Tony Nominations 2026: The International Perspective

Welcome to my regular roundup of theater headlines from around the world. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.

• The nominations for the 2026 Tony Awards were announced this morning, and while it’s too early to tell which of the nominated shows will go on to have an international life, we can find some hints of the possibilities with a look at the title pages of their Playbills. That’s where you’ll find, near the top of the page, the (usually very long) list of producers backing each show—and where it’s become increasingly common to spot the names of international producers who have ponied up for a Broadway production in the hopes of staging the show in their own market sometime down the line. Whether that future production materializes depends on a slew of factors—including box office and awards love—but those producers lists nontheless give us a glimpse of who around the world is interested in what:

  • The Lost Boys, based on the 1980s vampire flick, scored a dozen nominations including best musical (as did fellow frontrunner Schmigadoon!). Tucked into the producers list of that one is Stage Entertainment, the European megaproducer with a hefty presence across the continent in countries including France, Spain, and, of course, Germany—which has a proven affinity for vampire tuners, given the enduring success there of Tanz der Vampire (Dance of the Vampires). Also notably present among the backers: Toho Co. Ltd., part of the Tokyo-based entertainment conglomerate that is one of the biggest producers of musicals in Japan.

  • Is Titaníque setting sail for Seoul? That’s what I wondered when I spotted OD Company/OD Universe & Co. in the Playbill for that show’s Broadway production, which earned four nominations including best musical. OD is the prominent, Seoul-based production company run by Chunsoo Shin, the ambitious Korean producer who was the solo lead producer of The Great Gatsby, which launched on Broadway in 2024 and has since begun to make its way around the world.

  • The buzzy revival CATS: The Jellicle Ball, which reimagines Andrew Lloyd Webber’s surreal global smash through the lens of queer ballroom culture, already has transatlantic player Michael Harrison and his Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals on board, so it’s not hard to imagine Jellicle Ball finding its way to London at some point. Also among the show’s supporters is, of all things, another musical: Chimney Town, the in-development show from a transpacific team of Japanese and American creators and producers (including composer Frank Wildhorn) that has made it a point to “support the ecosystem” by investing in other Broadway shows on its way to the stage.

  • And on the relatively short list of co-producers of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (nine nominations) is Trafalgar Entertainment. That London-based firm operates theaters across the U.K. and Australia—venues that can always use new content for their stages including, for instance, a popular Broadway revival of this cult classic.

• Speaking of nominations: Stage Entertainment’s Cinderella will square off against ATG Entertainment Spain’s stagings of Wicked and Les Misérables for the top musical trophy at the fourth annual Talía Awards, the Madrid equivalent of the Tony Awards, writes Adela González Pérez in BroadwayWorld Spain. Set to be handed out May 18, the Talías also include a category for “Best Hispanic-Authored Performing Arts Show in New York,” with WP Theater’s Torera, Audible Theater and P3 Productions’ Mexodus, and Repertorio Español’s Los Soles Truncos among this year’s nominees.

• A panoply of data points from the Korean market (plus a couple from Japan) hit the papers over the last couple of weeks:

  • Solo attendance at Korean plays and musicals are on the rise, with single ticketbuyers now accounting for 57% of audiences for plays and 55% for musicals, according to an analysis of 2025 performance and ticket data sold through NOL Ticket by NOL Universe and reported by Junggeun Koo in Maeil Business News. Weekday bookings have also become increasingly common, indicating that theater, “once mainly consumed as weekend date [activities] or special-occasion events,” is “now taking root as a solo after-work hobby,” Koo writes.

  • Related: President Jae Myung Lee has “stepped up his attendance at cultural events [including musicals] after working hours, in what is seen as an effort to communicate his policies and values to the public in a less formal setting,” reports Whan-woo Yi in The Korea Times. Lee’s attendance at films and performances, including the stage musical The Long, Long Night, “reflects his long-standing belief in promoting culture as a key national value,” says a political pundit quoted in the story.

  • Based on data from the first two months of this year, the number of advance-sales tickets purchased by foreigners for Korean musicals has more than doubled year-over-year, according to a report from Korean broadcaster KBS. Compared to 2023, the figures are seven times higher this year; at one recent Seoul performance of the musical Death Note, foreigners “took up some 900 out of the total 1,200 seats for the day’s show.”

