Ben Ahlers will help host the 2026 Shubert Foundation High School Theatre Festival for New York City public schools on May 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Broadway’s Schoenfeld Theatre, where 200 students will get the chance to make their Broadway debuts.
The 12th annual festival will be led by Nathan Lane, Christopher Abbott and Ahlers and will feature guest presenters including Isa Antonetti, Treshelle Edmond, Thayne Jasperson, Francis Jue, Aimé Donna Kelly, Tom Kitt, Da’Von Moody, N’Kenge, Liz Pearce, Caesar Samayoa and Abel Santiago. The evening will celebrate five standout high school student productions from the 2025-26 school year: Chicago, Come From Away, In Transit, Little Shop of Horrors and The SpongeBob Musical.
For the first time, the festival will also highlight the students who finished first and second in the NYC Shakespeare Competition. Madison Martinez and Kriston Hall will perform the monologues that won them those spots before a scene from Romeo & Juliet.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said the festival gives students a rare Broadway setting to show what they can do, while Shubert Foundation President Diana Phillips said the event has spent 12 years putting NYC public school theatre programs on a Broadway stage. The festival is presented by The Shubert Foundation and the NYC Public Schools Arts Office, and a $734,000 Shubert Foundation grant for 2025-26 funds the festival as well as other theatre and arts education programs in city schools.
That grant underscores how long the Shubert Foundation has been building this pipeline: it began supporting theatre and arts education in New York City public schools in 2005, and this year’s festival is designed to turn that support into a night when student work reaches a Broadway audience instead of a school auditorium.
The question now is not whether the festival has staying power — it does — but how many of the 200 students stepping onto that stage for the first time will carry that night into whatever comes next.