Week three is on Saturday. Here is the start time, the full run of dates to the final, who has already gone, how the voting actually works, and the thing about Movie Week nobody wants to say out loud.

Movie Week sent home the one person in the building whose actual job is making famous people look incredible on camera.

Chris Appleton styles Kim Kardashian. He styles Jennifer Lopez. He has spent twenty years deciding how the most photographed women alive will look when the shutter goes, and he was the first celebrity voted off Strictly Come Dancing in 2026.

The dance-off that did it was also the wrong way round, and most of the coverage has skipped past that. Appleton went up against Jaime Winstone, a working actor from a family of working actors, who by any reasonable reading of Saturday night should not have been down there at all.

She survived, then went on It Takes Two and cried about it, which tells you roughly how much fun a dance-off is when you are the one everybody assumed was safe.

So: fourteen couples left, a leaderboard that is not behaving, and a ballroom with nobody familiar standing in the middle of it.

What time is Strictly on this week?

Strictly Come Dancing is on Saturday 10 October at 6.15 pm on BBC One, finishing around 8.35 pm. The results show follows on Sunday 11 October at 7.10 pm, running to about 8 pm.

Both go out on BBC One and land on BBC iPlayer afterwards. Week three is a straight competition week rather than a themed one, so the couples dance, the scores land, and two of them end up in Sunday’s dance-off.

One thing worth knowing if you are planning your evening around it: Strictly’s start time moves. It shifts by fifteen or twenty minutes most weeks depending on what the BBC has put either side of it, and it moves further when there is football or a one-off in the schedule. The 6.15 pm slot is right for this Saturday. Do not assume it is right for every Saturday in November.

What channel is Strictly on, and can you watch it later?

Strictly Come Dancing is on BBC One, and both the Saturday show and the Sunday results are on BBC iPlayer after broadcast.

You need a TV licence to watch live or on iPlayer. There is nothing to pay on top of that. Strictly: It Takes Two, the spin-off, goes out on BBC Two on weeknights at 6.30pm and appears on iPlayer the same evening.

Full Strictly Come Dancing 2026 schedule

Saturday live show, Sunday results. Times move week to week.

Week one had no elimination, which is why there is no results show against it. The final on 19 December decides the winner on the night, so there is no separate results show that weekend either. Movie Week has already been and gone in week two. Icons Week is the next themed night.

Who has left Strictly 2026 so far?

One couple has gone. Chris Appleton and Amy Dowden were eliminated in week two, after a Movie Week dance-off against Jaime Winstone and Carlos Gu.

Appleton and Dowden danced their cha-cha-cha to I’ll Be Ready from Baywatch. Winstone and Gu repeated their routine to Oh, Pretty Woman. The judges were unanimous, and it went Winstone’s way.

Fourteen couples are now left in the running for the Glitterball.

Why was there no public vote in week one?

There was no vote in week one by design. All fifteen couples danced and were scored; nobody was eliminated, and those scores were carried forward and added to the week two scores.

The first public vote opened after Movie Week on Saturday 3 October. The combined two-week judges’ ranking and that public vote decided who went into the first dance-off.

From week three onwards, the show reverts to normal: each week’s judges’ scores stand on their own alongside that week’s public vote, and nothing carries over.

Which is part of why Appleton’s exit stung. He was not sent home on one bad night. He was sent home on a fortnight.

Why did Strictly move Movie Week earlier in 2026?

Movie Week normally lands in week three. This year it was moved up to week two so that every couple got to dance a themed routine before anybody was eliminated.

Johannes Radebe has explained it as giving all fifteen celebrities the experience of one of the show’s big nights, which is a reasonable thing to want and does make the first elimination land harder. The dance-off arrived straight off the back of a themed episode rather than after a standard week.

The knock-on is that week three is an ordinary competition week, with Icons Week waiting behind it.

How do you vote on Strictly Come Dancing in 2026?

Voting is online only. You sign in with a free BBC account on the official Strictly website and vote in the window that opens near the end of Saturday’s live show.

If you are still looking for a phone number, there isn’t one. The BBC dropped premium-rate phone voting in 2025, after BT wound down the service that had run since the show launched in 2004. This is the second series without it.

The practical bit: voting opens a few minutes before the end of Saturday’s show, once everyone has danced, and closes shortly afterwards. The presenters announce the deadline on air, and only votes cast inside that window count. You can spread your votes across couples or put them all on one, and once a vote is in it cannot be changed.

If you are watching on iPlayer rather than live, check whether the window is still open before you try.

Who has the casting vote in the dance-off?

Not the head judge, not automatically. The casting vote rotates between the four judges, and whoever holds it that week is named at the end of Saturday’s show.

This replaced the old arrangement where Shirley Ballas decided every tie, a change she asked for herself on the grounds that it was time the power was shared. It has carried over into this series.

It matters more than it sounds. In a dance-off that splits two votes each, the couple that survives depends entirely on which judge happened to be holding it that night.

Who is still in Strictly 2026?

Fourteen couples are still competing, from an original fifteen.

Pairings as confirmed at the series launch on 19 September.

• Bethany Antoniawith Nancy Xu
• Cach Mercerwith Maddie Ingoldsby
• Chris AppletonOut — wk 2with Amy Dowden
• Dani Dyerwith Nikita Kuzmin
• Delta Goodremwith Kai Widdrington
• Graeme Hallwith Lauren Oakley
• Jaime Winstonewith Carlos Gu
• John Nelliswith Katya Jones
• Lacey Turnerwith Vito Coppola
• Lawrence Robbwith Jowita Przystał
• Melanie Walterswith Aljaž Škorjanec
• Dame Sarah Storeywith Julian Caillon
• Shaun Wright-Phillipswith Alexis Warr
• Tabby Stoeckerwith Mark Karmalita
• Will Bestwith Dianne Buswell

What is Strictly Icons Week?

Icons Week is the next themed night, with routines built around famous musicians and cultural figures.

It comes after this weekend, which means the couples have to get through Saturday’s vote and Sunday’s dance-off before they are in it. Song choices and dance styles are usually confirmed in the days beforehand.

Who is hosting Strictly in 2026?

Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe are presenting the 2026 series.

This is the part of the series that deserves more attention than it is getting. Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are not in the ballroom this year, and between them they had fronted the show for most of its modern life.

Radebe’s move is the genuinely interesting one. He spent years on the Strictly floor as a professional dancer, and he is now the person introducing it. Very few shows promote from the cast to the front of house, and almost none do it with a dancer.

Who are the Strictly judges in 2026?

Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas and Anton Du Beke are on the panel.

Unchanged, and after the presenting shake-up, that is probably deliberate. You do not replace the voices and the scores in the same year.

When is the Strictly 2026 final?

The final is on Saturday 19 December.

That is thirteen weeks of live shows from the 26 September opener. The semi-final is the weekend before, on 12 December.

Your questions