TodayTix opened its New York Theatre Sale on Monday, and if your inbox looks anything like ours, you heard about it from four directions at once. The sale runs September 15 through October 4, 2026, and covers more than 70 Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. SeatPlan is running a parallel version of the same promotion across 41 New York titles.
So: real sale, real dates, real shows. Now the part the emails leave out.
What the sale actually costs
These are the live floor prices on the sale page as of this morning. Not the "was" price, not the "up to 40% off" math — the number you actually pay before fees:
- Little Shop of Horrors — from $55
- Maybe Happy Ending — from $59
- The Lost Boys — from $58
- Hadestown, SIX, The Book of Mormon, The Great Gatsby, Rocky Horror, Stranger Things — from $62
- Operation Mincemeat — from $63
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — from $69
- The Outsiders — from $79
- Wicked — from $89
For a Broadway orchestra-adjacent seat in a good week, $62 is a genuinely decent number. Hold that thought for about nine seconds.
The lottery is cheaper. On almost every single one of them.
We keep the entry price for every lottery and rush program in the city, because that is the whole job here. Lined up against the sale, it is not close:
| Show | Sale floor | Lottery / rush | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maybe Happy Ending | $59 | $20.64 (Club 2064) | $38 |
| The Rocky Horror Show | $62 | $30 lottery, or $30 Hiptix if you're 18–40 | $32 |
| Wicked | $89 | $30 in-person lottery, $55 digital | $59 |
| The Great Gatsby | $62 | $45 lottery, $25 student rush | $37 |
| Harry Potter | $69 | $40 (Friday Forty) | $29 |
| Little Shop of Horrors | $55 | $40 Telecharge lottery | $15 |
| SIX | $62 | $45 lottery, $35 student rush | $27 |
| Stranger Things | $62 | $45 Broadway Direct | $17 |
| Hadestown | $62 | $49 Lucky Seat, $39 standing room | $23 |
| The Book of Mormon | $62 | $49 Lucky Seat | $13 |
| The Outsiders | $79 | $49 Telecharge | $30 |
| Operation Mincemeat | $63 | $59 Telecharge | $4, so, sure |
Twelve shows, twelve wins for the lottery. Operation Mincemeat is a rounding error and Little Shop is only $15, but the top of that table is brutal: Wicked is $59 cheaper through the in-person lottery than through the sale. Maybe Happy Ending is $38 cheaper and has been quietly the best-value ticket on Broadway since it opened.
So why would anyone buy the sale?
Because a lottery ticket you did not win is worth nothing, and Saturday is Saturday.
That is the honest trade, and it is the only reason this sale is worth your attention. The lottery is cheaper and the sale is certain. If you have people flying in, a birthday, a sitter booked, or any other reason the evening cannot collapse into "well, we didn't win, want to get noodles instead" — buy the sale seat. Paying $22 more than a lottery winner is a fine price for knowing you are going.
The sale also genuinely wins in two places where there is no lottery to lose to:
- Opera. La Bohème from $55, Tosca from $55, Così fan tutte from $45, Medea from $45 at the Met. No lottery competition, real money off.
- Small Off-Broadway and the weird stuff. Petite Rouge from $35, Drunk Dracula from $37, Garry Starr from $38, The Visitors from $40. These shows do not run lotteries, and $35 is $35.
One more wrinkle, and it expires Sunday
NYC Broadway Week is still running through September 20 — 2-for-1 on 25 shows with code 241BWSHOW. For two people on a participating show, that beats the Theatre Sale outright: half price on a full-price seat is almost always better than a discounted single. We did the full show-by-show breakdown when it launched in Broadway Week Is Back, and every word of it is good for three more days.
After Sunday, Broadway Week is gone and the Theatre Sale has two more weeks to itself.
How to actually play the next three weeks
- Through Sunday, buying for two? Broadway Week, if your show is in it. Nothing else touches 2-for-1.
- Flexible on which night, and willing to lose? Enter the lottery. Entries generally close the day before, so you can stack a week of draws and buy nothing. Our daily lottery board has every open draw with its deadline.
- The evening has to happen? Buy the sale seat and stop thinking about it.
- Under 30, or a student? Check the rush line before either. Great Gatsby student rush is $25 and Rocky Horror's Hiptix is $30 for anyone 18 to 40 — both beat every number on this page.
The sale closes October 4. The lotteries, as ever, run forever and cost nothing to lose.
