Blue Man Group "A New Holiday Surprise"

Blue Man Group: A New Holiday Surprise is a family holiday show from Blue Man Group, the American performance-art company whose off-Broadway show played the Astor Place Theatre from 1991 until 2025. Three performers in blue skin paint combine live percussion, physical comedy and visual storytelling, and they bring the audience into the action. They do all of it without saying a single word.

The show is a new production made for the 2026 holiday season. It is not a revival, and it is not the old Astor Place show moved to Broadway. It also marks two firsts for the company: its first engagement on Broadway and its first show built around the holidays.

The Broadway stay at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre is limited to about seven weeks over the holidays, and it is one stop on the company's first holiday tour.

Do not expect a conventional plot. Before previews, the company shared only a brief outline: the three Blue Men come across the customs and rituals of the season and try to make sense of them, and they wander off course more than once along the way. Scene-by-scene details were not released.

The evening rests on the idea that a holiday tradition does not have to go the way it was planned. The act of giving is a central theme, along with generosity, creativity, human connection and being present with the people around you.

The music comes from familiar holiday songs, played on the instruments Blue Man Group builds for itself. Among them are drums splattered with paint and instruments made from PVC pipes, so the melodies you know arrive wrapped in live percussion. As of October 2026, the list of songs in the show had not been published.

The group has a recording history as well. Its first studio album, Audio (1999), earned a Grammy nomination in the Best Pop Instrumental Album category.

The trio carries the whole evening without dialogue, so the jokes and the bits of story come across through movement, rhythm and images. The drumming is live, and the comedy is physical rather than verbal.

Audience participation is part of the format, so people in the seats may find themselves pulled into a scene.

Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton founded Blue Man Group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1987. The group settled into the Astor Place Theatre in 1991, and that run closed on February 2, 2025, after more than 17,000 performances. Long runs at Boston's Charles Playhouse (from 1995) and Chicago's Briar Street Theatre (from 1997) also ended in 2025.

The company's ownership changed along the way. Goldman sold his stake in 2010, and Wink and Stanton followed in 2017, selling to Cirque du Soleil. As of October 2026, the group had resident shows at the Luxor Las Vegas, its home in that city since 2015, and at ICON Park in Orlando, where its show opened in 2026. More than 50 million people around the world had seen its productions as of September 2026.

The Broadway engagement was announced on September 23, 2026. Previews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre were scheduled to begin on November 12, 2026, with the official opening set for November 17, 2026. The same holiday show is also reported to be booked for the CIBC Theatre in Chicago and the Boch Center Wang Theatre in Boston in late November and December 2026.