Summer in New York runs on a particular kind of magic: the free stuff, the outdoor stuff, the evenings when the whole city seems to be doing something good by the water. Broadway by the Boardwalk is one of the best of these.
Here's a fun event theater fans can't miss: Monday is Broadway's traditional dark night, so while the marquees rest, some of the city's biggest stage talents head to the Hudson and sing for free under an open sky.
That's the joy of Broadway by the Boardwalk, Hudson River Park's free summer concert series. Five Mondays, from July 13 to August 10, 2026, Broadway stars take a stage at Clinton Cove and perform as the sun drops behind New Jersey. No ticket, no rush line, no refreshing a lottery app at 11 a.m. Just some of the best voices working today, the Hudson going gold behind them, and a lawn full of people who picked the right place to spend a summer night.
It's the kind of evening that reminds you why you put up with this city the other ten months a year. So grab a picnic blanket, here's everything you need to know about Broadway by the Boardwalk NYC in 2026, including the full lineup, the performers, how to actually get a good spot, and why it might become your favorite summer ritual.
A quick note before we get into it: Field Trip is hosting free meetups at Broadway by the Boardwalk this summer. If you'd rather not show up solo, come watch with a small group of fellow theater people. RSVP here.
Broadway by the Boardwalk in NYC is Hudson River Park's free summer concert series featuring Broadway performers every Monday evening at Clinton Cove. Here's the short version:
Here's the full 2026 schedule. Every performance starts at 6:30 PM at Clinton Cove, and every single one is free.
The headliners are the draw, but the smartest new wrinkle in 2026 is the opening act. Each concert now begins with Stepping into the Spotlight, a short showcase featuring understudies and standbys from current Broadway productions.
If you're the kind of person who reads the insert that falls out of your Playbill, you already understand why this matters. Understudies and standbys are the reason Broadway runs eight shows a week without missing a beat, and they are frequently extraordinary performers who simply haven't had their moment in the spotlight yet. Some of the most beloved names in the business started exactly like that, waiting in the wings, ready to go on at a moment's notice.
Stepping into the Spotlight flips the usual order of things. For one night, the person who normally covers the role gets the stage to themselves. For the audience, it's a chance to see tomorrow's leads before the rest of the city catches on. Years from now you'll get to say you saw them at Clinton Cove when they were still standing by. That's the kind of bragging rights money can't buy, which is fitting, because this part is free too.
Here's who's opening each night in 2026:
This is a strong lineup, the kind that mixes legacy Broadway craft with this year's most-talked-about names. Here's a closer look at each headliner.
The series opens with a pairing built for anyone who loves classic Broadway done right. Max von Essen is a Tony, Drama Desk, and Grammy nominee who just wrapped a nearly two-year run as Billy Flynn in the record-breaking revival of Chicago. Before that he was Henri Baurel in An American in Paris, a performance The New York Times praised for its sensitivity and charm, and he's logged time in Anastasia, Evita, Les Misérables, and Jesus Christ Superstar. He's a true Broadway standard-bearer, equally at home at Carnegie Hall, Birdland, and 54 Below.
He's joined by Billy Stritch, one of the premier singer-pianists on the New York cabaret and jazz scene. Stritch spent 25 years as Liza Minnelli's accompanist and arranger, toured as Tony Bennett's pianist and music director, and co-wrote the Grammy-winning "Does He Love You." If you've ever caught Jim Caruso's Cast Party at Birdland on a Monday night, you've heard him play.
Together they make this the most refined night of the series, a love letter to the Great American Songbook for the people who keep an opinion about it. Opening the evening is Tristen Buttell, a Queens native currently appearing in Just In Time.
This may be the buzziest concert on the calendar. Ali Louis Bourzgui just won the 2026 Tony Award for Featured Actor in a Musical for playing David in The Lost Boys, so this is a chance to see a brand-new Tony winner on the waterfront while the win is still fresh.
