78th Tony Awards

The 78th Tony Awards were held on June 8, 2025, to recognize excellence in Broadway productions during the 2024–25 season. The ceremony took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and was broadcast on CBS, with streaming available on Paramount+ and Pluto TV. The show was hosted by Cynthia Erivo.

The musicals Death Becomes Her, Buena Vista Social Club, and Maybe Happy Ending led the field with ten nominations each. Maybe Happy Ending emerged as the night's most-awarded production, winning six Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Actor in a Musical. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play Purpose won Best Play.

Other top acting honors went to Nicole Scherzinger (Best Actress in a Musical), Cole Escola (Best Actor in a Play), and Sarah Snook (Best Actress in a Play).

Pluto TV streamed the pre-ceremony broadcast The Tony Awards: Act One, hosted by Darren Criss and Renée Elise Goldsberry. Brian Stokes Mitchell served as the announcer.

Cynthia Erivo served as host. Following the ceremony, NPR praised her comedy, the Associated Press described her as an "amiable host", and Deadline called her "absolutely flawless". Vulture praised her opening number, noting she had "a really smart strategy...: joking to a minimum (not her strong suit), vocals on max (there’s no one better)".

The ceremony opened with a brief sketch of Erivo walking from her dressing room to the stage, while various people advise her on what she should do for the opening number, before Oprah Winfrey advises her to be herself. Upon reaching the stage, Erivo sang "Sometimes All You Need Is a Song", an original piece written by Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul which referenced various nominees. She was joined by the Broadway Inspirational Voices choir partway through the number.

Erivo and Sara Bareilles performed a duet of "Tomorrow" for the In Memoriam section of the ceremony. The original cast of Hamilton also performed a medley of eight songs from the show in honor of the musical's 10th anniversary, choosing to wear all-black rather than their original costumes. The closing number was an adapted version of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," with lyrics changed to reference events of the night.

The Tony Awards eligibility dates for the 2024–2025 Broadway season were April 29, 2024, through April 27, 2025. Productions were also required to meet all other eligibility criteria as set forth by the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League. There are 41 legitimate Broadway-eligible theaters in which a production must be performed in to attain eligibility for award consideration. Nominations for the 2025 Tony Awards were announced on May 1, 2025.

The nominees for the 78th Tony Awards were announced on May 1, 2025, at 8:30am EDT by Wendell Pierce and Sarah Paulson. The winners were announced on June 8, 2025. The ceremony was hosted by Cynthia Erivo. The awards were largely spread out across various shows, with no one show "sweeping" the awards. Vulture criticized the choice to exclude some awards from the main ceremony, including Best Book, Best Score and Harvey Fierstein's acceptance of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Purpose, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, won Best Play. Jacobs-Jenkins had received Best Revival of a Play for his play Appropriate at the 77th Tony Awards. Maybe Happy Ending received six awards including Best Musical, while its director Michael Arden won Best Direction of a Musical and Darren Criss won Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Oliver, the first Asian-American man to do so. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard won Best Revival of a Musical with Nicole Scherzinger winning Leading Actress in a Musical, the second Asian-American woman to do so. Paul Tazewell won Best Costume Design in a Musical for his work in Death Becomes Her. Actors who won on their Broadway debut included Sarah Snook who won Best Actress in a Play for her 26 roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray, most notably Dorian Gray, and Jak Malone, who won Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role in Operation Mincemeat as Hester Leggatt.

Other winners included Cole Escola who won Best Actor in a Play for their role in Oh, Mary! as Mary Todd Lincoln and Kara Young who won Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role in Purpose as Aziza Houston. Escola was the first non-binary actor to win the category, while Young became the first Black actor to win a Tony Award in two consecutive years. Francis Jue won Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his role in Yellow Face, and said in his acceptance speech that 20 years prior, "he was gifted his tuxedo from another Asian actor who wanted him to wear it to the Tonys". Jue was the second Asian-American man to win the category, the first being B.D. Wong for M. Butterfly in 1988.

In an upset to some critics, the revival of Gypsy, headed by Audra McDonald, who is the most awarded performer in Tony history, did not win a single award. Additionally, Death Becomes Her, which tied for most nominated with ten nominations, won only a single award for costuming.

Source:

‡ The award is presented to the producer(s) of the musical or play.

Those being recognized with non-competitive awards are below.

Presenters

Performances

The ceremony featured performances from 11 nominated musicals, along with four additional performances.

The ceremony drew an average of 4.85 million viewers on CBS, making it the most-viewed Tonys ceremony since the 73rd Tony Awards in 2019. Figures from Paramount+, which was up 208%, brought total viewership up to 5.1 million. This follows the news that the 2024-25 season was the highest grossing season ever for Broadway.

The New York Times wrote that the ceremonies' highlights were the Hamilton 10-year anniversary performance, Cynthia Erivo's hosting abilities, and the performances of Nicole Scherzinger and Jonathan Groff. Erivo received widespread acclaim for her hosting abilities with Deadline Hollywood declaring, "[She] did an absolutely flawless job as host...This is what an awards show should look like". Entertainment Weekly cited her as one of the show's highlights saying, "From the opening seconds, Erivo defied expectations" adding, "Throughout the ceremony, she played to her strengths and it made for a superb outing as a host."

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