Broadway BOOP! and Off-Broadway 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee star Jasmine Amy Rogers will headline the 2026 Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta, closing out the three-day event with a special concert. The event will stream live to remote attendees.
Produced and hosted by Junior Theater Festival Productions, the weekend-long Junior Theater Festival brings youth groups from around the world together for a celebration of everything theatre. This year's sold-out event will see nearly 7,500 young theatre fans from the U.S., U.K. France, Malta, New Zealand, and Australia in attendance for three days of singing, dancing, acting, and learning. The Atlanta festival will be held January 16-18, 2026.
Along with Rogers, the 2026 Atlanta event will feature appearances from Isaiah Bailey (The Phantom of the Opera), DB Bonds (Kinky Boots), Frank DiLella (NY1), Tyler Joseph Ellis (Shucked), Adam Faison (The Venery Of Samantha Bird), Katy Geraghty (Into the Woods), Max Antonio Gonzalez (Huzzah!), Morgan Siobhan Green (Hadestown), Beau Harmon (So You Think You Can Dance), Briga Heelan (Once Upon a One More Time), Cori Jaskier (Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile), Taylor Iman Jones (Hamilton), Kelly Lomonte (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom), Brittney Mack (Six The Musical), Nicholas Matos (Smash), Jodi Picoult, Amanda Reid (Hell’s Kitchen), Matthew Lee Robinson (Atlantis), Rob Rokicki (The Lightning Thief Musical), Darian Sanders (The Lion King), Kay Sibal (Six The Musical), Jacob Ryan Smith (Shelter Me), Mark Sonnenblick (KPOP Demon Hunters), and Brion Marquis Watson (MJ The Musical).
The event will bring Rogers back to the annual festival after attending as a student, with Texas's Inspiration Stage. Matos and Reid are also JTF alum.
Attendees are encouraged to visit the Playbill booth throughout the weekend, where theatre fans can enter to win Broadway posters signed by a show's cast and buy Playbills—including many rare, limited edition covers—in a special fundraiser for theatrical non-profit Broadway Cares.
The Atlanta festival will be followed by Junior Theater Festival West in Sacramento February 6-8, 2026. That event will close with a headlining concert from Aladdin Broadway star Michael James Scott.
JTF celebrates musical theatre and musical theatre education with a weekend of events and performances that bring Broadway and West End professionals together with educators and young students. Youth theatre companies can bring 15-minute staged selections (from titles in musical licensor Music Theatre International's Broadway Junior collection) for adjudication. Students can also attend interactive workshops. Students interested in technical theatre can participate in the tech track, which includes the opportunity to work alongside industry professionals backstage for the festival's mainstage events.
“Our 2026 North American Junior Theater Festivals will unite more than 10,000 young people, educators, and families in celebrating the extraordinary skills of emerging theatre makers,” says iTheatrics (JTF's parent company) founder and CEO Timothy Allen McDonald in a statement. “Many of these students will go on to define the future of the entertainment industry. But, regardless of their career paths, the future is sure to be brighter thanks to the community created by these remarkable young people.”
Visit JuniorTheaterFestival.com.