  • The Musical Subcommittee of South Korea’s Culture and Arts Policy Advisory Committee—itself part of the nation’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism—announced a second meeting of industry leaders to “review the current status and discuss future policy directions,” writes Pyunghee Park in The Asia Business Daily. Among notable recent Ministry initiatives: upping the 2026 budget for governmental funding of musicals from 3.1 billion won (~$2.1 million) to 24.4 billion won (~$16.5 million); expanding support for the rental of dedicated creative musical spaces and pilot performances to establish a stable production environment for creators and producers; bolstering programs that support talent development and overseas expansion; and establishing a new financial support system “to boost the self-sustainability of the arts industry, including musicals, by introducing new art industry loan and guarantee programs for 2026 (loans totaling 50 billion won [~$33.9 million] and guarantees totaling 23.7 billion won [~$16 million]).”

  • Two major forces in the Seoul musical market are partnering “for joint musical production and future collaboration on performance content,” according to Park in a separate story in The Asia Business Daily. The first musical to be jointly produced by Lotte Cultureworks—operator of Korea’s first musical-exclusive theater, Charlotte Theater—and production company Show Note will be Siren, based on a popular web novel and webtoon.

  • Musical theater translator Seok-hee Hwang has bowed out of the upcoming Korean production of Frozen following allegations of sexual crimes, according to a story in ChosunBiz. Hwang had already begun work on the translation; his “existing translation material will be used, and the existing production team will complete the remaining portions” ahead of the Korean debut of Frozen in August.

  • Meanwhile, the Tony Awards success of Maybe Happy Ending has helped make K-musicals a hot commodity in Japan, according to a new report titled “2.5D Musicals and K-Musical: Changes in the Landscape and Growth Drivers of the Japanese Musical Market,” published by the Korea Creative Content Agency and spotlit by Jonggil Lee in The Asia Business Daily. “Leading Japanese musical production companies—Shiki Theatre Company, Toho Musical, and Horipro—began to increase licensed performances of original Korean musicals” after that pivotal Tony triumph last year. K-musicals scheduled for runs in Japan this year include Sylvia, Alive, Damaged Fruit, The Last Case, Eternity, and Rappaccini’s Garden; “[m]ost of these are licensed performances featuring Japanese actors.” Also noted in the story: “The size of the Japanese stage (musical and theater) market reached an all-time high of 230.6 billion yen [~$1.46 billion] in 2024. Pia Research Institute forecasts that the market will grow at an average annual rate of 2.4%, reaching 260 billion yen [~$1.65 billion] by 2030.”

• “Theatre touring ‘in crisis’ as performances of plays drop 70%” on the road in the U.K., reads the headline of a story by Ian Young from the BBC. According to Arts Council England’s State of Touring Report, “the number of touring performances [in the U.K.] declined by 24% between 2019 and 2024. For drama plays, that figure was 72%, while musicals and dance each had reductions of almost 50%.” Touring companies and venues are grappling with increased costs, decreased income, and challenges that have been “accelerated and exacerbated by the pandemic and funding austerity. Much of the sector ‘needs not just a sticking plaster but urgent corrective action’, the report said.”

• In Australia, “[m]usicals appear unbruised by cost-of-living pressures, with the genre selling a record 4.4 million tickets and clocking up more than half a billion dollars [~$360 million US] in revenue” in 2024, notes Will Nicholas in a Canberra Times story about the return of The Lion King to Sydney.

• And in Hamburg, “Stage Entertainment counts around two million musical visitors annually,” writes Petra Volquardsen in a story in German outlet NDR about the history of the city’s musical market, timed to the 40th anniversary of the Hamburg opening of Cats on April 18, 1986.

I’m back to my high-seas hijinks next year on The Broadway Cruise 4, where the just-announced lineup of talent includes Patti LuPone(!), Marc Shaiman, Adrienne Warren, and more more more. I’ll be leading panels and hosting intimate interviews onstage with many of the big names on board, in between stops at Cozumel and the Bahamas and, of course, a packed schedule of great performances by this shipful of stars. Sound like fun? Check out the itinerary—or take the plunge and book a cabin!—here.

This story from last week is full of surprising things I had not previously known, including the fact that Dubai is essentially a brand name that you have to get permission from the city to use in the title of your new musical: