Image Courtesy: BBC/Studio Lambert
When Celebrity Traitors launched on BBC One last year, it did something a lot of new formats promise and very few deliver: it got better as it went. The first episode found its feet, the mid-series found its rhythm, and by the finale, something had shifted. People were properly invested. Alan Carr won.
If you watched, you know how right that felt. The comedian who spent weeks being the warmest person in the castle turned out to have been the most clear-eyed one all along. Celebrity Traitors proved that the format works, and it works on famous faces just as well as on strangers.
What Series 1 proved
The finale drew more than 11 million viewers overnight, the biggest BBC One audience of the year and the biggest since the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special. Among viewers aged 16 to 24 who were watching linear TV in that time slot, 81% were on BBC One .More than half of 16-to-24s watching linear TV in the slot watched every Celebrity Traitors episode (Overnight figures).
Digital i's chief analytics officer Matt Ross described what the data showed: 'At a time when younger audiences are increasingly turning away from linear TV, The Traitors has grown into appointment viewing for 16 to 24 year-olds in the UK. The most recent iteration has been a major draw for younger viewers.'
The Guardian covered it, drawing on Digital i data, under the headline How The Celebrity Traitors reversed TV's most troubling trend. The argument that young audiences had left linear television for good turned out to be more complicated than it looked. They had not left. They had been waiting for something worth coming back for.
Series 2: cast and schedule
The second series launched on 1st October at 8 pm on BBC One. Claudia Winkleman is back. The castle is back. Twenty-one celebrities are competing for up to £100,000 for a charity of their choice, with the exact figure determined by how well they perform in each challenge. Charitable stakes do not make the game any less ruthless. Ten episodes, Thursday and Friday nights throughout October, finale on 30th October.
Twenty-one people who have never been in the same room before, and most of them have spent their careers being very good at being watched. In a game built on deception, that is either an advantage or a problem. The ones worth watching most closely:
Michael Sheen has built a career playing people playing characters: Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough. The castle may have met its match.
Joe Lycett has a professional talent for appearing more harmless than he is. Worth watching from the start.
Romesh Ranganathan is in the castle at the same time as his Rob & Romesh Vs co-host Rob Beckett. Whether that shared history helps or becomes the most complicated thing in the room is one of the series' more interesting subplots.
Bella Ramsey is 22 and the youngest in the cast. She has spent her career playing characters who survive in hostile environments against the odds. The castle is a different kind of hostile, but the skill set transfers.
King Kenny has built over two million YouTube subscribers and is part of the Beta Squad collective, with more than twelve million across the group. He brings an energy and an audience the format has not encountered before.
Also in the castle: Amol Rajan, James Acaster, James Blunt, Jerry Hall, Joanne McNally, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Maya Jama, Miranda Hart, Myha'la, Professor Hannah Fry, Richard E Grant, Ross Kemp, Sebastian Croft and Sharon Rooney.
The question Series 2 has to answer
Episode 1 gave the first answer. The opening night averaged 8.9 million viewers and a 54.9% viewing share. Series 1 opened on 8 October 2025 with 6.1 million and a 46.4% share. That is a 46% increase in the opening audience year on year. Among 16 to 34 year olds watching TV in the slot, nearly 84% tuned in. These are overnight figures. Consolidated numbers will follow over the coming days, and the full picture across the series will take shape across October.
Digital i measures BARB viewership data. Overnight figures, consolidated numbers across seven days, episode-on-episode trends across a full series. We will publish a full round-up when the series wraps on 30 October: how it performed week by week, whether the younger audience numbers held up, and who the Traitor turned out to be.
We cannot wait to find out who the Traitor is. And we cannot wait to see what the data looks like as the series runs.
The Traitors are back. And we are watching.
