The Awardist Tony Awards Tony Awards to (finally) be handed out in September as part of Broadway's Back! special Now that Broadway shows are setting their post-pandemic reopening plans, the Tonys are doing the same. By Jessica Derschowitz Jessica Derschowitz Jessica Derschowitz is the former digital features director at Entertainment Weekly. She left EW in 2022. EW's editorial guidelines Published on May 26, 2021 12:00PM EDT The long-delayed Tony Awards will finally take place in September, the same month Broadway shows will begin to raise their curtains after being shut down since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. CBS and Tonys producers announced Wednesday that the 74th annual honors will be presented on Sept. 26 in a ceremony that will stream live on Paramount+ from 7-9 p.m. ET/4-6 p.m. PT — and feature a live audience, pending COVID restrictions. The event will be followed by The Tony Awards Present: Broadway's Back!, a "live concert event" featuring performances from the three Best Musical Contenders, as well as "superstar Broadway entertainers and Tony Award winners reuniting on stage to perform beloved classics and celebrate the joy and magic of live theatre." During the broadcast, airing from 9-11 p.m. ET/6-8 p.m. PT on CBS, Paramount+, and the CBS app, presenters will hand out three of the biggest Tonys categories: Best Revival of a Play, Best Play, and Best Musical. The special will also celebrate other winners, the announcement said. Expect additional information in the coming months. Nominations for the 74th Tonys, honoring the upended 2019-2020 theatrical season, were revealed last October, amid uncertainty over how and when the ceremony would proceed. (Typically, in non-pandemic times, the Tony Awards take place in early June.) Organizers later said the awards would be scheduled "in coordination with the reopening of Broadway." That reopening is now timed for September, with Hadestown — the reigning Best Musical winner of the 2019 Tony Awards — currently set to be the first show to return, on Sept. 2. The nominees for Best Musical at this year's Tony Awards are Jagged Little Pill, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. The contenders for Best Play are Grand Horizons, The Inheritance, Sea Wall/A Life, Slave Play, and The Sound Inside. See the full list of nominees here, and you can keep up with the list of shows coming back to the Great White Way with our guide to all of its reopenings. Related content: Tony Awards 2020: See the full list of nominees All the Broadway shows that are reopening this fall Broadway set to officially reopen in September