Broadway's most prestigious night returns on Sunday when the 79th Annual Tony Awards take over Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Hosted by Pink, the ceremony promises a full slate of competitive awards alongside live performances from Queen Latifah, Whitney Leavitt, and Alex Newell - a lineup that signals an evening designed as much for entertainment as for recognition.
The Frontrunners: What to Expect in the Major Categories
The race for Best Musical is shaping up as one of the evening's most closely watched contests. Schmigadoon!, a meta musical that draws on the Golden Age Broadway tradition, leads the field alongside The Lost Boys, a pop-rock adaptation of the beloved 1987 vampire film. Both productions enter the night with 12 nominations each, making a clear winner difficult to call with confidence.
Schmigadoon!, based on the Apple TV+ series, follows a couple trapped in an alternate-universe town locked inside a 1940s-style musical - a premise that puts the form itself under examination. The Lost Boys, meanwhile, trades on nostalgia and a high-energy rock score. The Tony electorate has historically rewarded ambition in form, but it has also surprised observers often enough that predictions carry real uncertainty.
The Best Play race carries stakes that extend beyond the stage. Liberation is widely considered the likely winner - and if it prevails, it would mark the first time since 2009 that a woman has claimed Best Play, and the first time since 1989 that an American woman has done so. That gap is striking for an industry that frequently celebrates its progressive credentials. Other contenders in the category include Giant, The Balusters, and Little Bear Ridge Road.
In the acting categories, Daniel Radcliffe is among the leading candidates for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, for his role in Every Brilliant Thing - a production that has drawn sustained attention throughout the season.
How to Watch the 2026 Tony Awards Live
In the United States, CBS holds the broadcast rights for the ceremony. Cord-cutters have several options to follow the action live:
- YouTube TV - includes CBS and comes with a 21-day free trial
- Hulu + Live TV - also carries CBS with a free trial period available
- Paramount+ - streams the ceremony live on the Premium tier ($13.99/month); Essential subscribers ($8.99/month) can watch on demand the following day
- Walmart+ trial - a $1 introductory offer includes access to Paramount+ Essential, with on-demand availability from Monday
UK viewers face a less straightforward situation: as of now, no British broadcaster has acquired rights to the 2026 ceremony, leaving fans in the region without a direct domestic option.
Watching From Abroad: Where a VPN Becomes Useful
For viewers who are traveling outside the US - or who are based in a country where the ceremony has not been licensed - a VPN offers a practical route to accessing their home-country stream, provided doing so does not breach the terms of service of the relevant platform.
A VPN, or virtual private network, works by routing your internet connection through a server in a location of your choosing, masking your actual IP address and making it appear as though you are browsing from that server's country. For streaming purposes, this means a US subscriber temporarily abroad can connect to a US-based server and access CBS or Paramount+ as they ordinarily would from home.
The privacy dimension is worth understanding independently of the streaming use case. VPNs encrypt the data passing between your device and the VPN server, which adds a meaningful layer of protection on public or untrusted networks - hotel Wi-Fi being the obvious example for a traveler. That encryption prevents third parties on the same network from intercepting browsing activity or login credentials.
Not all VPN services offer equivalent reliability. For live-streaming events, connection stability and server capacity matter considerably - a provider with a broad network of US servers is better positioned to handle demand during a high-traffic broadcast window. NordVPN is among the well-regarded options for this use case, offering a wide server selection and consistent performance for streaming.
One practical note: streaming platforms periodically update their detection methods for VPN traffic. A provider that works reliably one week may encounter blocks the next, which is why choosing a service with an active record of maintaining streaming access is worth the extra consideration.
Why This Ceremony Matters Beyond the Red Carpet
The Tony Awards occupy a particular cultural position - they are the only major American awards ceremony dedicated exclusively to live theatre, a medium that resists the kind of algorithmic distribution that defines film and television. A Tony win can transform a production's commercial fortunes, extending its run and opening the door to national touring productions and international licensing deals.
The 79th edition arrives at a moment when Broadway is still consolidating its recovery from a period of significant disruption. Attendance figures have been building steadily, and the nominations landscape this year reflects genuine range - from the formally adventurous to the crowd-pleasing. Whether Schmigadoon! or The Lost Boys takes the top prize, and whether Liberation delivers that long-overdue recognition for a woman playwright, the evening is set to carry weight well beyond the ceremony itself.
