The Traitors
About The Traitors
The Traitors is a BAFTA-winning psychological reality game show that has become one of the BBC’s biggest hits, and by early 2026 the most-watched programme on British television. Based on the Dutch format De Verraders, the show was commissioned by the BBC in October 2021 and first filmed in May 2022. Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, it brings together a group of strangers in a Scottish castle where they must complete missions to build a prize fund of up to £120,000.
The original concept was dreamt up by Dutch television producer Marc Pos back in 2014, alongside Jasper Hoogendoorn, after Pos read Muiterij op de Batavia (Mutiny on the Batavia), a book about a bloody uprising aboard a shipwrecked Dutch East India Company vessel. Pos initially pitched the idea as De Muiters (The Mutineers), set on a ship with gameplay similar to the social deduction party game Mafia. The nautical setting proved too expensive to produce, but after years of refinement and persistence, Pos sold the format to Dutch network RTL, where it debuted as De Verraders on 13 March 2021 with Tijl Beckand as host.
Within months, international broadcasters came calling. The format now runs in more than 40 territories, but the British edition, produced by Studio Lambert Scotland for BBC One, is the one the others get measured against. The show won two BAFTAs in 2023: Reality & Constructed Factual, and Entertainment Performance for Claudia Winkleman. In March 2026, the BBC signed a three-year deal ensuring The Traitors and its celebrity spin-off will remain in production until at least 2030. Not bad for a format that started life as a story about mutiny on a 17th-century merchant ship.
Filming Location
The Traitors is filmed at Ardross Castle, a 19th-century estate in Ross-shire, about 30 miles north of Inverness. The gothic architecture and the weather do most of the atmospheric work: turrets, candlelit corridors and a reliable supply of Highland mist. Several international versions now film in castles of their own, but Ardross is the one people picture.
How It Works
At the start of the game, a small number of contestants are secretly selected as “Traitors” while the rest are “Faithfuls”. Each night, the Traitors meet in secret to “murder” a Faithful, eliminating them from the game. During the day, all players discuss and vote to “banish” whoever they suspect of being a Traitor.
The Faithfuls win if they banish all the Traitors. The Traitors win if they remain undetected until the end. The surviving players share the prize pot, but if any Traitors are still in at the end, only they take the money. The premise is simple and the tension comes from that simplicity: any conversation might be a lie, and the roundtable vote is the only tool the Faithfuls have.
Where to Watch
- Live: BBC One
- Catch-up: BBC iPlayer
- Time: varies by series. Series 4 ran Wednesday to Friday at 8pm; series 1 to 3 went out at 9pm. The celebrity edition airs Wednesday and Thursday at 9pm
- When: the civilian series runs in January; the celebrity edition runs in the autumn
Series History
| Series | Year | Contestants | Winners | Role | Prize | Finale (consolidated) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Series 1 | 2022 | 22 | Aaron Evans, Hannah Byczkowski, Meryl Williams | Faithfuls | £101,050 (split 3 ways) | 4.7M |
| Series 2 | 2024 | 22 | Harry Clark | Traitor | £95,150 | 8.0M |
| Series 3 | 2025 | 25 | Jake Brown, Leanne Quigley | Faithfuls | £94,600 (split) | ~10.0M |
| Series 4 | 2026 | 22 | Rachel Duffy, Stephen Libby | Traitors | £95,750 (split) | ~11.9M |
| Celebrity Series 1 | 2025 | 19 | Alan Carr | Traitor | £87,500 (charity) | 15.2M (28-day) |
Consolidated figures have risen with every civilian series since the 2022 debut. The celebrity row uses the 28-day figure, which is why it is not directly comparable with the rest of the column.
Series 3 Recap (2025)
Series 3 launched on New Year’s Day 2025 with 25 contestants, the most of any UK series, and wasted no time. The opening episode put a twist on the train to Ardross Castle: Claudia made three players, Fozia, Jack and Alexander, step off. It cost the group money rather than earning it. The pot opened at £10,000 and shed £1,000 for every minute the three took to decide, finishing at £7,000.
The original Traitors were Linda Rands, Minah Shannon and Armani Gouveia, a 27-year-old financial investigator, and the first all-female Traitor trio in the UK version. None of the three made the finale, also a first.
Minah was the breakout of the series, a 29-year-old who carried the Traitor role with real nerve. By day she charmed her fellow contestants with warmth and sincerity; by night she plotted their murders without a flicker of remorse. She recruited Charlotte Berman in Episode 8, with an ultimatum rather than an invitation. Minah was eventually banished in Episode 10 after suspicions finally caught up with her, but not before playing the role better than anyone in the UK version had managed.
Linda was banished in Episode 7 after seven players, her fellow Traitor Minah among them, wrote her name at the roundtable. Allies count for very little here.
