The 79th Annual Tony Awards arrive at Radio City Music Hall in New York City with a ceremony that places live performance at the center of an evening built to celebrate the best Broadway has produced over the past season. Hosted by Pink, the June 2026 event will feature performances by Queen Latifah, Whitney Leavitt, and Alex Newell, alongside a nomination field that includes some genuinely competitive races and at least one historically significant potential outcome.
The Awards That Will Define the Night
The most closely watched category, Best Musical, is shaping up as a genuine contest between two productions that could not be more different in temperament. Schmigadoon! - adapted from the Apple TV+ series of the same name - is a self-aware love letter to Golden Age Broadway, following a couple trapped inside an idealized 1940s musical world. Its meta-theatrical premise has earned it significant critical attention, and with 12 nominations, it enters the evening as a leading contender.
But The Lost Boys, a pop-rock adaptation of the 1987 vampire film, arrives with equal nomination weight - also 12 - and a very different kind of energy. Pop-rock musicals have historically divided Tony voters, but they have also produced genuine upsets when audience enthusiasm translates into industry affection. Neither production should feel confident walking into Radio City.
Best Play carries weight beyond the trophy itself. Liberation is widely expected to win, and if it does, the award would mark the first time since 2009 that a woman has won Best Play, and the first time since 1989 that an American woman has taken the prize. That gap - now stretching across several decades - has become a quiet but persistent point of conversation in Broadway circles. Other contenders in the category include Giant, The Balusters, and Little Bear Ridge Road, though Liberation appears to hold the clearest path to victory.
In the acting categories, Daniel Radcliffe is positioned as a leading candidate for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, for his work in Every Brilliant Thing. Radcliffe has spent the years since his most famous role building a stage career with notable ambition, and this performance appears to represent a further consolidation of that reputation.
How to Watch the 2026 Tony Awards Live
In the United States, the ceremony airs live on CBS. Viewers who have cut the cord can access CBS through live TV streaming services including YouTube TV, which offers a 21-day free trial, and Hulu + Live TV. Paramount+ is the dedicated streaming home of the event: subscribers on the Premium plan ($13.99 per month) can watch live, while those on the Essential plan ($8.99 per month) gain on-demand access the following day.
There is also a lower-cost route worth knowing about. A 30-day Walmart+ trial, available for $1 at time of writing, includes access to the Paramount+ Essential tier - meaning the ceremony would be available on-demand the morning after broadcast. For viewers who can wait a few hours, that represents one of the most cost-effective ways to catch the full show.
UK-based Broadway fans face a harder situation: no broadcaster in the region has acquired rights to the 2026 ceremony, leaving the event without a domestic streaming home across the Atlantic.
Watching From Outside Your Home Country
Geo-restrictions are a routine feature of broadcast rights agreements, and the Tony Awards are no exception. If you are a US subscriber traveling abroad during the ceremony, your usual CBS or Paramount+ stream may be inaccessible depending on where you are. A Virtual Private Network - a VPN - can address this by routing your connection through a server located in your home country, making the service you pay for behave as though you never left.
A VPN works by encrypting your internet traffic and tunneling it through a server in a chosen location. For the purposes of accessing geo-restricted content you are legitimately entitled to, it is a straightforward and widely used tool. NordVPN is a frequently recommended option for this use case, given its broad server network and reliable performance with major streaming platforms. Before using any VPN to access streaming content, it is worth reviewing the terms of service of the platform in question, as policies on VPN use vary by provider.
The 79th Tony Awards represent an evening with genuine stakes - historically significant potential wins, competitive nomination races, and a performance lineup with real drawing power. Whether you watch from a living room in New York or a hotel room abroad, the action is accessible with the right setup.
