79th Annual Tony Awards: Celebrating the LGBTQ+ Winners and Moments That Made Broadway’s Biggest Night Shine
The 79th Annual Tony Awards, Broadway’s biggest night of the year, arrived spectacularly on June 7 at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. Hosted by singer-songwriter P!nk, the ceremony celebrated the best of the 2025-2026 theater season with unforgettable performances, emotional speeches, and plenty of reasons for theater fans to cheer.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Schmigadoon!, The Lost Boys and Ragtime emerged as some of the night’s biggest winners, capping off a memorable evening for Broadway. But for queer theater nerds like us, the 79th Annual Tony Awards felt especially meaningful. Throughout the night, LGBTQ+ artists were recognized for their work both on and off the stage, while several acceptance speeches and performances delivered powerful messages of support for our community—particularly for our trans siblings, who continue to face relentless attacks across the globe.
If you’d like to explore the complete list of winners from the 79th Annual Tony Awards, you can find it on the official Tony Awards website. But since we’re an LGBTQ+ publication, we’ve put together our own roundup of the rainbow winners and queer highlights from Broadway’s biggest celebration.
In what can only be described as a victory for the gays, Schmigadoon! took home the Tony Award for Best Musical. The stage adaptation of the beloved Apple TV series—which was unfortunately canceled before receiving a third season—also won Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre, giving the musical four wins overall.
Out director Joe Mantello added another Tony Award to his impressive career, winning Best Direction of a Play for Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Meanwhile, Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch won Best Direction of a Musical for Cats: The Jellicle Ball. The show’s ballroom-inspired reimagining continued its successful night when choreographers Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons received the Tony Award for Best Choreography.
One of the most significant moments of the evening came when Qween Jean won Best Costume Design of a Musical for her work on Cats: The Jellicle Ball. With the victory, she became the first openly transgender woman to win a Tony Award, marking a historic milestone for Broadway and the theater community at large.
The achievement builds on several recent milestones for trans representation at the Tony Awards. In 2022, non-binary composer-lyricist Toby Marlow won Best Original Score for Six. In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell became the first non-binary performers to win acting Tony Awards. Last year, non-binary artist Cole Escola won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for their acclaimed Broadway debut in Oh, Mary!.
During her acceptance speech, Qween Jean reflected on the significance of the moment and the responsibility that comes with visibility: “This experience has been monumental. We are here for the legacy of queer people, trans people. We are taking up space in ways we have to take up space. We have to shift the paradigm. So I just want to say, thank you all so much for this incredible honor. The world right now is deeply, deeply combating so many ailments, and we know as a society that when we come together, we can make real, permanent change.”
Several additional LGBTQ+ artists also joined the list of winners at the 79th Annual Tony Awards. Dane Laffrey won Best Scenic Design of a Musical for The Lost Boys, while Jen Schriever and Michael Arden received the award for Best Lighting Design of a Musical for the same production. The win marked Arden’s sixth Tony Award overall, with his previous five victories coming in directing and producer categories. Theater leader André Bishop was also honored with the Lifetime Achievement Tony Award for his remarkable contributions to Broadway.
The support for the LGBTQ+ community wasn’t limited to the awards themselves. During the ceremony’s opening number, a rewritten version of Lady Marmalade, now titled Leading Lady Marmalade, featured trans actress and activist Dylan Mulvaney alongside ballroom icon Leiomy Maldonado singing the line, “Hey sisters, soul sisters… protect the dolls, sisters!” The moment drew enthusiastic applause from the audience and quickly became one of the evening’s most talked-about moments.
Later in the night, Ali Louis Bourzgui, who won Best Featured Actor in a Musical for The Lost Boys, used his acceptance speech to send a message of solidarity to our community, dedicating his award to “…the queer and trans communities who have and always will exist, no matter what people in power try to take away from them.”
As the curtain closes on another Broadway season, we’re thrilled to celebrate the LGBTQ+ artists, performers, directors, choreographers, designers, and creatives who helped make the 79th Annual Tony Awards such a memorable night. Their wins are reminders of the incredible talent that exists throughout our community and of the importance of continuing to create space for queer and trans voices on every stage.
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners. We can’t wait to see which LGBTQ+ creatives will make history next.
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Featured Image: Image via Getty Images. Photo by Theo Wargo.
