Kara Young, Justin Peck, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins win Tony Awards for the second year in a row

After taking home top prizes in 2024, numerous artists — including an actor, a playwright, and a choreographer — are back in the winners' circle in 2025.

They're on a streak — the 2025 Tony Awards saw numerous first-time winners, but it also, perhaps more rarely, saw multiple winners who were just up on that stage accepting awards last year. Actor Kara Young, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and choreographer Justin Peck, all 2024 Tony Award winners, also clinched prizes in 2025.

Young won for Best Featured Actress in a Play; 2025 was her fourth consecutive time being nominated for a Tony (making her the first Black performer and only second-ever performer to do so) and second time winning after Purlie Victorious in 2024 (making her the first Black performer to win twice consecutively).

Through August 31, she plays Aziza, a guest at the tense family reunion of the politically illustrious Jaspers. She unwittingly ends up the middle of the chaos when the relatives' long-held grievances boil over.

"I feel incredibly grateful, an overwhelming amount of gratitude," Young said in the Tonys press room after her win. "I don't think I really fully understand the gravity of [this win], but I feel grateful to be doing this every day."

Additionally, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is also a back-to-back winner, winning Best Play for Purpose after winning Best Revival of a Play in 2024 for Appropriate, his Broadway debut. He is the first Black playwright to win Best Play since August Wilson for Fences in 1987.

Purpose also won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama in May.

"This play only happened because I had the opportunity to work with one of the best acting ensembles in the world and work with the Phylicia Rashad [as director] and really just be in a room where we just played make believe all day," Jacobs-Jenkins said. "This is like the icing on the cake, [but] I want to be around inspiring people. I want to push my limits and my craft and what what makes me me."

Like Young, Peck has been nominated for every Broadway credit he's had. He made his debut in 2018 with a revival of Carousel, winning Best Choreography that same year. His 2024 win was for choreographing the Sufjan Stevens-scored dance musical Illinoise, and in 2025, he wins alongside Patricia Delgado, a first-time winner and Peck's wife, for creating the electrifying Cuban social dances of Buena Vista Social Club, set to the music of the same-named band from Havana.

"It's not just making these steps," Peck said. "It's one small fraction of what it is about: how you meld with the creative team, the cast, and just all the influences in the room."

Other 2024 winners nominated again this year included Just in Time star Jonathan Groff, up for Best Leading Actor in a Musical after winning the 2024 category for Merrily We Roll Along, and John Proctor Is the Villain director Danya Taymor, who won for directing the musical The Outsiders last year.

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Photo credit: Kara Young, Justin Peck, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. (Photos courtesy of productions)