His growing résumé is the kind that makes you sit up. He made his Broadway debut in the title role of The Who's Tommy, earning a Theatre World Award and a stack of nominations, then stepped into Hadestown as Orpheus, and was recognized for his work in We Live in Cairo. Off the Broadway stage, he's a musician and writer who released a debut album, Becomes A Home, with his band Resident Lightweight. He's also a proud son of a Moroccan immigrant and an advocate for broader representation in the arts.
A Tony-winning leading man who's also a working recording artist tends to build a setlist worth showing up early for. Opening the night is Savy Jackson, who currently stands by for Claire in the Tony-winning Maybe Happy Ending.
Ali Stroker won a Tony Award for her unforgettable Ado Annie in the revival of Oklahoma!, and in doing so became the first actor who uses a wheelchair to win one. She also made history as the first wheelchair-using actor to appear on a Broadway stage, in Deaf West's acclaimed Spring Awakening. Her presence reshaped what a Broadway stage is expected to look like, and the industry is better for it.
She's also everywhere on screen, with credits including Ozark, Only Murders in the Building, and the Netflix series Echoes, plus a career as a children's and YA author. Her motto, "Turning Your Limitations Into Your Opportunities," tells you most of what you need to know about the energy she brings to a stage. Expect a night that's as moving as it is fun. Opening the evening is Christian Probst, the understudy for Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical and, in a lovely bit of trivia, a former Yale Whiffenpoof.
J. Harrison Ghee is one of the most exciting performers working in theater right now, and the receipts back it up. In 2023 they made history as the first openly non-binary performer to win the Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, for their dual role in Some Like It Hot. It was the kind of win that felt like a door opening.
Their Broadway credits read like a tour of the last decade's classic shows: Hadestown, Kinky Boots, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Chicago, plus the Off-Broadway hit Saturday Church. On screen they've turned up in FOX's Accused and HBO's High Maintenance. Ghee performs with a generosity and a sense of joy that translates beautifully to an outdoor crowd, the kind of artist who makes a few thousand people on a lawn feel like one room. Opening the night is Kent Overshown, who recently made their Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival of Ragtime.
The series closes with a Broadway favorite, and one of its most reliable powerhouse voices. If you've spent any time in New York theaters over the past two decades, you've probably heard Mandy Gonzalez bring a house down. She starred as Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, originated Nina Rosario in In The Heights (winning a Drama Desk Award), and played Elphaba in Wicked, sending "Defying Gravity" up into the Gershwin's rafters night after night. More recently she guest-starred as Norma Desmond in the revival of Sunset Blvd.
Beyond the stage, she's a concert soloist who's performed at Carnegie Hall and with symphony orchestras around the world, plus a YA author behind the FEARLESS series. She's beloved precisely because she's so at home in concert, which makes her the ideal note to end the summer on. Closing out the series in the opening slot is Christopher James Tamayo, a standby in Maybe Happy Ending.
A great free concert is only great if you can actually find a good spot. Here's how to do Broadway by the Boardwalk NYC right.
The series takes place at Clinton Cove in Hudson River Park, on Manhattan's west side around West 55th Street, in the stretch where Hell's Kitchen meets the water. Clinton Cove is one of the park's quieter pockets, a grassy lawn that locals use for kayaking, picnicking, and watching the sunset. For one night a week each summer, it turns into one of the best free theater venues in the city, with the Hudson as a backdrop and the sky doing half the lighting design.
Showtime is 6:30 PM, but that is not the time to arrive. This is a popular, free, word-of-mouth event, and the good lawn space fills in fast. If you want a comfortable spot with a clear view, aim to get there 45 minutes to an hour early. Treat the wait as part of the evening. Bring a picnic, pour something into a cup, and watch the lawn fill up while the light goes soft over the water.
The sweet spot on the lawn is close enough to see faces but far enough back that you're not craning your neck, ideally with the stage between you and the setting sun so you get the performance and the view in a single frame. Get there early enough to choose, and you'll understand why people come back week after week.
Yes. Completely free, every Monday of the series, no ticket and no RSVP required to attend. (If you'd like to come with a Field Trip group, the free meetup RSVP is separate and just helps us find each other on the lawn.)
Yes. Clinton Cove is listed as accessible.
