The West End Right Now: What's Actually On, by the Numbers

Most guides to the West End tell you what was good five years ago. This one is a snapshot of what is genuinely on sale today, drawn from the live booking data behind tickadoo, which was built by the founders of London Theatre Direct. The figures shift week to week as shows open and close, so treat this as a photograph rather than a permanent record. Here is what the West End actually looks like right now, counted rather than guessed.

46 shows, and more variety than the cliche suggests

There are 46 productions on sale across central London as I write. Musicals lead with 23 titles, followed by 14 plays, and the rest is made up of comedy, concert-style shows, circus spectacle and immersive dining experiences. The idea that the West End is wall-to-wall jukebox musicals does not survive contact with the listings: for every Mamma Mia! there is a Cyrano de Bergerac, an Agatha Christie courtroom thriller in Witness for the Prosecution, or a play staged inside a recreated Berlin nightclub. The split is roughly half musicals, a third plays, and a long tail of everything else.

The price spread: from £13 to triple figures

This is the figure that surprises people most. The cheapest tickets currently start at £13, for shows including The Gruffalo and the Oscar Wilde comedy An Ideal Husband. The median price across everything on sale is around £32. At the top end, a standard musical or play tops out near £44 to £49, while the genuinely expensive numbers, above £100, belong to one-off events: the dining show Mamma Mia! The Party and the open-air Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare's Globe.

In other words, the West End is not one price. It is a range, and the entry point is far lower than its reputation. A ticket to a long-running hit like Hamilton, The Book of Mormon or Matilda The Musical often starts around £25, which is the detail that quietly demolishes the "theatre is only for special occasions" myth.

How long will you be in your seat?

Running times matter more than people admit, especially if you are planning dinner or a train home. The shortest shows on sale are pop-fuelled and interval-free: Six clocks in at about 1 hour 20 minutes, with Showstopper! The Improvised Musical and Magic Mike Live around 90 minutes. Family shows go shorter still, with The Gruffalo at roughly 55 minutes, short enough for the smallest attention spans.

At the other extreme sit the epics. Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Oh, Mary! run close to three hours, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a two-part event you can see across one long day or two separate visits. The typical West End show, though, lands almost exactly where you would expect: around two and a half hours including an interval. If you have booked a restaurant, the interval is your friend, and the 80-to-90-minute shows are the ones to choose when the evening is tight.

The best-reviewed shows on sale

Audience ratings cluster high, which is partly survivorship: shows that are not loved do not last in the West End. Even so, a handful sit right at the top of the pile. My Neighbour Totoro, the Studio Ghibli stage adaptation, and the Barbican revival of High Society both hold a 4.9 out of 5, level with The Lion King. Just behind them, Hadestown, Moulin Rouge! The Musical and The Devil Wears Prada all sit around 4.8. If you want the safest possible bet for a guest you are trying to impress, that top tier is where I would start.

The family end of the listings

A surprising share of what is on sale is built for younger audiences, and it is some of the best value in town. The Gruffalo is the obvious entry point at £13 and around 55 minutes, pitched squarely at the under-sevens. Beyond it, the family bracket is unusually strong right now: Matilda The Musical and The Lion King are the blockbusters, the Studio Ghibli adaptation My Neighbour Totoro is the critics' darling at 4.9, Paddington the Musical has just arrived at the Savoy, and Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs offers an hour-long immersive walk-through for dinosaur-obsessed children. A family of four can get into several of these for less than a single premium seat at a starrier show.

The new wave

The West End is not a museum. Among the shows that have recently gone on sale are Paddington the Musical at the Savoy, the Tony-winning puppet comedy Avenue Q at the Shaftesbury, that lavish revival of High Society at the Barbican, and a new staging of Cyrano de Bergerac. These sit alongside the immovable long-runners, The Lion King, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, which have anchored the listings for decades and show no sign of slowing. The push and pull between the new arrivals and the institutions is, more than anything, what keeps the West End worth returning to.

What the numbers tell you

Strip away the marketing and the West End reads like this: 46 shows, a median ticket around £32, a starting price of £13, a running time that usually lands near two and a half hours, and an audience that rates its favourites at nearly five stars. It is more varied, more affordable and more current than the postcard version suggests.

A note on the method, because it matters: every figure here is counted from the shows actually on sale through tickadoo today, not from a fixed list or last year's hits. Because those figures move, the most useful thing is to check what is live rather than what was true last season. You can see current availability and prices for every show mentioned here, and browse the full set of musicals, plays and everything on sale in one place. We will refresh this snapshot as the listings change.