Strictly Come Dancing’s class of 2026 will be publicly partnered up through a process only used behind-the-scenes in the past, Emma Willis has been revealed.
Appearing with her fellow new co-hosts Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe on The One Show on Thursday (17 September), Willis, 50, shared this new twist for the first time.
The trio were on to talk about this Saturday (19 September) evening’s launch show, during which the public will find out who each celebrity’s professional dancing partner will be.
Teasing that this process would involve “more movement” than previous launch shows, Willis revealed that this year, the couples would be “paired during a dance”, which she said was “something we have never done” on Strictly before.
“So, we’ve got three groups of five, and each group of five will have their own dance. And they’ll be paired like speed-dancing, so like you would with speed-dating,” she revealed.
“We’ll all be there, we’ll put a song on. They’ve all learnt a routine together, all 10 of them [in each group], but 30 in total,” Willis continued, joking that she was “complicating this much more than it needs to be”.
“The music will start, they will dance, and then we’re stood at the side, and we go, ‘Change partners!’ and they all have to change. Then they dance for maybe five seconds, and we’ll go, ‘Change partners!’ and then they might dance for 30 seconds, ‘Change partners!’ So they never know when that rotation is going to stop until we stop it and tell them.”
Comedian Widdicombe, 43, interjected: “It’s so entertaining, I think we should just take it on and do it every week.”
A former Strictly pro himself, Radebe, 39, meanwhile joked that “I’m so glad I’ve changed roles”, adding: “It’s just a lot of work. It’s something that’s never been done before, so I can imagine what they were going through. Normally you’d just be paired up for the launch show and that’s it – a small dance at the end, and then we call it quits.”
Willis then jumped back in, explaining that the contestants were “trying to guess” who they were going to be paired with during the process, “but they couldn’t, and that was great”.
But while “speed-dancing” might be new for Strictly viewers, a similar process likened to speed-dating has happened behind the scenes for years to allow the producers to pair up the couples.
Each season, weeks before the show kicks up, the celebrity contestants and pro dancers all come together for the first time to meet socially and dance together.
This allows the producers to spot couples who get on or have visible natural chemistry, while the celebrities and pros are also allowed to request particular people they’d like to dance with.
This process was first revealed back in 2019 on a one-off TV special all about Strictly’s professional dancers. There, Aljaž Škorjanec explained: “They put us in a circle. We do a salsa and a waltz. The celebrities do like four steps, and then we sort of move on.”
This year, however, a similar process will play out on screen during the launch show, ahead of the first live show on Saturday 26 September, when all 15 couples will dance for the first time.
Strictly Come Dancing returns Saturday 19 September at 7.25pm on BBC One.
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