How accurate is the per-category prediction model at predicting Tony Awards?

Each Tony category uses its own blend recipe tuned across 12 Tony seasons. Best Musical: 45% critic + 45% audience + 10% cast acting Tony nominations count (a same-ballot voter-sentiment signal that activates after Tony nominations are announced; pre-noms, the model falls back to the prior precursor blend). Best Play: 100% precursor awards combining Drama League/OCC/Drama Desk top-category signal with Pulitzer, NYDCC, and Tony nomination breadth. Best Revival of a Musical: 95% audience + 5% broad precursor signal, with weights fit by log-loss on the displayed softmax. Best Revival of a Play: 20% critic + 60% audience + 20% Awards Score. Best Musical and Best Revival of a Musical also penalize shows without a Best Direction of a Musical Tony nomination (no winner has lacked one in 11 seasons) and jukebox musicals (no wins outside the COVID-truncated 2019-20 ceremony). Across 12 seasons the model picks the eventual winner 44 of 47 times (93.6%).

Tony Awards

Tony Awards Predictions

14 seasons of data-driven Tony predictions. Each category gets its own blend of critic, audience, and precursor signal.

These are data-driven, not editorial. Rankings are what our model outputs when trained on past Tony data — not personal picks. Expect surprises when audience buzz or precursor signal pushes a show above conventional favorites.

Live · Predictions

2026-2027 Tony Awards

9 shows still to openNominations ∼ May 2027Ceremony ∼ June 2027

See our picks for all 4 categories →

Track Record

44/47

Our #1 matches the Tony winner across 12 seasons · 93.6% match rate

Best Musical12/12 100%

Best Musical

12/12100%

Best Play12/12 100%

Best Play

12/12100%

Best Revival Musical11/11 100%

Best Revival Musical

11/11100%

Best Revival Play9/12 75%

Best Revival Play

9/1275%

Season by season

Season	Mus.Musical	PlayPlay	R. Mus.Revival Musical	R. PlayRevival Play
2025-2026	✓	✓	✓	✓
2024-2025	✓	✓	✓	✓
2023-2024	✓	✓	✓	✓
2022-2023	✓	✓	✓	✓
2021-2022	✓	✓	✓	✓
2019-2020	✓	✓	—	✓
2018-2019	✓	✓	✓	✗
2017-2018	✓	✓	✓	✓
2016-2017	✓	✓	✓	✓
2015-2016	✓	✓	✓	✓
2014-2015	✓	✓	✓	✗
2013-2014	✓	✓	✓	✗

Where we missed (3)

Our #1 didn't match the Tony winner in these category-seasons. Most are voter-sentiment upsets (cultural significance, star power) that blended scores can't fully capture.

2018-2019 · Best Revival Play

Our #1: The Waverly Gallery

Tony: The Boys in the Band

2014-2015 · Best Revival Play

Our #1: The Elephant Man

Tony: Skylight

2013-2014 · Best Revival Play

Our #1: The Glass Menagerie

Tony: A Raisin in the Sun

A note on the number: the match rate above is measured on the same 12 seasons the recipe weights were tuned on. Under leave-one-season-out cross-validation — refitting the weights on the other 11 seasons and predicting the held-out one — the model matches 93% of past winners (40 of 43). The remaining gap is a handful of voter-sentiment upsets (cultural significance, star power) that no critic, audience, or precursor signal will fully capture.

vs GoldDerby's expert predictions

10 seasons · 39 races

Broadway Scorecard

37/39

94.9% match rate

GoldDerby experts

32/39

82.1% match rate

We picked the winner, they missed

6 races

They picked the winner, we missed

1 race

By category

Category	Us	GoldDerby
Best Musical	10/10	9/10
Best Play	10/10	8/10
Best Revival of a Musical	9/9	8/9
Best Revival of a Play	8/10	7/10

Races we caught, they missed

2024-25 · Best Play

Winner: Purpose

GoldDerby picked: Oh, Mary!

2024-25 · Best Revival of a Play

Winner: Eureka Day

GoldDerby picked: Yellow Face

2023-24 · Best Musical

Winner: The Outsiders

GoldDerby picked: Hell's Kitchen

2022-23 · Best Revival of a Play

Winner: Topdog / Underdog

GoldDerby picked: A Doll's House

2019-20 · Best Play

Winner: The Inheritance

GoldDerby picked: Slave Play

2017-18 · Best Revival of a Musical

Winner: Once on This Island

GoldDerby picked: My Fair Lady

Races they caught, we missed

2014-15 · Best Revival of a Play

Winner: Skylight

We picked: The Elephant Man

GoldDerby publishes panel-of-experts predictions before each Tony ceremony. Their pundits are not tuned to past Tony outcomes; ours is. Same contests, different methodologies, directly comparable on whether the #1 pick won. Updated after each ceremony.