I enter Broadway lotteries the way other New Yorkers check the weather — daily, reflexively, and with a running commentary. The tracker says I’ve won 150 of them, which sounds like bragging until you realize how many I’ve lost to get there. The single biggest lesson from all that losing: not all lotteries are the same game. Some are a coin flip. Some are the Powerball with better lighting. This is my honest fall 2026 ranking — where your entry is a real shot, and where it’s a donation to the gods of hope.
How I ranked these
Producers don’t publish entry counts, so anyone quoting exact percentages is making it up. What we do know: industry estimates put the popular lotteries around a 3–5% win rate, and per our 2026 lottery & rush census, about 70% of shows on the boards run a lottery, rush, or under-35 program. Within that, the spread is enormous. A play in its final weeks draws a fraction of the entries that Wicked pulls on a Saturday. So the ranking below is built on three things: how famous the show is, how long it’s been running, and how close it is to closing. Fame and tourists push odds down. Closing notices and weekday matinees push them up.
The lost causes (enter anyway, expect nothing)
These are the lotteries you enter as a lifestyle, not a plan.
- Wicked — $55 via Broadway Direct. Two decades of tourists can’t be wrong, and they’re all in this lottery with you.
- Hamilton — the famous $10 lottery lives in the Hamilton app. Everyone on earth enters. Treat a win like a lightning strike: thrilling, rare, slightly suspicious.
- The Lion King and Aladdin — both via Broadway Direct. Disney prices, Disney demand.
- Stranger Things: The First Shadow — $45 via Broadway Direct. Netflix fandom plus a closing date of January 3 means demand isn’t cooling any time soon.
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — TodayTix lottery. See: Netflix fandom, but with wands.
The middle of the pack
Long-runners with steady demand but not stampedes. Six ($45), MJ the Musical ($49), Hadestown ($49), The Book of Mormon ($49 via Lucky Seat, plus a TodayTix rush), and Paranormal Activity ($40 via Lucky Seat, closing January 3, so entries will spike as the date gets close — enter now, not in December). You’ll win these eventually if you’re consistent. Tuesday through Thursday entries are where it happens; the competition thins out dramatically midweek. The Hadestown lottery is the clearest case: the same $49 seat every night of the week, and a Wednesday pool a fraction of Saturday’s.
The easiest wins: shows on the clock
Here’s the actual arbitrage. A show announces its closing date, the tourists never knew it existed, and suddenly the lottery pool is you and a few hundred theater kids. Everything below has a date on it, and most of it is Off-Broadway — which is the point. The autumn board is thinner on Broadway closings than the summer was, and the cheap seats moved downtown with it.
- Lean-To — closes October 10. $28 TodayTix rush at 59E59. A small house, which is the kind of room where a cheap seat is also a good seat.
- Kramer/Fauci — closes October 24. $25 TodayTix rush, fees included, at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Twenty-five dollars all-in, in DUMBO, for two men arguing about an epidemic.
- ANON – a tempest at our kitchen table — closes November 1. $35 TodayTix rush at the Newman Mills Theater. The Tempest moved to a family dinner table, and the entry pool is smaller than the house.
- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee — closes October 11. $39 Telecharge lottery at New World Stages. A revival everyone claims to love and few have bothered to enter for.
- Heathers: The Musical — closes November 8. $38 Telecharge lottery, and a $38 rush at 11 a.m. if you lose. Two shots a day at the same price is unusual.
The sleepers (running, cheap, under-entered)
- The Rocky Horror Show — a $30 TodayTix lottery, and a $30 general rush at the Studio 54 box office if you lose. One of the cheapest ways into a Broadway house, and Roundabout backs it up with HipTix at $30 for the 18–40 crowd and $10 for high schoolers. Extended through February 2027.
- Operation Mincemeat — $59 via Telecharge, or $49 in-person rush at the Golden. Runs to February 2027, so no closing panic — just a cult-hit comedy that tourists haven’t fully found yet.
- Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) — $48, Telecharge. New musical, no closing date in sight, entry pool still small.
- The Play That Goes Wrong — $35 digital lottery, entries open two days out. Off-Broadway at New World Stages, no closing date announced, and the lottery is friendlier than the set is to the cast.
- Buena Vista Social Club — $49, Telecharge. The band alone is worth triple that.
How to actually convert these odds
Three moves. One: enter every eligible performance, not just Friday night — midweek matinees are where win rates roughly double, because the crowd fighting you shrinks by more than half. Two: stack entries across the easy tier instead of pounding on Wicked’s door. Five entries in the friendly tier beat one long-shot entry at Wicked’s door every day of the week. Three: build the habit — the full playbook is in How to Win Every Broadway Lottery, and if you’re not sure which app runs what, the platform guide untangles TodayTix vs. Telecharge vs. Broadway Direct vs. Lucky Seat in one read.
Every lottery above, with entry links and prices, lives on the Broadway lottery hub — it’s updated daily, because closing dates on Broadway move faster than the 6 train at rush hour.
