Tickets went on sale this morning. NYC Broadway Week is back for the fall, 25 shows are doing two-for-one, and the performances run Tuesday, September 8 through Sunday, September 20. Thirteen days, half price, and a pile of fine print that most people scroll straight past and then get annoyed about at checkout.
Here is the whole thing, including the parts the press release leaves out and the shows where you should absolutely ignore Broadway Week and take the lottery instead.
What Broadway Week actually is
It is run by NYC Tourism + Conventions with the Broadway League, twice a year — once in the dead of winter, once in the back-to-school lull that is right now. The pitch is two-for-one tickets. The mechanic is slightly different from the pitch, and the difference matters.
You do not get one free ticket per full-price ticket. Every ticket in the order is issued at 50% off its regular price, and there is a two-ticket minimum. Same math, different cart. The reason ticketing systems do it this way is that they cannot process a $0 line item, so they halve everything instead. If your cart shows two half-price seats rather than one paid and one free, nothing has gone wrong.
The code is 241BWSHOW. There is a second code, UPBWSHOW, for upgraded seats — better locations at a flat rate starting at $135 and running to about $155 depending on the show. Tax and fees sit on top of both. Book at nyctourism.com/broadway-week, or on the show’s own ticketing page with the code applied.
The 25 shows
Eighteen are returning from previous rounds. Seven are new to the promotion this fall.
Returning: & Juliet (Stephen Sondheim), Aladdin (New Amsterdam), The Book of Mormon (Eugene O’Neill), Buena Vista Social Club (Schoenfeld), Chicago (Ambassador), The Great Gatsby (Broadway Theatre), Hadestown (Walter Kerr), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Lyric), The Lion King (Minskoff), Maybe Happy Ending (Belasco), MJ (Neil Simon), Oh, Mary! (Lyceum), Operation Mincemeat (John Golden), The Outsiders (Bernard B. Jacobs), Six (Lena Horne), Stranger Things: The First Shadow (Marquis), Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) (Longacre), and Wicked (Gershwin).
New this fall: Just in Time (Circle in the Square), The Lost Boys (Palace), Paranormal Activity (August Wilson), The Rocky Horror Show (Studio 54), Schmigadoon! (Nederlander), School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play (Samuel J. Friedman), and Titanique (St. James).
Note who is not on that list: Hamilton. A few ticket roundups have it, the official lineup does not. Hamilton has its own $10 digital lottery and has never needed the help.
Where Broadway Week is genuinely the best deal
Broadway Week wins when a show has no other cheap door. On the list of 25, the standouts are the ones with thin or no day-of discount programs.
- School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play — Manhattan Theatre Club handles discounts through its own membership programs. If you are over 35 and not a student, Broadway Week is your route.
- Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) and Stranger Things: The First Shadow — both have lotteries, but they are the kind you lose repeatedly. Guaranteed seats beat a coin flip when you are planning a night around it.
- Wicked and The Lion King — the two hardest tickets on the list. Their lotteries run $55 and $60 respectively and both are long odds. A half-price seat you can pick in advance is worth real money here.
Where you should skip it and enter the lottery instead
This is the part the promotion will not tell you. For a lot of these shows the lottery or rush price is lower than half of a regular ticket, and half of a $180 orchestra seat is still $90 before fees.
- Paranormal Activity — two doors at $40: a Lucky Seat lottery and a TodayTix rush, fees included. The August Wilson is charging real money for the newest scare on Broadway, so $40 undercuts half price whichever way you get in.
- The Great Gatsby — $25 student rush and $40 general rush at the box office, plus a $45 lottery.
- Chicago — $49 general rush and $39 standing room, every day, no draw to win.
- The Rocky Horror Show — $30 through the TodayTix lottery, and $30 Roundabout Hiptix if you are 18 to 40, which is a membership that is free to join.
- Maybe Happy Ending — a Telecharge lottery that has run between $20 and $35, plus $49 rush and $49 standing room.
- Six — $45 lottery, $35 student rush.
- The Book of Mormon — a $15 Lucky Seat lottery, though that one draws monthly rather than daily, so enter early. Nothing at half price is beating fifteen dollars.
The honest framing: Broadway Week buys you certainty and seat choice. The lottery buys you a lower price and a lot of losing. If the night is a plan — a birthday, out-of-town family, a date you already promised — pay for the certainty. If you are flexible and live here, keep entering. Our lottery guide has the full board, and the rush census has every walk-up price we have verified.
Four traps
Not every seat is eligible. The discount applies only to seats the production has released for it. On a hit, that can be a thin band of the mezzanine on a Tuesday. If the seat map looks bare, the promotion is working as designed and you are just late.
Not every date works. Blackout dates apply, and they are per show. Harry Potter, for one, is being listed as available only for the back half of the window rather than the full thirteen days. Check the specific performance before you get attached to it.
Fees are not included. Half price is half of the ticket. Tax and service charges are added after, and on a two-ticket order that is real money. The lottery prices above are mostly all-in, which narrows the gap further than it looks.
All sales are final. No refunds, no exchanges. Buy the date you will actually be free.
What to book today
The shows that sell out of Broadway Week inventory first are the ones with the strongest word of mouth and the weakest other discounts. This fall that is Wicked, The Lion King, Maybe Happy Ending, and Paranormal Activity for the novelty. Weeknights hold longer than Saturdays. If you want a Saturday in the window, that is the booking to make first and the rest can wait.
Then figure out dinner. Evening curtains are mostly 7 PM now, which means you want to be sitting down by 5:45 — see where to eat before a Broadway show for places near the theaters that will actually get you out in time.
