Here’s How to Get $10 Tickets to See Hamilton in Philadelphia

A ticket lottery for the Broadway musical Hamilton was just announced for the upcoming run at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia (photo courtesy Ensemble Arts Philadelphia)

One of the greatest Broadway musicals of all time — I am, of course, talking about Hamilton — is coming to Philadelphia. Quite soon, in fact. Hamilton opens at Philadelphia’s prestigious Academy of Music in less than two weeks. The show will run from October 29th through November 23rd. The only problem? Getting tickets.

Hamilton tickets are among the most sought after tickets in the Philadelphia theater world, if not the most. Actually, yeah, let’s just go ahead and call them the most. Shows that aren’t sold out are damn near close to it. Sure, you could go searching around on third-party sites. But why do that when you have a shot at getting tickets to see Hamilton in Philadelphia for just $10?

On Thursday morning, the producers of the Hamilton run at the Academy of Music announced a ticket lottery for every single performance of the show there. The venue is making 40 $10 tickets available for every show. It all starts on Friday morning at 10 a.m.

Here’s how the Hamilton ticket lottery works. First, you have to download the Hamilton app to your Apple or Android device. And starting at 10 a.m. on Friday and continuing through noon on Thursday, you can go into the app and enter the lottery. One entry per person. After the lottery closes that Thursday, winners will get an alert and have two hours to claim their tickets, which cost $10 each, with a limit of two tickets per winner. The tickets made available will be for the upcoming week’s shows. And then the whole cycle repeats starting each Friday morning at 10 a.m.

Now, if you’re thinking to yourself that you can score $10 tickets in the Hamilton lottery and then resell them for a bunch of cash, I should tell you that you can’t actually get the tickets until two hours before the show. That’s when you can pick them up at the venue. And you need photo ID.

There’s also a way to win free tickets to Hamilton in Philadelphia: A scavenger hunt. Basically, you look for clues to different scavenger hunt locations on the Ensemble Arts Philly social media accounts. Then you go to said locations and snap a selfie using the HamCam filter that you get through the show’s app. There are seven locations in total. To be eligible to win tickets, you need photos from at least four of those locations. And, naturally, you have to share these selfies on your own social media using the hashtag #HaminPHL.

Way too much work for me. I’ll stick with the lottery. Either way, good luck!