The 78th Annual Tony Awards, with host Cynthia Erivo, will be broadcast and streamed live from Radio City Music Hall tonight, celebrating the Broadway 2024-2025 Broadway season. with performances, mostly from the nominated musicals, and acceptance speeches from the Tony Award nominees who win.

Tony Award printable ballot

List of winners

How to Watch

Simple answer: From 8 to 11 pm EST, Sunday, June 8,  the Tony Awards will air live on CBS (CBS broadcast network, CBS app, CBS.com) and stream live on Paramount + (but only for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers. not Paramount+ Essential subscribers. You can try Paramount + free for a week.)

Theater lovers answer: The “Tony show” is in three acts, over a total of six hours:

1. First, if you live in New York, you can watch the red carpet as the stars enter Radio City Music Hall, showing off their glamorous garb  and saying some upbeat things, starting at 5 p.m. EST on NY1.
2. Then, there is a “pre-show,” from the stage of Radio City Music Hall, called Act One, with hosts Darren Criss, a first-time Tony nominee, and Tony winner Renee Elise Goldsberry starting at 6:40 p.m. This is available for free on  Pluto TV, where you have to sign up (or sign in) and click on the “Live Music” channel within the Entertainment category. (I found this glitchy and confusing last year.)
   The winners of some of the 26 Tony award categories will be announced, and give their acceptance speeches (which will be summed up briefly during the main broadcast.)
3. The main broadcast on CBS and Paramount+ from 8 to 11 will present the “major” awards, including all eight categories for performers. This is also when the casts of the nominated musicals will perform.

This year tickets to attend the ceremony in person at Radio City Music Hall were available to the general public (at a minimum cost, in the nosebleed seats, of $600) but they are officially sold out.

Why Watch?

For those not obsessed with Broadway, the main reason to watch is surely the performances, but the show is studded with celebrities you wouldn’t necessarily associate with Broadway, from George Clooney and Keanu Reeves to Oprah Winfrey, and with outsized personalities who soon may be more widely celebrated.

The Host

Cynthia Erivo won a Tony Award in 2016 for her breathtaking Broadway debut in “The Color Purple,” with a voice of both exquisite nuance and shattering power, then left for Hollywood. But her theater cred skyrocketed this past year when she portrayed “Elphaba” in the movie adaptation of “Wicked.” Expect fewer jokes and more singing (and dancing?):  “I want my part of the Tonys to feel like a Broadway show.”

Performances

This year, the original Broadway cast of Hamilton will reunite to celebrate the show’s tenth anniversary.
(Full list of participating cast members, many of whom have become fan favorites: Carleigh Bettiol, Andrew Chappelle, Ariana DeBose, Alysha Deslorieux, Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Sydney James Harcourt, Neil Haskell, Sasha Hutchings, Christopher Jackson, Thayne Jasperson, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Stephanie Klemons, Morgan Marcell, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Javier Muñoz, Leslie Odom, Jr., Okieriete Onaodowan, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Jon Rua, Austin Smith, Phillipa Soo, Seth Stewart, Betsy Struxness, Ephraim Sykes and  Voltaire Wade-Greene.)

Cast members will perform numbers (or medleys) from each of following musicals of the season (all of which have received multiple nominations — and all of which are still running on Broadway):

Buena Vista Social Club
Dead Outlaw
Death Becomes Her
Floyd Collins
Gypsy
Maybe Happy Ending
Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical
 Pirates! The Penzance Musical
Sunset Blvd.
Just In Time
Real Women Have Curves 

Also performing: Broadway Inspirational Voices, which received a 2019 Tony Honor.

Sara Bareilles will perform during the In Memoriam segment.

(I have heard not a peep from the producers of the show about how they will be handling the nominations for straight (non-musical) plays. I suspect they, as usual, will get short-shrift, which is too bad, because many are terrific this year.)

Presenters

The thirty scheduled: Sara Bareilles, Danielle Brooks, Kristin Chenoweth, Bryan Cranston, Auli’i Cravalho, Ariana DeBose, Charli D’Amelio, Jesse Eisenberg, Tom Felton, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Julianne Hough, Katie Holmes, Samuel L. Jackson, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Allison Janney, Rachel Bay Jones, Adam Lambert, Lea Michele, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kelli O’Hara, Sarah Paulson, Carrie Preston, Keanu Reeves, Lea Salonga, Jean Smart, Ben Stiller, Aaron Tveit, Oprah Winfrey, Alex Winter, Michelle Williams..
Brian Stokes Mitchell will be the show announcer.

Honorees

Harvey Fierstein will get a lifetime achievement award, and Celia Keenan-Bolger the 2025 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, recognizing her long history of advocacy work through the arts. Both are terrific (if very different) speakers.

Nominees

Among the nominees this year you’d likely recognize even if you’ve never seen a Broadway show, familiar screen or pop stars: George Clooney, Darren Criss, Mia Farrow, Daniel Dae Kim, Audra McDonald, Bob Odenkirk, Justina Machado, Nicole Scherzinger, Sadie Sink, Sarah Snook.
But it’s the newly-discovered talents, and their clever and/or heartfelt acceptance speeches, that can generate the most morning-after chatter. Be prepared for some surprises (i.e. from Cole Escola)

Insidery Stuff:

2025 Tony Awards: Who SHOULD Win, and Why

Personal preferences (not predictions), my own and from a poll of New York Theater readers 

The Tonys are a culmination of a month-long theater award season. Check out my New York Theater Awards Calendar and Guide 2025 which explains the history of each award (including the Tonys) and links to the lists of winners (many of which/whom have been nominated for Tonys as well.)