Where Are All Of the New Musicals This Season?

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Only two new musicals are opening on Broadway in the first half of the 2025-2026 season: The Queen of Versailles and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). There has been much discourse on the topic of whether rising capitalization costs and the rareness of full recoupment is impacting the number of new musicals being produced on Broadway. 

But while economics are also tenuous off-Broadway, a combination of determined non-profit companies, small casts, and risk-taking producers has given us a plethora of diverse new musicals off-Broadway this fall—and that’s something to support and celebrate. 

The Public Theatre is where some of the most successful musicals in the canon have originated, from Hair to A Chorus Line to Hamilton; for that reason among others, a new musical at the Public is always noteworthy. This fall the Public is bringing us The Seat of Our Pants, an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Ethan Lipton has written book, music, and lyrics, but he’s not the first to create a major musical of the Wilder work. For many years, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joseph Stein toiled on a musical adaptation of the play that they called All About Us. It was produced regionally but never came to New York. Now, the Antrobus family gets the musical treatment at the Public’s Newman Theatre in a new piece, starring Ruthie Ann Miles, Shuler Hensley, Micaela Diamond, Damon Daunno, and more. 

Also an adaptation but of vastly different source material is the upcoming Romy & Michele: The Musical, a stage version of the beloved 1997 film, Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion. Hitting Stage 42 this October are Laura Bell Bundy as Romy and Kara Lindsay as Michele, ready to charm audiences in the universal tale of best friends who strive to reinvent themselves when reuniting with their former classmates. The book is by Robin Schiff and music and lyrics are by Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay. Will your favorite quotes from the movie be heard on 42nd Street this fall? Will the original pop score add a new layer of nostalgia to the mix? Only one way to find out.  

While there’s nothing wrong with an adaptation—even Rodgers and Hammerstein would agree—there’s something specifically worth celebrating about an original musical that lands on a stage in New York City. These shows are often an impossible dream come true, and that can certainly be said of several original musicals happening this fall on off-Broadway stages.

The much-buzzed about new musical Mexodus is currently making waves at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. A few years ago, Audible took over this historic off-Broadway space and has since programmed plays and musicals that are also available in audio format on its platform. One notable production was Dead Outlaw, which transferred to Broadway following its Minetta Lane run. Mexodus is the newest musical presented by Audible, and it utilizes live looping equipment to tell the untold story of how one path of the Underground Railroad led to Mexico. Co-created and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, Mexodus is an enlightening, galvanizing tale of ancestry and survival.

Just a few blocks away, in the West Village, The Least Problematic Woman in the World is also getting audiences talking, while being performed by its creator. In this case, the cast is even smaller; while Mexodus has a cast of two, Least Problematic Woman counts only one on stage: Dylan Mulvaney. Mulvaney is an actress, activist, and content creator whose videos have been vitally important in shining a light on transgender identity. While the show is billed as a play with music rather than a musical, it’s worth noting here, particularly as the composers involved are Abigail Barlow, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Ingrid Michaelson, and Mark Sonnenblick. 

Topics involving the LGBTQ+ community are also at play in Saturday Church, a new musical that just concluded its run at New York Theatre Workshop. This adaptation of the 2017 film has music and lyrics by Sia, was originally written and directed for film by Damon Cardasis who also penned book and additional lyrics here alongside James Ijames, and has additional music by Honey Dijon. The storyline finds a teenage boy in New York City coming to terms with his queerness as he is introduced to a vibrant community of LGBTQ+ youth at a spot called Saturday Church. Like the Public, NYTW has sent several important musicals from its stage to Broadway in the past, including Rent and Once. Its cast for Saturday Church included Bryson Battle, J. Harrison Ghee, Joaquina Kalukango, Kristolyn Lloyd, and more. 

Of course, a transfer to Broadway is not the only indicator of valuable and important work being done off-Broadway; in fact, far from it. Sometimes great musicals belong off-Broadway for any number of reasons. One of this year’s most successful off-Broadway productions so far was Beau, which ran downtown over the summer presented by Out of the Box Theatrics. Beau is thankfully returning to New York this fall so more audiences can take in this moving tale of a young man learning about his grandfather conceived and written by Douglas Lyons with music by Lyons and Ethan Pakchar. The show’s return will be to a new off-Broadway theater, this time St. Luke’s in midtown, led by Matt Rodin and Jeb Brown. 

Even off-Broadway musicals with casts on the larger size often don’t have dance as a main focus of the proceedings since spaces are smaller and more often words and music are what’s centered. But the York is giving off-Broadway audiences a treat later this fall with Gotta Dance, a dance revue in the vein of Dancin’ or Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. The work of major choreographers including Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, Michael Bennett, Susan Stroman, and Billy Wilson will be showcased in this exciting recreation of iconic choreography. 

Earlier in the fall, the York presented This is Not a Drill, a brand new musical about a 2018 event in Hawaii where an emergency alert let citizens know a missile attack was imminent. With book by Holly Doubet and Joseph McDonough and music and lyrics by Doubet, Kathy Babylon, and John Vester, This is Not a Drill continued the York’s mission of giving a space to new musicals as well as overlooked gems. 

Another off-Broadway company dedicated to presenting new work and supporting new writers is the Signature. One of the Signature’s fall productions is Oratorio for Living Things, a new musical by Heather Christian who recently won a MacArthur Genius Grant. Previously seen at Ars Nova in 2022, where it was recognized by the Drama Desk, Drama League, Obie, and Lucille Lortel Awards, Oratorio “peels back complex layers of what it means to be alive on both a human and a cosmic scale”. The show blends classical oratorio with genres from gospel to jazz to create a new hybrid form. 

Off-Broadway musicals could never be considered a uniform genre, because Slam Frank is as different from Oratorio for Living Things as one can get. The satirical musical currently playing at Asylum “imagines Anne Frank’s  story as an intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical”. Taking wild swipes at progressive overreach in the arts and identity politics, the show with book by Joel Sinensky and music and lyrics by Andrew Fox was originally inspired by a 2022 tweet asking if Anne Frank ever acknowledged her white privilege. Now it’s one of the hardest tickets in town, with weeks of sold out performances that have audiences’ jaws dropped from start to finish.

Slam Frank, which is billed in some places as an off-off-Broadway production, shares its space with Exorcistic, another satirical musical, this time parodying the horror film The Exorcist. With a rock musical score by Michael Shaw Fisher who also penned the book, Exorcistic comes to New York from an acclaimed run in Los Angeles and stars Emma Hunton alongside a lineup of varied special guests. 

And the final contender in the parody musical category this fall, 44 The Obama Musical, hits the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square after successful engagements in several other cities including Chicago and Los Angeles. 44 is written, directed, and produced by Eli Bauman, a former Obama campaign organizer, and tells the tale of the Obama years through the hazy memory of Joe Biden. Other characters in the parody musical include Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz, so audiences are in for quite a ride through the political landscape.