Let’s use What’s New on Broadway in NYC: 15 Shows to See in 2026–27

From Dolly Parton’s life story to Tom Hiddleston in Shakespeare, here are the buzziest new Broadway openings to plan for this season.

New York City is magical at night, especially if you take in a Broadway play. Image by ed2456 from pixabay via Canva
New York City is magical at night, especially if you take in a Broadway play. Image by ed2456 from pixabay via Canva

Fall and winter are always exciting times on Broadway, and this year there’s a lot to choose from.

Billy Crystal returns with a deeply personal one-man show. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Joe Keery make their Broadway debuts. Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell take on Shakespeare. Rosamund Pike arrives from London, while Raúl Esparza returns to a Broadway musical after a 14-year absence.

There are also some intriguing firsts. The Fantasticks, one of the longest-running musicals in theater history, has never actually played Broadway. Paranormal Activity brings the horror franchise to the stage with an entirely new story. And DOLLY: A True Original Musical brings Dolly Parton’s life and music to Broadway just months after her death.

Do note, however, that many of these shows have limited runs, so don’t delay in buying your tickets.

Here are 15 new shows to put on your Broadway list.

1. Paranormal Activity

Can a Broadway play actually scare you?

Inspired by the movie franchise but telling a completely new story, Paranormal Activity follows James and Lou, an American couple who move from Chicago to London. Their new home turns out to be considerably less welcoming than expected.

Cher Álvarez (Grey’s Anatomy, Shameless) makes her Broadway debut as Lou, opposite Travis A. Knight. Director Felix Barrett created the immersive theatrical phenomenon Sleep No More, so expect more than conventional things-that-go-bump-in-the-night scares.

Dates: August 25, 2026 through February 28, 2027
Theater: August Wilson Theatre, 245 West 52nd Street
Tickets: Paranormal Activity official site

2. School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play

Mean Girls goes to Ghana, but Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy has something more serious on its mind.

Set at an elite girls’ boarding school in 1986, the play centers on Paulina, the school’s reigning queen bee, who expects to become Miss Ghana. Then a new student arrives from America and changes the competition.

Denée Benton (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812), Patina Miller (Pippin) and Jasmine Amy Rogers (BOOP! The Musical) head the cast. Beneath the comedy are questions about beauty standards, race and colorism.

Dates: September 28 through November 15, 2026
Theater: Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street
Tickets: Manhattan Theatre Club

3. Other Desert Cities

Other Desert Cities with Allison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Photo by Emilio Madrid
Other Desert Cities with Allison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Photo by Emilio Madrid

Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Broadway? Yes.

The Veep star makes her Broadway debut alongside Ed Harris (To Kill a Mockingbird), Allison Janney (Six Degrees of Separation), Lily Rabe (The Merchant of Venice) and Joe Keery (Stranger Things), also making his Broadway debut.

Jon Robin Baitz’s play takes place over Christmas in Palm Springs, where a daughter arrives at her parents’ home with a memoir that threatens to reveal a long-buried family secret.

So much for a peaceful family holiday.

Dates: October 18, 2026 through January 17, 2027
Theater: Hudson Theatre, 141 West 44th Street
Tickets: Other Desert Cities official site

4. 860

Billy Crystal in 860. Photo by Avery Brunkus
Billy Crystal in 860. Photo by Avery Brunkus

Billy Crystal knows how to hold a Broadway stage by himself. He won a Tony Award for 700 Sundays, his autobiographical show about his father. Now he has another very personal story to tell.

The title 860 refers to the address of the Pacific Palisades house where Crystal and his wife lived for 46 years and raised their family. It was destroyed in the 2025 Los Angeles fires.

Written and performed by Crystal, the show looks at the memories contained within a home that no longer exists, with the humor you would expect from him.

Dates: October 21, 2026 through February 14th, 2027
Theater: Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th Street
Tickets: 860 official site

5. The Imaginary Invalid

If you’ve ever convinced yourself you have an illness after Googling your symptoms, Molière might have understood.

Bill Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) adapts and stars in this new version of the 17th-century comedy about a wealthy hypochondriac obsessed with doctors, ailments and treatments. His imagined illnesses create very real problems for everyone around him.

Dates: October 22 through November 22, 2026
Theater: Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street
Tickets: Roundabout Theatre Company

6. A Few Good Men

A Few Good Men. Photo by Emilio Garda
A Few Good Men. Photo by Emilio Garda

“You can’t handle the truth!”

Aaron Sorkin’s military courtroom drama returns to Broadway with Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) as Lt. Col. Nathan Jessep and Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) as Lt. Daniel Kaffee.

The play launched Sorkin’s career and became the 1992 movie starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.

Dates: October 29, 2026 through January 10, 2027
Theater: Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 West 65th Street
Tickets: Lincoln Center Theater

7. WANTED

The Wild West gets a very different pair of outlaws.

Inspired by a true story, WANTED follows twin sisters Mary and Martha Clarke, Black women who could pass for white in 1890s Texas. When their family and inheritance are threatened, the sisters take matters into their own hands.

Solea Pfeiffer (Hadestown) and Liisi LaFontaine (Dreamgirls in London) star in the new musical, which looks at race and identity through the lens of the American West.

Dates: Opens November 8, 2026, no closing date announced
Theater: James Earl Jones Theatre, 138 West 48th Street
Tickets: WANTED official site

8. Here There Are Blueberries

Here There Are Blueberries. Photo courtesy of OMDKC
Here There Are Blueberries. Photo courtesy of OMDKC

It started with a photo album.

In 2007, an album of photographs from the Nazi era was delivered to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The pictures showed Nazi officers and staff relaxing and socializing near Auschwitz, a chilling contrast to what was taking place nearby.

