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Getting seats to the best Broadway shows usually requires quite a bit of advance planning. But what if you haven't planned, and you urgently need to see a show tomorrow or even tonight? Don't panic: There are plenty of options for last-minute tickets, especially if you’re willing to put in some legwork. It partly depends on what you're willing to pay and how much risk you're willing to take—and, of course, on plain old luck. If everything goes your way, you might even luck into cheap Broadway tickets, great seats or a chance to see hit shows that you would never have been able to get into earlier. Here is our insider guide to buying last-minute Broadway tickets.
The day before the show: Enter the digital lottery
Many Broadway shows—including Aladdin, The Book of Mormon and Hadestown—conduct digital lotteries for cheap tickets on the day before each performance. In most cases, you enter the lottery online, then wait until later the same day to find out by email if you've won; if you do, you'll need to reply to the ticket offer within an hour or you'll lose your chance. A few shows, such as Wicked, do their drawings on the morning of the show itself; others have drawings once a week, notably the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child $40 ticket lottery and the $10 Hamilton lottery, both of which happen on Fridays and cover the week ahead. For a full list of shows that offer lotteries, consult Broadway on a Budget or Playbill's Broadway and Off Broadway listings.
The morning of the show: Go to theater for rush tickets or standing-room tickets
Many shows offer special same-day rush tickets; in some cases, they're the only way to get tickets at a reasonable price for shows that are otherwise sold out. Rush tickets to Broadway and Off Broadway shows usually go for $40–$60; student rush tickets can be even less. Among the current Broadway shows with a rush policy are Oh, Mary!, Death Becomes Her and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Go to the theater of the show you want to see as soon as the box office opens—typically 10am except on Sundays, when it opens at 11am or noon—to see if they have rush tickets available.
Some sold-out shows offer a different possibility for cheap same-day tickets: standing-room-only tickets that entitle you to watch the show from the back of the audience without sitting down. If you don't mind being on your feet, this is an option worth considering. Among the productions that offer SRO tickets are Hadestown, Maybe Happy Ending and The Outsiders. (Visit Broadway on a Budget or Playbill's Broadway and Off Broadway pages to find out which shows offer rush and SRO tickets.)
The day of the show (or the day before): Visit TKTS
If you're not dead-set on seeing one particular show, the standard choice for same-day tickets is TDF's TKTS, which has two booths: the flagship location under iconic the red steps in Times Square (Broadway at 47th St) and the newer one at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium (Broadway at 62nd St). Tickets for all but the biggest hits are for sale there at discounts of up to 50%. Although it's best known for same-day sales, TKTS also lets you buy tickets to matinees the day before—which can save you the hassle and uncertainty of scrambling to get there in the morning.
The Times Square TKTS booth opens at 11am for matinees (Wednesday, Thursdays and weekends) and at 3pm for evening performances; it stays open until 8pm. The Lincoln Center outpost, which is indoors and less crowded, is open from 11am to 6pm every day except Sundays and Mondays. The earlier you get to TKTS the better, but blocks of good seats are sometimes released closer to curtain time. To see what is available on a given day, download the TKTS app or visit its website.
The day of the show: Check for digital rush tickets
There are other ways than TKTS to score cheap tickets on the day of the show. See if there’s anything available on the handy TodayTix app, which offers same-day discounted tickets. You may also be able to take advantage of discount codes offered by individual shows. One reliable online source for cheap tickets is nytix.com; good discount codes can also be found at BroadwayBox.
The night of the show: Hit the cancellation line
At most performances, at least a few seats go unclaimed. It's worth lining up at the theater on the day of the show to buy cancelled seats right before the curtain goes up. There's no guarantee you'll get in, but it's worth a shot if you've got the time (and perseverance) for it. Get to the theater a couple of hours early and keep your fingers crossed, as cancellation lines are first come, first served. You may see touts lurking around the theater selling tickets; be wary of fakes, because there won't be any chance to get your money back if you fall for one.
Right before the show: Try the secondary market
For better or worse, the practice of buying tickets and reselling them for profit—once known as scalping, now more politely euphemized as the secondary market—has gone legit in the past 15 years. Sometimes these sellers are the only ones with tickets to the most popular productions, because they buy seats early in bulk. So if you simply must see a certain show and money is no object, see what you can find at Broadway.com, StubHub, VividSeats or even Ticketmaster itself, which has areas devoted to resale. Depending on the show and the seller, the markup can be very high indeed. But if you check the sites very close to curtain time, the prices sometimes fall dramatically, as vendors try to avoid taking a total loss on tickets they haven’t sold yet.
Insider tip: If at first you don't succeed, look again
If there's a specific show you've been wanting to see, but you've looked online in the past and no tickets were available, check that same show's Telecharge or Ticketmaster pages again closer to the date of the performance; you may find that some of the best seats in the theater are suddenly up for grabs. All Broadway shows have allotments called house seats, which are set aside for friends of the production. But if those house tickets aren't used, they go back into the pool for general sale between 96 hours and 24 hours before the show. The same applies to premium seats, which are reserved for sale at higher prices but get bumped down to regular price if they haven’t been sold. If possible, visit the box office in person to find out when house seats and premium seats might wind up for sale at normal prices. If you’re nice, the box office manager might give you some tips. (And if you buy directly at the theater, you’ll save the big fees that the websites tack on.)