The 2024 Tony Awards by the numbers

Read on to learn fun facts and stats about the nominees, venue, and more trivia associated with the 77th annual theatre awards ceremony, hosted on June 16.

It's 2024, the year of the 77th annual Tony Awards, with 28 plays and musicals from the past year vying for 26 awards that celebrate main thing: the best Broadway theatre of the season.

Those are just a few of the numbers associated with this year's ceremony, set to take place on June 16 at 8 p.m. at the David H. Koch Theater on 63rd Street and Broadway, from where they'll also be broadcast nationwide on CBS. Ahead of the 2024 Tony Awards, read on to learn fast facts, fun stats, and notable achievements among the 204 Tony Award nominees, and tune in to see which shows come out number one.

Get tickets to Tony-nominated Broadway shows on New York Theatre Guide.

77 years of the Tonys

The 2024 Tony Awards are the 77th annual ceremony. The first Antoinette Perry Awards took place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in 1947. It wasn't broadcast on TV yet, the winners received different physical prizes depending on their gender, and there were only eight awards categories:

• Actor in a Play
• Actress in a Play
• Best Performer in a Musical
• Outstanding Newcomer
• Director
• Choreographer
• Costume Designer
• Composer

26 competitive award categories

Since their inception, the Tony Awards now give prizes to performers, directors, writers, choreographers, and designers. Most categories are split between plays and musicals.

There are also multiple special Tony honors awarded each year: Lifetime Achievement, Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre, Regional Theatre Tony Award, and other Special Tony Awards. Learn more about the special Tony Awards and this year's honorees.

1 new venue

For the first time in Tony Awards history, the ceremony is being held at the David H. Koch Theater in the Lincoln Center performing arts complex. For most of the year, the 2,586-seat Koch is home to New York City Ballet performances.

The Tonys were also hosted at a new venue in 2023: the United Palace in Washington Heights, now primarily used as a movie theatre.

36 eligible shows

This figure includes 15 new musicals, 10 new plays, six musical revivals, and five play revivals that opened during the 2023-24 Broadway season. Ultimately, 28 of these were nominated for at least one Tony Award.

A total of 39 shows opened in the Broadway season, but three were special events that were not eligible in the competitive categories. These included a solo comedy show by Alex Edelman (which received a non-competitive Special Tony Award this year), a theatrical concert by Melissa Etheridge, and a magic show by Antonio "El Mago Pop" Diaz.

2 shows with 13 nominations

A play and a musical are tied for the most 2024 Tony Award nominations. The play is Stereophonic, a play with music about a '70s rock band on the cusp of superstardom. The musical is Hell's Kitchen, inspired by the life of and set to the hit R&B songs of 16-time Grammy winner Alicia Keys.

In 2023, Some Like It Hot, the musical adaptation of the same-named Billy Wilder film, was also the most nominated show of the season with 13 nods.

1 record-breaking play

Stereophonic's 13 nods made it the most nominated play in Tony Awards history, overtaking previous record holder Slave Play, which earned 12 nods in 2020. The show has a chance to become the winningest play in Tonys history; the current record holder is The Coast of Utopia, which won 7 in 2007.

In addition, Stereophonic is also the first play to ever be nominated for the Tony for Best Orchestrations. Will Butler and Justin Craig co-orchestrated the play's '70s rock-inspired songs, played on stage by the fictional band.

1 powerhouse theatre company

Manhattan Theatre Club, a nonprofit theatre company that produces Broadway and Off-Broadway shows at three venues, is known for producing excellent new plays, often with big-name stars. The organization particularly shone this year, with all three of its 2023-24 Broadway plays nominated for Best Play.

The fall production was Jocelyn Bioh's Jaja's African Hair Braiding, about a day in the life of African immgrant workers at a Harlem hair braiding shop. In winter, MTC produced Prayer for the French Republic on Broadway, which it had premiered off Broadway to critical acclaim and multiple awards in 2021. The play follows the shared struggles between multiple generations of a French Jewish family.

The currently running spring play is Mary Jane, in which Rachel McAdams plays a single mother who leans on a supportive network of women as she cares for her chronically ill child. That acclaimed show is running through June 30.

Learn more about Manhattan Theatre Club and its plays.

70 first-time nominees

There are 70 first-time Tony Award nominees this year, encompassing all areas of artistry: performance, writing, direction, choreography, and design. Twenty-four are nominated for making their Broadway debuts, and of those, nine are actors, listed below:

• Brody Grant (Best Leading Actor in a Musical: The Outsiders)
• Eli Gelb (Best Featured Actor in a Play: Stereophonic)
• Juliana Canfield (Best Featured Actress in a Play: Stereophonic)
• Maleah Joi Moon (Best Leading Actress in a Musical: Hell's Kitchen
• Rachel McAdams (Best Leading Actress in a Play: Mary Jane)
• Sarah Pidgeon (Best Featured Actress in a Play: Stereophonic)
• Sky Lakota-Lynch (Best Featured Actor in a Musical: The Outsiders)
• Tom Pecinka (Best Featured Actor in a Play: Stereophonic)

The rest are designers, choreographers, and writers. Additionally, a few designers, like Illinoise lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker, are nominated for their first lead project. Baker has been an associate on numerous Broadway shows before, but Illinoise is his first as the head designer. That's a great accomplishment, too!