The Death Match ran across Episodes 6 and 7. The Traitors wrote four names on a painting and those players competed over three rounds of cards, with the card game ending Episode 6 on a cliffhanger and the outcome landing in Episode 7. Fozia Fazil lost and was murdered face to face rather than overnight, going out 14th of 25 with around eleven players still in the castle.
The finale came down to Jake Brown, Leanne Quigley, Francesca Rowan-Plowden and Alexander Dragonetti. In a tense sequence of votes, Alexander was banished first, followed by Francesca. That left Jake and Leanne, both Faithfuls, to split £94,600 between them.
Series 4 (2026)
Series 4 premiered on 1 January 2026 and finished on 23 January, the finale taking 9.4 million overnight and roughly 11.9 million consolidated, a record for the civilian version. The first three episodes all exceeded 11 million viewers on consolidated seven-day figures, with the launch pulling in a staggering 11.9 million.
The series introduced the “Secret Traitor”, its largest format change so far. Claudia selected barrister Hugo (51), head of communications Rachel Duffy (42) and cybersecurity consultant Stephen Libby (32) as the known Traitors. A fourth, Fiona Hughes, was a hidden Traitor, unknown to the other Traitors and to viewers until Episode 4, when Stephen and Rachel completed a challenge to uncover her.
Among the 22 contestants were a retired police detective (Amanda), a crime writer and, in a first for the show, a mother-and-daughter pair (Judy and Roxy Wilson) alongside a couple who were already together: psychologist Ellie Buckley and Ross Garshong.
Hugo became an early target. Fiona, newly revealed as the Secret Traitor, helped things along by questioning his behaviour after the train. He was banished with 10 votes, which suggests courtroom skills do not always transfer.
The rivalry between Fiona and Rachel was the loudest thing in the series. Amanda’s exit set it off, and her banishment was a mess in its own right: the roundtable tied with Reece Ward, tied again 7-7 on the revote, and was finally settled by the Chest of Chance, a two-chest lottery in which Amanda drew the empty one. Afterwards Rachel told the group that Amanda had confided she was a retired police detective. Fiona, herself a Traitor, accused Rachel of lying and said she thought Rachel was a Traitor. The group split, both women campaigned openly to have the other banished, and it made for riveting television.
In the finale, Rachel Duffy and Stephen Libby became the first pair of Traitors to win the UK version, sharing a prize pot of £95,750. Rachel credited her years of playing the social deduction game Mafia for teaching her to lie convincingly while controlling her emotions. She said she planned to use the money to support her mother, who lives with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Stephen said he would use his share on his parents, who had gone without to put him through university, and to help his father, a butcher, take his painting more seriously.
Their win made history: the first time two Traitors survived to the end together in the UK version, and only the second time Traitors have taken the prize (after Harry Clark’s solo victory in Series 2).
Celebrity Traitors Series 1 (2025)
The Celebrity Traitors launched on 8 October 2025 and ran for nine episodes, with Claudia Winkleman once again at the helm at Ardross Castle. The cast of 19 playing for charity included: Stephen Fry, Tom Daley, Jonathan Ross, Alan Carr, Clare Balding, Kate Garraway, Charlotte Church, Paloma Faith, Celia Imrie, Joe Marler, Nick Mohammed, David Olusoga, Lucy Beaumont, Mark Bonnar, Joe Wilkinson, Cat Burns, Niko Omilana, Ruth Codd and Tameka Empson.
The format worked with famous faces because they threw themselves into the paranoia rather than protecting their images. Playing for charity rather than for themselves helped too.
Alan Carr emerged as the winner — and a Traitor, no less. In the finale, David Olusoga and Nick Mohammed chose to end the game alongside Carr, believing him to be a Faithful. When Carr revealed his true identity, he burst into tears. His win secured £87,500 for Neuroblastoma UK, a charity close to his heart. It was a genuinely moving moment, and it settled any argument about whether the celebrity edition was a novelty.
The finale averaged 11.1 million overnight and peaked at 12 million, the most-watched Traitors episode in the UK on that measure. On the 28-day consolidated figure it reached 15.2 million, which made it the BBC’s biggest programme of the year.
The Celebrity Traitors Series 2 (2026)
The BBC confirmed the second celebrity line-up on 2 May 2026, and it is a noticeable step up in wattage. Twenty-one famous names go into Ardross Castle this time, across ten episodes rather than nine, with Claudia Winkleman hosting again and up to £100,000 on the table for their chosen charities. Filming took place over May and June 2026, and the series is scheduled for autumn 2026 on BBC One and iPlayer. An exact launch date has not been announced.
