Hamilton Guides
Hamilton's running time is 2 hours and 45 minutes on Broadway, with a 15-minute intermission built into that total. The Disney+ film runs 2 hours and 40 minutes, five minutes shorter than the stage version, with its own one-minute intermission instead.
Lin-Manuel Miranda packed more than 20,000 words into the score, which is a big part of why 2 hours and 45 minutes passes quickly.
Hamilton's producers haven't published official stage timings for each act. What's public is the original Broadway cast recording: 46 tracks running 2 hours, 22 minutes, and 13 seconds in total. Act One holds 23 tracks and runs 70 minutes and 58 seconds, opening with "Alexander Hamilton" and closing with "Non-Stop." Act Two also holds 23 tracks, running 71 minutes and 15 seconds, opening with "What'd I Miss" and closing with "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story."
Hamilton started off-Broadway at The Public Theater, previewing from January 20, 2015, and opening February 17, 2015. It moved to the Richard Rodgers Theatre for its Broadway opening on August 6, 2015.
The album leaves out one stage scene, "Tomorrow There'll Be More of Us," by Lin-Manuel Miranda's choice. Broadway.com counts 47 songs in the show, one more than the album's 46 tracks. Even without exact stage minutes, the two acts carry almost identical amounts of music, so neither half of the show runs noticeably longer than the other.
If you want to hear the score before you go, the Original Broadway Cast Recording covers both acts in full, minus that one interlude.
Hamilton had played 4,005 Broadway performances as of September 27, 2026, the 16th-longest run in Broadway history. See our ranking of the longest-running Broadway shows for how it compares.
FiveThirtyEight's Leah Libresco counted every word in the Hamilton cast recording and found 20,520 of them, delivered at about 144 words per minute. Spring Awakening, the next-fastest score she measured, runs about 77 words per minute, roughly half Hamilton's pace. At the pace of other Broadway scores, Hamilton's word count would take four to six hours to perform, according to the same analysis.
That density isn't spread evenly. Lafayette's verse in "Guns and Ships" hits about 6.3 words per second, just ahead of the 6.2 in "Not Getting Married Today" from Company. Hamilton is a sung-through musical, with, as Wikipedia puts it, "little dialogue isolated outside of the musical score." Almost none of the show's time is spent on spoken dialogue between songs.
Hamilton's filmed version runs 2 hours and 40 minutes on Disney+, five minutes shorter than the Broadway show. Disney filmed it over three live performances at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2016, using the original Broadway cast. It premiered on Disney+ on July 3, 2020.
On Disney+, the intermission runs just one minute, nowhere near the 15 minutes you'd get in the theater. When Hamilton returned to theaters in September 2025, that intermission was extended to ten minutes.
It's rated PG-13 for language and some suggestive material, with two instances of profanity muted in the Disney+ cut to avoid an R rating.
Plan to arrive at least 30 minutes before curtain. There's no coat check at the Richard Rodgers, so bring only a bag that fits under your seat. Curtain times shift by day and season, so check the official schedule before you go, but the math stays simple: a 7 p.m. curtain lets out around 9:45 p.m.
Hamilton's official site recommends the show for ages 10 and up. Infants aren't allowed in the theater, and children 5 and older need their own ticket. Expect profanity, gunshot sound effects, and loud music cues; there are no strobe lights. Standard Broadway etiquette applies: don't sing along, even if you know every word.
At the time of writing, the Ham4Ham lottery offers $10 tickets for every performance. Entries open Fridays at 10 a.m. and close the following Thursday at noon, and winners can buy up to two tickets. Our guide to buying Broadway tickets covers the rest.
Yes. Hamilton has one 15-minute intermission on Broadway. Act One runs 70 minutes and 58 seconds on the cast recording, and Act Two runs 71 minutes and 15 seconds, so the break lands roughly in the middle.
The Disney+ film runs 2 hours and 40 minutes, with a one-minute intermission built into the stream. It premiered on Disney+ on July 3, 2020, and returned to theaters in 2025 with a longer, ten-minute intermission.
Most Broadway shows run "between 90 minutes and three hours," according to our guide to Broadway show lengths, and Hamilton's 2 hours and 45 minutes falls toward the longer end of that range.
The show's official recommendation is ages 10 and up. Infants aren't allowed inside the theater, and any child age 5 or older needs their own ticket. The show also contains profanity, gunshot sound effects, and loud music cues, though there are no strobe lights.
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Hamilton throws a lot of real historical figures at you fast. This guide sorts out who's who, how they're connected, and which parts of their stories the musical dramatizes, compresses, or leaves genuinely uncertain.
Most of what people call Broadway etiquette isn't a secret rulebook. It's a handful of practical expectations, some official policy and some shared cultural norm, that keep a live performance working for everyone in the room at once.
Most Broadway shows run between 90 minutes and three hours, with musicals averaging about two and a half hours. Current running times by show, from Broadway.com.