Clinton Cove is easy to reach by transit. The closest bus lines are the M31 and the M57. By subway, your best bets are the 1 train, the A and C, and the B and D, with a walk west toward the water from there. If you're coming from the West Village or Chelsea, the 1 up the west side is the path of least resistance.
Here's the thing a great concert series understands that a great show sometimes can't: the magic isn't only in the polish. It's in the proximity.
Inside a Broadway house, a performer is in character, in costume, behind a fourth wall, at the top of a price ladder that keeps a lot of people out. At Clinton Cove, that all falls away. You're watching the same artists, often singing the same songs that made them famous, but they're being themselves. They talk between numbers. They tell stories. They react to the boats going by and the kid in the front row and the sunset doing something ridiculous over the river. It's looser, warmer, and somehow more intimate, even with a few thousand people on the lawn.
There's also the simple, radical fact of the price barrier being gone. No second mortgage for a good seat. No lottery anxiety. If you've spent your summer bouncing between Shakespeare in the Park lotteries and rush lines and digital queues, Broadway by the Boardwalk is the rare event that just lets you in. You show up, you sit down, you get to be moved by world-class talent for the price of the subway ride. That accessibility changes the whole feeling of the night. It makes it feel less like a transaction and more like the city giving you something.
If part of what you love about Broadway by the Boardwalk is the people, you're not alone in that. A lot of theater fans go to these things solo, which is completely fine, but it's even better with company who gets just as excited about a standby finally getting their night.
That's where Field Trip comes in. This summer, Field Trip is hosting free meetups at Broadway by the Boardwalk, so you can watch alongside a small group of fellow theater lovers instead of going it alone. No pressure, no awkward icebreakers, just good people on a lawn who'd rather not Monday-night by themselves. RSVP for a Field Trip meetup here.
Beyond the summer, Field Trip organizes small-group theater outings, post-show conversations, and arts experiences throughout the year for people who want to experience theater culture with others. If you like discovering artists before everyone else does and meeting people who follow the scene as closely as you do, that's the whole point.
Broadway by the Boardwalk is Hudson River Park's free summer concert series featuring Broadway performers. It runs on Monday evenings at Clinton Cove on Manhattan's west side and pairs established Broadway stars with emerging performers from current shows.
Yes. Every performance in the series is completely free, with no ticket required.
At Clinton Cove in Hudson River Park, on Manhattan's west side around West 55th Street near Hell's Kitchen, right on the waterfront.
Performances begin at 6:30 PM. Arriving 45 minutes to an hour early is the move if you want a good spot on the lawn.
No. No tickets and no reservations are required. You simply show up. (A Field Trip meetup RSVP is optional and separate, just to connect with the group on site.)
The 2026 lineup is Max von Essen featuring Billy Stritch (July 13), Ali Louis Bourzgui (July 20), Ali Stroker (July 27), J. Harrison Ghee (August 3), and Mandy Gonzalez (August 10). Each night also opens with an understudy or standby showcase called Stepping into the Spotlight.
Generally, yes. It's an outdoor concert on a public park lawn, so families are welcome and kids can spread out. As with any concert, song selection and between-song banter are geared toward a broad audience, so use your own judgment with very young children, but the relaxed, open-air setting makes it an easy one to bring people of different ages to.
A blanket or a low chair, a picnic, water, and layers for when the breeze comes off the river after sunset. Sunscreen if you're arriving early, and a bag to pack out whatever you bring in. That's really all it takes.
It's one of the best free cultural experiences the city offers in the summer, so for most theater fans, yes. But the real answer depends on what you're after. If you want a polished, seated, full-production Broadway show, this isn't a substitute for that. If you want to see genuinely world-class performers up close, in a looser and more personal setting, with the Hudson behind them and no ticket in your pocket, it's hard to beat. The Stepping into the Spotlight showcases sweeten the deal by letting you discover next-generation talent before the rest of the city does. Add good company and a picnic, and it's the kind of Monday night that makes you remember why you live here.
Field Trip is hosting free meetups at Broadway by the Boardwalk all summer. Come watch with people who love theater as much as you do. RSVP here.