2026 New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards

2025-2026 season winners :

The New York Drama Critics' Circle has awarded:

• Best Play - Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road
• Best Musical - No award given.
• Best Individual Performance - Alden Ehrenreich of Becky Shaw
• Best Ensemble Performance - the cast of Death of a Salesman.

Special Citations:

• Lincoln Center Theater revival of Ragtime;
• Wallace Shawn and André Gregory for career achievement
• Qween Jean for the costume design of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Liberation and Saturday Church.

2024-2025 season winners :

• Best Play - Purpose (Branden Jacobs-Jenkins)
• Best Musical - Maybe Happy Ending (Will Aronson and Hue Park)
• Best Individual Performance - Dead Outlaw (Itamar Moses, David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna)
• Best Ensemble Performance - The cast of Liberation

Special Citations:

• Cole Escolar for Oh, Mary!
• Cats: The Jellicle Ball
• David Greenspan for lifetime achievement

The New York Drama Critics’ Circle comprises 22 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines, wire services and websites based in the New York metropolitan area. The New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, which has been awarded every year since 1936 to the best new play of the season (with optional awards for foreign or American plays, musicals and special achievements), is the nation's second-oldest playwriting award, after the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/LITTLE-BEAR-RIDGE-ROAD-Named-Best-Play-AtNew-York-Drama-Critics-Circle-Awards-20260430

Updated On: 5/1/26 at 12:28 AM

These awards match pretty well with the board consensus, including the shrug over what should be the best musical.

Interesting that of the eligible Broadway musicals, it's Schmigadoon with the most support from the critics. Critics make up a minuscule number of the Tony voter pool, and the third viable best musical winner in the mix, Titanique, was not eligible. But I do see this as a bit of a bellweather in an awards system that is idiosyncratic and not the best for predictions. The DCC do tend to have a good track record of awarding musicals that go on to win Best Musical and, as critics, their opinion carries some amount of weight. In the last 15 years, they've only awarded four musicals that did not go on to win best musical: Matilda, Shuffle Along, Tootsie, and Dead Outlaw. (Their awards don't always align with the Tonys because they include off-broadway and have awarded shows that then went on to transfer and win, like Hamilton and Band's Visit, which allowed Shuffle Along and Tootsie to win those years).

This being said, I'm surprised they opted for no winner instead of coalescing around Mexodus as a consensus. It looks like they haven't awarded an off-Broadway production that did not transfer since 1997 with Violet.

Updated On: 5/1/26 at 12:16 PM

You guys inspired me to do a bit of a deep dive into the Best Musical precedent, for anyone interested:

https://reddit.com/r/Broadway/comments/1t11gj7/new_york_drama_critics_circle_winners_ballots_and/