Oscar-winning film about it, loosely inspire the parody musical.
• Giant: Children’s author Roald Dahl is called out for antisemitism as his latest book is about to come out.
• Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride: The standup comedian reflects on his life.
• Punch: British teenager Jacob Dunne accidentally kills a man, serves his time, and gets involved in a restorative justice program.
• The Queen of Versailles: Wealthy socialites Jackie and David Siegel face challenges during the 2008 financial downturn.

Out-of-the-box revivals

Fresh interpretations of old plays and musicals revealed new dimensions of familiar works.

• Cats: The Jellicle Ball: The queer-forward reboot imagines the characters not as felines, but as people at a ballroom contest in Harlem.
• Proof: The play’s first Broadway revival features a primarily Black cast and a set with walls that are sometimes see-through to underscore the themes of transparency and truth.
• Waiting for Godot: The revival swapped the show's usual only set piece — a tree — for an enormous tube-like structure, suggesting the circular nature of the play.
• Oedipus: The family tragedy is set during a present-day election night as a clock ticks down to an inevitable outcome.

Interactive experiences

The invisible wall between performers and spectators dissolves as audience members are invited to step in as active participants instead of staying passive viewers.

• Every Brilliant Thing: Daniel Radcliffe interacts with theatregoers from their seats and invites some of them on stage.
• Titanique: The entire audience can sing the final rendition of “My Heart Will Go On” in this musical sendup of Titanic.
• The Rocky Horror Show: Audience participation isn’t exactly encouraged, but shout-outs come anyway thanks to the film adaptation's history.
• Masquerade: Audiences move through this reinvention of The Phantom of the Opera in small groups as they interact with the performers.

True-crime dramas

Court is in session. Legal thrillers and procedurals are popular material for podcasts, documentaries, and TV series, and now plays.

• The Fear of 13: A death row inmate in Pennsylvania fights to prove his innocence.
• Punch: A British man who accidentally kills another man serves his time and learns about restorative justice.
• Dog Day Afternoon: Would-be bank robbers bungle a bank robbery in Brooklyn in August 1972.
• Kenrex: A serial criminal who terrorized a Missouri farming community is killed in broad daylight, and no one steps up to testify.

Family matters

Count on your relatives to stoke drama and joy. Playwrights have always relied on family dynamics for inspiration and always will.

• Proof: A daughter grapples with the prospect that she’s inherited both her father’s genius and his mental illness.
• Death of a Salesman: An aging patriarch and his wife and sons chase an elusive American dream.
• Oedipus: A leader destroys himself and his family by fulfilling an unthinkable prophecy.
• Little Bear Ridge Road: A man grieving his father’s death forges a tentative relationship with his aunt.
• Marjorie Prime: Family members reckon with the increasing role of artificial intelligence in their lives — and deaths.

Best friends forever

You’ve got to have friends. Plays and musicals with non-romantic relationships at the core of the story provided stirring reminders of that.

• Beaches: The lifelong bond between two very different women sustains them to the end.
• Dog Day Afternoon: The friendship between two would-be bank robbers humanizes them.
• Fallen Angels: Two good friends' bad behavior provides the laughter in this vintage comedy.
• Waiting for Godot: Two pals are caught in a never-ending waiting game.
• Art: Three friends find themselves at odds about the value of a plain white painting.

Spoofing: the sincerest form of flattery

New and old musicals looked to the art of the parody to drive their narratives.

• Titanique: The campy show spoofs the movie Titanic and Celine Dion, raiding the pop star’s catalog of hits.
• Schmigadoon!: Like its TV source material, the musical spins Broadway gold from loving spoofs of Golden Age musicals.
• The Rocky Horror Show: Back for its second Broadway revival, the show gleefully borrows from, and sends up, B-horror movies.

Broadway's big gay jamboree

Queer representation in pop culture shapes visibility, empathy, and acceptance. Look to Broadway plays and musicals for LGBTQ+ depictions that are all over the spectrum as this trend has gained even more steam since Oh, Mary! set it in motion last season.

• Cats: The Jellicle Ball: The show is reframed as a celebration of queer ballroom culture.
• Dog Day Afternoon: Bank robber Sonny’s homosexuality is more overt on stage than the movie source.
• Titanique: The show leans hard into queer jokes and aesthetics, including numerous RuPaul's Drag Race references.
• The Lost Boys: A character sings that being queer could be his “superpower.”
• Beaches: Cee Cee Bloom performs in the Ramrod Club, a gay joint, in the musical. CC Blooms, a real gay bar in Edinborough, is named after the character.
• The Rocky Horror Show: The show courses along on an anything-goes vibe.
• Schmigadoon!: Two closeted characters come to accept themselves as gay.
• Little Bear Ridge Road: An aunt tells her nephew that his homosexuality is the “most interesting thing” about him.

The mother lode

Maternal figures were key to plays and musicals in which they showed off free spirits, came with sharp tongues and matching wits, and displayed steely courage.

• Becky Shaw: Susan is a mom who’s an equal-opportunity offender when she speaks.
• Titanique: Rose’s mom calls her “a walking yeast infection.” Move over, Mommie Dearest.
• The Lost Boys: When the stakes are life-and-death, mama Lucy steps up.
• Ragtime: Mother’s self-awakening and desire to change propels the story.
• Every Brilliant Thing: An unseen depressed mother’s actions set the play in motion.
• Beaches: We meet a stage mom with no filter and a domineering rich mom who goes by the rules. Later, their daughters become mother figures themselves.
• Marjorie Prime: A woman grapples with the version of her mom she wants to remember.
• Mamma Mia!: Donna makes it work as a nontraditional mom.
• Liberation: The very consideration of motherhood shifts across generations.

Little kids, big impressions

Kids say the darnedest things, and that made for some memorable moments this season.

• Beaches: Little Cee Cee will say anything about anybody.
• Schmigadoon!: Little Carson turns the tables on the oppressive mayor in a snappy response to her ridicule.
• Ragtime: Little Edgar sets the entire show in motion and prophetically implores Harry Houdini to “Warn the Duke!”
• Joe Turner's Come and Gone: Little Zonia and Eugene forge a sweet bond at the boarding house apart from the adults.

Signs of the times

Broadway has always been a place to see names up in lights on theatre marquees. This season, several shows — like Ragtime and The Lost Boys — were also inspired to post neon signs of the show’s titles on stage. The trend continued with Messy White Gays and Kenrex off Broadway, too. What’s in a name? Brand recognition, of course.

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