The Duke of York Theater is to be renamed after Sir Tom Stoppard.

Naming the theater after Sir Tom, who died in November 2025, “felt like the right and natural way to keep him with us,” said Andrew Rawlinson, commercial director of ATG Entertainment in London.

“Sir Tom Stoppard has given the British theater some of his best and most beloved works, and he has done it with wit and humanity so that audiences can take them home with them,” he said.

The announcement was made by Stoppard’s sons – Ollie, Barney, Will and Ed Stoppard – who said: “The West End was close to his heart and we are sure he will be equally delighted and humbled by this great honour.”

Among the plays are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, The Real Thing, The Love Invention, The Coast of Utopia, Rock’n’ Roll and Leopoldstadt.

One of Sir Tom’s plays, Arcadia, is currently playing at the theatre, which will be rebranded over the next few months.

In the year Opened in 1892, the theater hosted the premiere of JM Barry’s Peter Pan in 1904 and Charlie Chaplin’s in 1905.

Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Helen Mirren, Glenda Jackson and Michael Gambon appear at the theater on St Martin’s Lane in London.

There is no mention of the former Duke of York in the theater group’s advertising – and theaters change names, for example the Shaftesbury Theater in London is named after Dame Judi Dench.

In a letter to Stage Gazette last fall, a former actor at the Duke of York said it was time to change the theater’s name.

And there were earlier examples of name changes away from the former Prince Andrew and his title.

The Duke of York Stakes, an annual horse race in York, has now become the Minister’s Stakes. The Duke of York pub in York Station became a line and whistle.

Councilors have voted to rename Prince Andrew Way in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, and residents in Hellesdon, near Norwich, have raised concerns over Prince Andrew Way.

A statue of former Prince Andrew, which once hung in the Duke of York’s pub in central London, was taken down last year.