Olivier Awards 2025 – we predict this year’s winners

The Olivier Awards arrive on Sunday – and expect WhatsOnStage to be providing you with non-stop top-tier coverage and content from the green carpet and the winner’s room!

But before then, we thought we’d nobly stride once more into the world of idle speculation in order to make some ill-founded guesses as to what will win on the night.

Musical categories

Given we were expecting a big head-to-head battle between Oliver! and Starlight Express to be the main story from the nominations, Fiddler on the Roof‘s seismic success at the nominations stage wasn’t one we had on our radar – we expected something solid, but not record setting. Either way, it is now certainly the one to beat in the musical revival category, so we’d probably put our money there. That said, it’s nice to see three of the four nominees (Oliver!, Starlight and Fiddler) destined for long, hearty lives either on tour, in the West End or in bespoke London venues.

On the new material side, it feels as though the two long-titled shows – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 – are vying for the top musical prize. We’d probably wager that Oliviers voters will mimic last year’s support for emerging British musicals that originated off-West End (after Operation Mincemeat) and go for Benjamin Button. 

Play / Entertainment categories

Fresh off its set of wins at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, a Best Play Revival trophy for Robert Icke’s Mark Strong– and Lesley Manville-led Oedipus feels most likely – it truly was prestige-level theatre and is bound for Broadway. A win for any of the other shows may raise an eyebrow, though it’s an incredibly strong field either way.

The Best New Play category is much more difficult to call! Eline Arbo’s The Years has been a profoundly powerful presence in the West End, while the Critics Circle could be right twice and Mark Rosenblatt’s West End- (and reportedly New York-) bound Giant could win big. Personally, it would be absolutely wonderful to see a prize go to Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, but where will the voters’ heads be turned?

Finally you get the Best Entertainment category – a veritable treasure trove of genre-defying theatre being given a space to stand strong. It would be hilarious to see a win for the jukebox musical parody Titanique, but it feels as though Olivier voters will likely opt for the classier Inside No 9 Stage / Fright. A win for the National Theatre’s epic winter show Ballet Shoes would also be cause for celebration.

You can listen to even more of our predictions here:

Acting categories

There are eight performance categories at the Oliviers, split across plays and musicals as well as actor/actress. Some categories feel slightly easier to call than others. We’d put money on John Dagleish picking up his second Olivier Award for his performance as Benjamin Button in the Best Actor in a Musical category – a transformative performance that taps into something immensely controlled and physical. Best Actress in a Musical feels like Imelda Staunton‘s to lose, though she’s in very fine company alongside the likes of Clare Foster, Chumisa Dornford-May, Lara Pulver and Céline Dion herself Lauren Drew.

The favourites for actor/ actress on the play side are probably Manville and Strong after their wins for Oedipus at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, but they’re both in competitive categories.

Supporting performer-wise – there are a lot of tough calls – it’d be lovely to see Maimuna Memon recognised for Great Comet, while there could be a further Olivier for Elliot Levey for Giant. We’d also love to see the Queen of the UK theatre scene, Sharon D Clarke, pick up a further gong for her brilliant Lady Bracknell.

Creative categories

We’re not going to try and make calls for all the creative categories, but single out some predictions. First of all, we’re expecting to see a real spread here – so no one show storming the various categories. Gabriella Slade may pick up a prize for her wonderful Starlight costume design, while Christopher Wheeldon may add an Olivier to his WhatsOnStage and Tony Awards for MJ’s choreography. In her retiring year, it would be wonderful to see Paule Constable (alongside Ben Jacobs) recognised for Oliver!’s classy, refined lighting design, while Tom Scutt’s various design choices in Fiddler could also see him triumph in the set category – though he’s some very strong contenders to deal with there.

Want to tune in to find out just how wrong we got it? Here’s how.