Here There Are Blueberries follows the museum researchers attempting to identify the people in the photographs and understand what the images reveal.

Created by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich with Tectonic Theater Project, the play was a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama.

Dates: November 9, 2026 through January 10, 2027
Theater: Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street
Tickets: Here There Are Blueberries official site

9. Downstate

This may be the most challenging play of the season.

Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park) focuses on four men convicted of sex offenses who have completed their prison sentences and now live together in an Illinois halfway house.

What happens after someone has served his time? Does punishment ever really end? Downstate deliberately asks questions that may make audiences uncomfortable.

Joe Mantello directs a cast that includes K. Todd Freeman, Francis Guinan, Liza Colón-Zayas (The Bear) and Thomas Sadoski.

Dates: Opens November 15, 2026, through January 10th
Theater: Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street
Tickets: Downstate official site

10. The Fantasticks

“Try to Remember.”

You probably know the song. And you may think The Fantasticks has already been on Broadway.

It hasn’t.

The little musical that opened Off-Broadway in 1960 went on to become one of the longest-running musicals in theater history. Now it finally makes its Broadway debut in a newly reconceived production.

This time the young lovers are two boys, and their meddling fathers have become meddling mothers, played by Ruthie Ann Miles (The King and I) and Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer (Spamalot). Zane Phillips makes his Broadway debut as El Gallo.

Dates: November 16, 2026 through February 7, 2027
Theater: Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street
Tickets: Second Stage Theater

11. Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by Marc Brenner
Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by Marc Brenner

Tom Hiddleston (Betrayal, and Loki to Marvel fans) and Hayley Atwell (A View from the Bridge, Mission: Impossible) are Beatrice and Benedick, one of Shakespeare’s great sparring couples.

Jamie Lloyd, whose Broadway productions include Sunset Blvd. and A Doll’s House, directs.

For anyone who has forgotten the plot, Beatrice and Benedick spend a remarkable amount of time insisting they don’t love each other. You can probably guess how that turns out.

Dates: November 19, 2026 through January 10, 2027
Theater: Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway
Tickets: Much Ado About Nothing official site

12. Inter Alia

Inter Alia stars Rosamund Pike. Photo courtesy of LeadGen Assets
Inter Alia stars Rosamund Pike. Photo courtesy of LeadGen Assets

Rosamund Pike comes to Broadway for the first time.

The Gone Girl and Saltburn star plays Jessica Parks, a London Crown Court judge who is accustomed to weighing evidence and making difficult decisions. When a crisis strikes her own family, questions about justice become intensely personal.

Suzie Miller, who wrote Prima Facie, is the playwright. Pike won acclaim for the role in London before bringing it to New York.

Dates: December 1, 2026 through February 21, 2027
Theater: Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street
Tickets: Inter Alia official site

13. Galileo

Galileo. Photo courtesy of OMDKC
Galileo. Photo courtesy of OMDKC

Raúl Esparza is back in a Broadway musical.

The four-time Tony nominee (Company) plays Galileo, the astronomer whose discoveries brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church. This is Esparza’s first Broadway musical in 14 years.

But don’t expect a conventional history lesson. Galileo has a contemporary rock score by Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner and a book by Danny Strong. Joy Woods (The Notebook, Gypsy) plays Galileo’s daughter Virginia, with Jeremy Kushnier (Footloose) as Cardinal Barberini.

Dates: Opens December 6, 2026; closing date to be announced
Theater: Shubert Theatre, 225 West 44th Street
Tickets: Galileo official site

14. Awake and Sing!

Welcome to the Bronx, 1933.

Clifford Odets’ Depression-era drama follows three generations of the Berger family living under one roof, each with a different idea about money, love and the American dream.

The cast is a Broadway-lover’s dream: Danny Burstein (Moulin Rouge!), Jessica Hecht (Summer, 1976), Micaela Diamond (Parade), Jeremy Shamos (Clybourne Park) and Will Pullen.

First produced by the legendary Group Theatre in 1935, Awake and Sing! is both a family drama and a piece of New York theater history.

Dates: Opens January 7, 2027, for a limited run; closing date to be announced
Theater: Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street
Tickets: Manhattan Theatre Club

15. DOLLY: A True Original Musical

Is there anyone who didn’t like Dolly Parton?

The singer, songwriter, actress and entrepreneur was closely involved in bringing her life story to Broadway before her death on August 25 at age 80. That makes the arrival of DOLLY: A True Original Musical particularly poignant, a chance to revisit Parton’s remarkable journey through the music she created.

The musical follows Dolly from Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains to international stardom, with “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” along with new songs Parton wrote for the show. She co-wrote the book with Maria S. Schlatter.

Dates: Opens January 19, 2027, the date that would have been Parton’s 81st birthday; closing date to be announced
Theater: St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street
Tickets: DOLLY official site

Where to Book Broadway Tickets

For show information and links to official ticket sellers, Broadway.org, the Broadway League’s official consumer site, is a good place to start. You can also buy directly from theater box offices, which can eliminate some online and 

Seeing More of New York

Broadway nights leave your days wide open. If you’d like to fit in a few of the city’s big sights between shows, the New York CityPASS covers admission to the Empire State Building and the American Museum of Natural History, plus your choice of three more, including Top of the Rock, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry.

Tickets are good for nine days from your first visit, so it’s easy to plan them around your showtimes. Most attractions need a timed reservation, which you can make in the CityPASS app after you buy.

Need a hand planning your trip? Here are the sites and services we rely on most, from booking tools to travel products we love.

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Meryl Pearlstein

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