Ben Zauzmer’s math-driven Tony Awards 2026 forecast gives Schmigadoon! a narrow edge in best musical, with the show carrying just better than a 50-50 chance as Broadway heads toward the June 7 telecast on CBS and Paramount+.
That prediction matters because this year’s race is not just about one marquee category. Zauzmer’s model also points to Bess Wohl’s Liberation as a 3-in-5 favorite for best play, while David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters arrived with momentum after winning honors from this year’s Outer Critics Circle Awards and Drama Desk Awards.
Zauzmer built the forecast using historical data, the number of other categories a show is nominated in, previous theater honors, aggregated critic predictions and betting markets. In his read of best musical, Schmigadoon! sits in front, but The Lost Boys and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) are close enough to keep the race alive. That makes the category feel more open than a simple favorite-versus-field story, even with the model leaning one way.
The bigger picture is that the Tony Awards have not offered many truly crowded best musical fields in recent years. In the past two decades, there has been only one race with at least three nominees widely considered potential frontrunners, and two years ago The Outsiders got past Hell’s Kitchen and Suffs for the prize. This year’s setup, with Schmigadoon!, The Lost Boys and possibly Two Strangers in the conversation, has some of that same uncertainty without a clear runaway.
Ragtime is another show the model treats as a force. It emerged as the favorite for best revival of a musical after sweeping through the precursors, and that strength carries into the acting categories as well. Joshua Henry of Ragtime is the most likely winner among this year’s 41 acting nominees, and Caissie Levy of the same production sits just above the 50-50 mark in her category, with Marla Mindelle of Titaníque in second place behind her.
If Henry and Levy both win, it would be only the third time this century that a musical took both leading acting Tony Awards. Death of a Salesman, meanwhile, has won three separate Tonys for best revival, a reminder that the Tony race often rewards productions with staying power as much as individual performances.
For now, though, all of it remains prediction, not result. The next fixed point is the June 7 telecast on CBS and Paramount+, when the numbers stop being probabilities and start becoming winners.