The full cast: Bella Ramsey, Michael Sheen, Miranda Hart, Richard E. Grant, Maya Jama, James Acaster, Joe Lycett, Romesh Ranganathan, Rob Beckett, Amol Rajan, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, James Blunt, Jerry Hall, Hannah Fry, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Myha’la, Sharon Rooney, Joanne McNally, Ross Kemp, Sebastian Croft and Kenny Ojuederie — the Beta Squad YouTuber and boxer who competes as King Kenny.
It is a shrewder bit of casting than a simple list of names suggests. Series one worked because it mixed people who were good at the game with people who were entertainingly bad at it, and the same logic is visible here: Hannah Fry and Amol Rajan are professional analysts of how information travels, Acaster and Lycett are practised at sustaining a bit long past the point of comfort, and Michael Sheen is an actor capable of holding a lie in front of twenty people without blinking. None of which tends to survive first contact with a roundtable.
There is also a companion show this year. The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, hosted by Ed Gamble, gives banished players somewhere to explain what they were thinking — the format’s equivalent of Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, and a fair measure of how much airtime the BBC thinks the franchise can carry.
The Traitors Series 5 (2027)
The civilian series is expected back in early January 2027, the slot it has occupied since 2024, with filming at Ardross Castle across summer and autumn 2026. Claudia Winkleman returns. The BBC’s three-year agreement, signed in March 2026, keeps both the civilian and celebrity editions in production until at least 2030.
Viewing Statistics
A note on the numbers, because they are easy to misread. Overnight figures count who watched live; consolidated figures add catch-up over the following seven or 28 days and are always higher. The two are not comparable, so each is labelled below.
Series 1 (2022): Averaged 3.7 million across the run on consolidated seven-day figures, with the finale at 4.7 million. A decent start for a show nobody had heard of.
Series 2 (2024): Word of mouth did the work. The opener took 5.9 million consolidated and the finale 8.0 million, close to double the Series 1 peak.
Series 3 (2025): Launch episode 9.2 million consolidated. The finale came in just under 10 million on the same basis.
Series 4 (2026): The best figures the show has had. The launch took 11.9 million consolidated and the first three episodes all cleared 11 million. The finale drew 9.4 million overnight, peaking at 9.6 million with a 54.9% share, meaning more than half of everyone watching anything at that moment was watching this. On consolidated figures the finale reached roughly 11.9 million, about two million up on the previous year.
Celebrity Series 1 (2025): The celebrity edition beat the civilian series outright. The finale averaged 11.1 million overnight and peaked at 12 million, and reached 15.2 million on the 28-day consolidated figure.
For context, 5 million is now treated as a hit. These are numbers that would have stood up in the terrestrial era.
How The Traitors Compares to Other Reality Shows
British reality television has had plenty of cultural moments, from early Big Brother to the Love Island summers. The Traitors is doing something different, and it is worth working out what.
For a start, it does not rely on romance or physical attractiveness to generate drama. There are no bikini-clad contestants lounging by a pool. It runs on whether you can read the person sitting opposite you. That is a puzzle rather than a spectacle, and it gives the show a reach that Love Island and I’m a Celebrity do not have.
The show also benefits from a remarkably diverse audience. While Love Island skews heavily towards younger viewers, The Traitors pulls in families, older viewers and people who would never normally watch reality TV. Part of that is down to its BBC One primetime slot and the lack of any content that might make you uncomfortable watching with your parents. But it is also that the central question, who is lying, needs no explaining to anybody.
Then there is the format itself. Unlike the weeks-long commitment required by Love Island or Big Brother, The Traitors runs for roughly three weeks in January, airing three times a week. That concentrated burst is what makes it event television. Longer-running series have fallow weeks; this one has no time for any.
Compared to I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, The Traitors offers a different kind of spectacle. I’m a Celeb thrives on the physical discomfort and celebrity fish-out-of-water comedy of the jungle. The Traitors thrives on suspicion, betrayal and the slow unravelling of alliances. Both are good television. The Traitors asks more of you and pays it back.
The show also manages something most game shows cannot: real emotional stakes without much money on the table. The pot is capped at £120,000 and has never actually reached it, which is modest by the standards of the genre. Yet the roundtable banishments produce confrontations that rival anything on television, because the betrayal is personal rather than financial.
If The Traitors has a weakness, it is the risk of twist fatigue. Series 3 and 4 both introduced new mechanics, the Death Match and the Secret Traitor, and there is a danger each run now feels obliged to outdo the last. The original format is strong enough to sustain itself without constant reinvention, and the producers would do well to trust that.
That is a small complaint about the most successful British reality format of the decade. The BBC deal runs to 2030 and the figures are still going up.
Host
Claudia Winkleman hosts The Traitors, bringing her signature wit and dramatic flair to the proceedings. Her BAFTA-winning style, all black outfits and the fringe, is now inseparable from the show. She delivers each revelation with a mix of glee and real sympathy, and never lets anyone forget that it is a game.
