KC fuses Broadway fare and city premieres in PNC’s prolific 2025-2026 season

Lauren Samuels as Elphaba and Austen Danielle Bohmer as Glinda in The National Tour of Wicked. // Photo by Joan Marcus

When attending a Broadway show, we have concrete expectations to be perched at the edges of our seats and our nails dug into the fabric of our armrests as we take in the rare occasion to invest in someone else’s story. With a legacy traced back to 1735, Broadway has established a reputation for making us laugh until we snort and ugly cry until we run dry.

It’s a privilege to see these groundbreaking productions brought to our hometown as we find more space for theatre—a privilege made possible by The American Theatre Guild which brings Broadway to Kansas City every season. As of today, they have just announced their 2025-2026 seasons for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and the Music Hall, and with it comes five Kansas City premieres and plenty of crowd favorites to keep us singing in the shower.

Craig Aikman, Senior Director of Booking Operations at The American Theatre Guild, says the selection process starts years before this announcement and entails tracking trends of what’s hot in New York and what ticket buyers in Kansas City are interested in. The next steps are to contact booking agents out of New York City to negotiate which shows geographically can make it here, ensuring the best route for the tour and the best viewing for our city. It’s a complex puzzle that Aikman enthusiastically navigates each year.

He comments on how this season has compared to the last few and what we can expect with the 2025-2026 selections. “I think this just builds upon the growth and the momentum that we have seen over the last several years,” Aikman says. “Kansas City is a very eclectic theatre community, and it’s a larger theatre community than people realize, and this is just one facet of that. If we can continue to grow this, get people excited about seeing what they can see in New York right in their own backyard, it’s an incredible opportunity.”

Without further ado, here’s the lineup: Wicked, Kimberly Akimbo, The Great Gatsby, & Juliet, Stereophonic, Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and Mrs. Doubtfire.

In one of Broadway’s most “popular” picks, Kansas City will be holding space for “Defying Gravity” with the return of Wicked—a story presenting a hushed perspective of The Wizard of Oz, bringing with it an unexpected and gratifying story of friendship and morality.

Kimberly Akimbo is a five-time Tony Award winner about a 16-year-old coping with adolescent life as problems get heaped on her plate. Kimberly will soar above her genetic condition, family drama, boy trouble, and felony charges with sheer optimism and youthful naivety. Aikman says “It’s that sleeper hit that people aren’t going to be sure what they’re seeing.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel takes to the stage with a musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby, an energetic performance about wealth, desire, and calamity. Prepare to pop the champagne—The Roaring Twenties are on the prowl.

Described by Aikman as “fun on a plate,” & Juliet explores a girl-empowered “what if.” What if Juliet hadn’t taken it to the extreme with Romeo, what would she be up to? She’d obviously be screaming out pop anthems by Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry and taking back the narrative. & Juliet is the twisted take on the classic love story, written by the Emmy award-winning writer of Schitt’s Creek.

Another five-time Tony Award winner, Stereophonic is the most nominated Tony Award production of all time. Rewind to a 1970s music studio, and watch a rock band revolutionize the music industry and try not to fall apart in the process. Aikman believes it’s a unique premise in that audience members “get to be a fly on a wall in a recording session.”

The revolutionary biography of Alexander Hamilton comes to town for a third time with Broadway’s mega-hit Hamilton. “If you got a chance to see it the first time it was in Kansas City, and even the second time, come again because the one thing about that show is you do find something different every single time you see it on stage,” says Aikman. The genre-fusing music biography dishes out history and spills the tea in an opportunity to shake our fists for freedom to a blend of hip hop, jazz, and R&B.

The Book of Mormon is a winner of a whopping nine Tony Awards where “you will catch yourself laughing and then feel guilty about laughing all at the same time,” Aikman explains. Expletives will fly, and revelations will be made as missionaries are sent to spread the Good Word.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is in its 30th anniversary with “a brand new incarnation of the show,” he says. The production’s classic enemies-to-lovers trope and nostalgic tunes beg for us to be their guest.

In a musical adaptation of the Robin Williams classic, Mrs. Doubtfire follows a jobless actor turned bustling Scottish nanny. His dress-up game is fire. He’s dedicated to his kids. Sounds like an upstanding gentleman… Wait, gentlewoman? It’s easy to lose track.

With a complete list of nine selections, The Pitch couldn’t help but ask Aikman which one he was secretly excited about. To this, he says “It’s like choosing my favorite child.” Impossible to choose one, impossible to attend just one.

Individual tickets for these shows are not quite available for purchase just yet, but will be as of this fall. Right now, season memberships are the best way to guarantee a spot at the shows.

For more information on season memberships and the upcoming 2025-2026 season, head to PNC Broadway in Kansas City’s website.