Ben Zauzmer put tony awards 2026 on a numbers-first sheet, and his model gives Schmigadoon! just better than a 50-50 chance to win best musical. The June 7 telecast on CBS and Paramount+ is still spread across 26 categories, but the best-musical race looks tighter than the rest of the field.
Zauzmer, a contributing writer and author of Oscarmetrics: The Math Behind the Biggest Night in Hollywood, said he plugs in Tonys data from the season to determine the odds that each nominee in each category goes home a winner. “This year's category-by-category look at which musicals and plays have the best chance of claiming honors during the June 7 telecast on CBS and Paramount+, based on a model built on historical data.”
Schmigadoon! Faces Two Rivals
The Lost Boys and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) are the other contenders in best musical, which makes this a three-way race rather than a one-title runway. Zauzmer’s model points to a narrow lead, not a lock, and that is the practical takeaway for anyone tracking the top musical prize ahead of the telecast.
The model does not rest on one input. Zauzmer said it uses which other categories a show is nominated in, previous theater honors, aggregated critic predictions, and betting markets. He put it more bluntly in the article: “How do we know? Math.”
Bess Wohl and Ragtime
Bess Wohl has a 3-in-5 chance to win best play for Liberation, while David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters comes in with honors from this year’s Outer Critics Circle Awards and Drama Desk Awards. That split tells the story of the play races: one frontrunner with a clear edge, and another title that has already picked up outside validation from two major awards bodies.
Ragtime emerged as the favorite to win a best show trophy, and the model’s acting picture is equally concentrated. Joshua Henry is the most likely winner among this year’s 41 acting nominees, and Caissie Levy sits just above the 50-50 mark.
Henry, Levy, and History
If Henry and Levy both win, it would be only the third time this century that a musical has taken both leading acting categories. That makes the acting races the clearest place where the night could shift from a standard awards sweep to a cleaner statement about one production’s reach across categories.
Death of a Salesman remains part of the historical frame here: it won the second-ever Tony for best play and three separate Tonys for best revival. The present race is different, though, because Zauzmer’s model is trying to quantify not legacy but season-wide momentum, and it is doing so across all 26 categories before June 7.
That leaves the reader with a straightforward bet: Schmigadoon! is the slight best-musical favorite, but the Tony Awards 2026 field is still close enough that a few strong precursor indicators could flip the board. If you are tracking one thing, watch whether the musical acting prizes line up with the best-musical vote; if they do, the night could narrow fast around one title.
