Broadway Set Another Box Office Record in 2025-2026, Crossing $1.91 Billion

The 2025-2026 Broadway season closed with cumulative grosses of $1,910,903,835, setting a new annual record, according to figures released by The Broadway League on May 27. The figure surpassed the prior season’s $1,892,650,959 by 0.96 percent.

The headline comparison is complicated by the calendar. The 2024-2025 season ran 53 weeks rather than the standard 52, a correction the League makes roughly every seven years to keep weekly reporting aligned with the actual year. In its detail report, the League provided an adjusted basis for last season’s totals reflecting a 52-week length: $1,845,375,536 in grosses, 14,316,455 in attendance, and a $128.90 average paid admission. Measured against that adjusted basis, this season’s grosses rose 3.5 percent, attendance rose 1.8 percent, and average ticket pricing rose 1.7 percent.

Those gains roughly tracked U.S. inflation over the same window. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7 percent from December 2024 to December 2025 and accelerated to a 3.8 percent annual rate by April 2026, driven in part by energy price increases tied to the U.S.-Iran conflict. Per-week Broadway grosses grew faster than the lower CPI reading and roughly in line with the higher one. Average ticket pricing trailed inflation by between one and two percentage points.

Broadway welcomed 14,577,322 people across 13,416 performances over the season. Capacity averaged 90.8 percent, narrowly below the prior season’s 91.2 percent. The average ticket price was $131.09.

The composition of that audience shifted notably between musicals and plays. Musicals accounted for 77 percent of all tickets sold but saw attendance fall from 11,758,735 in 2024-2025 to 11,232,843 in 2025-2026. Play attendance moved the other direction, rising from 2,875,162 to 3,316,722. Plays also commanded higher average prices, at $139.55 per ticket compared to $128.83 for musicals. 

That dynamic was visible in last season’s top-grossing weeks. The 2024-2025 box office was anchored in May by three limited-run plays carrying A-list names: Good Night, and Good Luck with George Clooney, Othello with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, and Glengarry Glen Ross with Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk. In a single week last May, those three productions combined for $10.3 million in grosses. 

The final week of the season, ending May 24, 2026, brought in $40.7 million across 40 productions, with houses averaging 89.8 percent of capacity. Every Brilliant Thing led all productions at $2.3 million as audiences sought one of the final opportunities to see Daniel Radcliffe’s Tony-nominated performance in the solo play, which set a house record at the Hudson Theatre for the second consecutive week. Hamilton followed at $2.04 million, with The Lion King at $1.98 million, Death of a Salesman at $1.64 million, and MJ at $1.59 million rounding out the top five.

Among productions running in both this final week and the comparable week of the prior season, the performance was mixed. Oh, Mary! gained 29 percent year over year, MJ gained 28 percent, Hadestown gained 22 percent, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child gained 15 percent. On the decline side, Death Becomes Her fell 44 percent, Wicked fell 38 percent against last May’s movie-tie-in peak, Buena Vista Social Club fell 32 percent, and The Outsiders fell 27 percent. Ragtime and The Lost Boys nearly tied as the highest-grossing new musicals of the final week, each near $1.3 million.

The 2025-2026 season opened 35 new productions, comprising 12 musicals, 21 plays, and two specials.