65-year nominee age range

This year's youngest nominee is 21-year-old Best Leading Actress in a Musical nominee Maleah Joi Moon. She plays Ali, a teenager inspired by a young Alicia Keys, in Hell's Kitchen. Moon made her professional acting debut with Hell's Kitchen off Broadway in fall 2023 and her Broadway debut with the show this spring.

EGOT honoree Jonathan Tunick is the oldest nominee at 86; he's up for Best Orchestrations for Merrily We Roll Along. The esteemed orchestrator is best known for working on Stephen Sondheim's musicals, Merrily being one of them.

Among the acting nominees, however, the oldest is Jessica Lange at 75. The actress already has two Oscars and a Tony under her belt, and she's nominated this year for playing tough matriach Phyllis in Paula Vogel's Mother Play.

8 double nominees — and 2 triple

No two dual nominees are alike. Some are nominated for making multiple contributions to one show, like Shaina Taub, up for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score for Suffs. Others are nominated for different shows, like Isabella Byrd. She's nominated for Best Lighting Design of a Play and Musical, respectively, for An Enemy of the People and Cabaret.

Still other nominees are actually groups, like the scenic design collective dots, composed of Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk, and Kimie Nishikawa. They're competing against themselves for Best Scenic Design of a Play, for Appropriate and An Enemy of the People.

And two people are triples nominee this year: One is costume designer Dede Ayite, and the other is set and costume designer David Zinn. Both are competing against themselves — and they're indomitable designers to keep an eye out for.

Here are all the 2024 Tony Award nominees with multiple nominations.

• Cody Spencer (Best Sound Design of a Musical: Here Lies Love and The Outsiders)
• David Zinn (Best Scenic Design of a Play: Jaja's African Hair Braiding and Stereophonic; Best Costume Design of a Play: An Enemy of the People)
• Dede Ayite (Best Costume Design of a Play: Appropriate and Jaja's African Hair Braiding; Best Costume Design of a Musical: Hell's Kitchen)
• dots (Best Scenic Design of a Play: Appropriate and An Enemy of the People)
• Isabella Byrd (Best Lighting Design of a Play: An Enemy of the People; Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Cabaret)
• Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Justin Levine (Best Orchestrations and Best Score: The Outsiders)
• Natasha Katz (Best Lighting Design of a Play: Grey House; Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Hell’s Kitchen)
• Shaina Taub (Best Book and Best Original Score: Suffs)
• Tom Scutt (Best Scenic and Costume Design of a Musical: Cabaret)
• Will Butler (Best Orchestrations and Best Score: Stereophonic)

3 former Elphabas in Wicked

Before going on to earn Tony Award nominations this season, three women played the same Broadway lead role: Elphaba in the long-running musical Wicked.

Lindsay Mendez played the witch in 2013, and she's now up for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Merrily We Roll Along. But Shoshana Bean, nominated in the same category for Hell's Kitchen, played Elphaba earlier, in 2005. And who stepped into the role directly afterward? Eden Espinosa, who's now up for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Lempicka.

2 nominated sibling duos

Siblings who get nominated together stay together. Brother and sister duos are each up for musical awards this year.

Brothers Rick and Jeff Kuperman are up for Best Choreography for The Outsiders, and sisters Maria and Sonia Friedman are nominated for Merrily We Roll Along. Maria Friedman is up for Best Direction of a Musical, and Sonia Friedman is up for Best Musical Revival as a producer on the show.

3 consecutive nominations

Actress Kara Young is on a roll. She made her Broadway debut in the play Clyde's in 2021, performed in Cost of Living in 2022, and followed it up with Purlie Victorious in 2023. She's been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play all three times; she's up for Purlie this year. Maybe the third nomination is a charm!

Eleven other nominees are also on a hot streak, up for an award for the second year in a row. Actor Brian d'Arcy James, playwright Amy Herzog, directors Kenny Leon and Jessica Stone, and numerous designers are among them.

1 nomination 4 decades in the making

Longtime Broadway mainstay Kecia Lewis is finally getting her due. She's the nominee with the longest gap between her Broadway debut and her first Tony Award nomination: 43 years.

She first hit the Broadway stage as a replacement in the original production of Dreamgirls, which premiered in 1981, and she's now up for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for playing piano teacher Miss Liza Jane in Hell's Kitchen. She's already won Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards for her performance, a well-deserved honor for her Hell's Kitchen performance and for a lifetime of Broadway excellence.

Get tickets to Tony-nominated Broadway shows on New York Theatre Guide.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Kecia Lewis's involvement in Dreamgirls. She was in the original Broadway production, but not the original cast.