After the huge success of the celebrity version the producers added a twist – and host says it all gets ‘hardcore’

With its cloak and dagger plots and gripping finale, The Celebrity Traitors became the biggest show of 2025 in the UK – but the new series of the regular version is even more brutal, the host Claudia Winkleman has said.

And as Kate Garraway might put it, audiences are set to be flabbergasted by a new twist that the producers say has been introduced to “change the conversation” around the regular version of the hit reality gameshow when it returns for its fourth series on 1 January.

The first season of The Celebrity Traitors brought new fans to the show when it aired in the autumn, with about 15 million viewers watching the comedian Alan Carr triumph.

So expectations for the return of the normal version – in which members of the public play for prize money of up to £120,000 – are high.