New York City Ballet‘s 2026 Winter Season will open on Tuesday, January 20, and continue for six weeks of performances, until Sunday, March 1 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.
The season will feature 18 ballets, including 2 World Premieres, which will be the 499th and 500th original works created for the Company since its founding in 1948.
The first premiere, by NYCB Resident Choreographer Justin Peck, will take place on Thursday, January 29. The second premiere, by NYCB Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky, will take place on Thursday, February 5.
In a joint statement, NYCB Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford and Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan said:
In reaching this incredible milestone of 500 original ballets, which is a testament to the Company’s unparalleled history of creativity and its enduring contributions to the world of dance, we are thrilled that the 499th and 500th new works created for the Company will be choreographed by our current resident artists, Justin Peck and Alexei Ratmansky, and will premiere just one week apart this winter.
In addition to the 500 new works created for the Company since it was founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein in 1948, NYCB has also performed nearly 70 additional ballets created for other companies. These include masterpieces by the Company’s co-founding choreographers, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, that were choreographed before 1948, and ballets by additional choreographers that entered the NYCB repertory after first being performed elsewhere. With the addition of the 2026 Winter Season World Premieres by Peck and Ratmansky, NYCB will have performed a total of 571 works during its history.
The opening night programme on Tuesday, January 20 will feature two early ballets by Balanchine: Serenade (1934) and Prodigal Son (1929). The programme will also feature one of the newest additions to the NYCB repertory, Ratmansky’s Paquita, which premiered during the 2025 Winter Season. Set to music by Ludwig Minkus, Ratmansky’s Paquita was originally paired with Balanchine’s Minkus Pas de Trois from 1951. For the 2026 Winter Season, only Ratmansky’s Paquita, inspired by the Grand Pas from Marius Petipa‘s 1881 staging of the full-length ballet, will be performed.
The second programme of the 2026 Winter Season, which will debut on Friday, January 23, will feature Balanchine’s Kammermusik No. 2 (1978), Le Tombeau de Couperin (1975), and Raymonda Variations (1961), as well as Robbins’ Antique Epigraphs (1984).
The second week of the 2026 Winter Season will be highlighted by the World Premiere of The Wind-Up by Justin Peck on Thursday, January 29. Peck’s new ballet, his 26th for NYCB, is set to the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (Eroica). The Wind-Up has costume designs by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker. The ballet will premiere on a programme that also features Balanchine’s Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano Pas de Deux, and Jerome Robbins’ Opus 19/The Dreamer.
The third week of the season has the World Premiere of The Naked King by Alexei Ratmansky on Thursday, February 5. Ratmansky’s new ballet, his ninth for NYCB, will be set to Jean Françaix’s Le Roi Nu, which was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes, and was composed in 1935 for a ballet by Serge Lifar that premiered at the Paris Opera Ballet the following year. The Naked King will feature costume and scenic design by Santo Loquasto and lighting design by Mark Stanley. The ballet will premiere on a programme with two works by Justin Peck: Dig the Say and Everywhere We Go; and Christopher Wheeldon‘s This Bitter Earth.
The fourth and fifth weeks see 14 performances of Peter Martins‘ production of The Sleeping Beauty, from Wednesday, February 11 until Sunday, February 22. The production was created in 1991 and has set design by David Mitchell, costume design by Patricia Zipprodt, and lighting design by Mark Stanley.
The final week of the 2026 Winter Season offers a programme that will debut on Thursday, February 26 with two masterpieces created for NYCB by the Company’s co-founding choreographers in the 1960s: Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering (1969) and Balanchine’s Diamonds (1967).
The NYCB performances are accompanied by the 62-piece New York City Ballet Orchestra under Music Director Andrew Litton.
Tickets are available online at nycballet.com, by phone at 212-496-0600, or at the theatre’s box office.
For complete programme information, visit nycballet.com.
JUSTIN PECK: World Premiere – January 29, 2026
Justin Peck is the Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor of New York City Ballet. He has created more than 50 works for NYCB and other dance companies around the world, including the Paris Opéra Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, L.A. Dance Project, and The Juilliard School. His works have also been performed by Dutch National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Acosta Danza, and Hong Kong Ballet, among other companies.
A native of San Diego, California, Peck studied at California Ballet before enrolling at the School of American Ballet (SAB) in 2003. He joined NYCB as a dancer in 2007 and was promoted to Soloist in 2013, retiring from dancing following NYCB’s 2019 Spring Season. Peck first choreographed as a student at SAB in 2005. He participated in a working session at the New York Choreographic Institute (NYCI), an affiliate of NYCB, in the fall of 2009, and received NYCI’s first year-long choreographic residency in 2011. He was named NYCB’s Resident Choreographer, the second in the Company’s history, in July 2014, and was also appointed as Artistic Advisor in February 2019.
Peck was the subject of the 2014 documentary Ballet 422, which followed him for two months as he created NYCB’s 422nd original ballet, Paz de la Jolla. In 2015, his ballet Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes won the Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, and he is also the recipient of the 2018 Ted Arison Young Artist Award.
Peck is a three-time Tony Award winner for choreography for the 2018 Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel; the 2024 production of Illinoise, based on Sufjan Stevens’ album Illinois, which Peck also directed; and the 2025 production of Buena Vista Social Club, co-choreographed by Patricia Delgado, which is currently on Broadway. Peck choreographed Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film adaptation of West Side Story and Bradley Cooper’s film Maestro.
ALEXEI RATMANSKY: World Premiere – February 5, 2026
Alexei Ratmansky began his position as Artist in Residence at New York City Ballet in August 2023. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Ratmansky is of Ukrainian descent and trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow prior to becoming a Principal Dancer with the Ukrainian National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and the Royal Danish Ballet. From 2004 to 2008, he was the Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Ballet. He served as Artist in Residence at American Ballet Theatre from 2008 to 2023.
Ratmansky first worked with New York City Ballet as part of a Working Session of the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB, in 2002. His acclaimed ballets for the Company include Russian Seasons (2006), Concerto DSCH (2008), Namouna, A Grand Divertissement (2010), Pictures at an Exhibition (2014), Odesa (2017), Voices (2020), Solitude (2024), and Paquita (2025).
Ratmansky received the Benois de la Danse award for his full-length Anna Karenina, created for the Royal Danish Ballet, in 2005. He was made a Knight of Dannebrog in Denmark in 2001 and was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for 2013. He won his second Benois de la Danse for Shostakovich Trilogy, an ABT and San Francisco Ballet co-commission, in 2014. He is also Associate Artist with Dutch National Ballet, and his work is performed by nearly all major international ballet companies. Recent ballets include The Art of the Fugue, a full-length work premiered by the Royal Danish Ballet in 2025.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.