It’s usually around this time of year that the hankering for my summer tradition starts to kick in. I’m talking about Big Brother, a show that has monopolized more hours of my summers than I can fathom, and I’m not at all sorry about it. I know we probably have a few months to wait before Big Brother Season 27's start date comes up on the 2025 TV schedule, but that doesn’t mean I’m not eagerly anticipating its arrival.
So, let’s get into what we do know about Season 27. I also want to talk about the competition I sincerely hope comes back in some form or another when the new season kicks off.
What's The Big Brother Season 27 Premiere Date?
No date has been announced for Season 27 of Big Brother just yet. The premiere dates for the competition have varied over the years, and honesty, it’s not that easy to guess when Season 27 will debut.
Earlier seasons saw an early-July launch, however, as the game extended its in-house days from somewhere in the 70-to-80-day range to 90+ days, the premiere date moved to late June for a while.
Events in recent years have made the premiere date far less predicable. In 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic that had us sheltering in place, Big Brother Season 22 (the second All Star season), premiered on August 5. The two seasons that followed arrived in early July, but then the WGA strike of 2023 led to Season 25 debuting later than usual (August 2). That brings us to last year, when the series returned for its 26th season on July 17.
All of this is to say that in this day and age, there is no normal time for Big Brother to debut, apart from that it’s probably safe to expect it back on our TVs sometime this summer. Maybe it’ll be earlier than last season’s debut, but I’m not willing to get my hopes up that we’ll see Season 27 before July.
What I am getting my hopes up about is that they’ll bring back some version of the AI Arena.
I Want To Know If The AI Arena Will Return In Some Way In Season 27
Anyone who’s watched numerous seasons of Big Brother knows that, while the motto of the show is “expect the unexpected,” we can usually expect the series to add a few twists and turns to the format of the game throughout the run of any given season. Some changes have stuck for much longer than others, but most twists aren’t anywhere in the same league as something like the Power of Veto or the Double Eviction — to use two actual examples of early-series changes that became part of the game longterm.
My hope, however, is that the AI Arena does manage to make it into that echelon of game staples, because man, did it shake up Season 26 in the best ways possible, and I doubt I’m alone in thinking it could benefit future seasons as a permanent fixture.
How The AI Arena Worked In Big Brother Season 26
To refresh your memory, Season 26 of Big Brother was themed around AI, which included the new arena competition twist. Rather than two nominees sitting on the block on eviction night, the Thursday night live show began with three nominees, all of whom would face off in the AI Arena competition.
The winner of the comp secured their safety and the opportunity to vote in the live eviction, while the other two remained on the block until the voted evictee was sent out to meet Julie Chen shortly after. So, the houseguests didn’t have any kind of certainty over who they were voting to evict, apart from that it would be a choice of two of the three nominees.
What Allison Grodner Has Said About It Possibly Returning
Whether or not the AI Arena will return for Big Brother Season 27 remains to be confirmed, though I do hope CBS mentions it in whatever announcement they make about the season premiere date when that comes.
For right now, the main thing we have to go on is, in October 2024, after Season 26 wrapped up, this exact topic came up. When discussing the idea of the AI Arena and whether or not it’ll return, BB executive producer Allison Grodner spoke with EW about the success of the new competition, adding:
I think it's something that as we look towards the summer, nothing's ever going to be exactly the same. We love mixing things up. But I think the essence of that, it's very likely to be carried forward.
The fact that, following Season 26’s finale, Grodner spoke positively about the idea of bringing it back in some form is promising.
That it won’t be exactly the same as it was in Season 26 isn’t that surprising, given that AI was the theme for the season last summer, and explains the name of the competition. It only makes sense that they would call it something else if it returns next season. But I hope they leave the rules as they are, at least for now.
The AI Arena Really Improved The Live Show, Particularly For Live Feed Watchers
The unpredictability that the Arena competition brought to Thursday night’s live episode really was a game-changer, and shook the show out of its too-predictable eviction episodes (especially for live-feed watchers). In recent years, live feed watchers had a pretty solid idea of who was going to be evicted by the time Thursday night rolled around. Heck, in most cases, the decision was already made by the time the Veto Ceremony took place, and it was unlikely to change in the days leading up to eviction.
With the Arena in play, the houseguests had to consider different voting and eviction scenarios depending on which of the three nominees did or didn’t win the competition. Nothing was set in stone, which led to some interesting outcomes in the early weeks of Season 26.
Some might disagree with me on this front, but I’d even go so far as to say that I was a lot less frustrated by the lack of a live Head of Household competition on Thursday nights last summer when the Arena was happening, because there was so much suspense leading up to the actual eviction. I still don’t love that we don’t see a new Head of Household crowned live as often as we used to, considering Thursday’s episode was the one where feed watchers truly could expect the unexpected.
Still, the AI Arena brought back some of the unpredictability to the live show, and that was genuinely needed to shake up the game, not to mention giving the houseguests a reason to scramble a bit once the competition was won and the other two nominees’ fates hung in the balance.
So... What DO We Know About Big Brother Season 27?
Obviously, I would’ve led with this if there was a whole lot to report, but there really isn’t just yet.
As is often the case at this point in the year, we don’t know a whole lot about the new season of Big Brother. The series is well known for keeping a lid on the details of the season until much closer to the premiere date. This is, presumably, to ensure the houseguests know as little as possible about the house and the plans for the season until they’re officially cut off from the outside world.
So, we don’t know the theme, nor do we have confirmation about whether or not Thursday’s episode will have an AI-Arena-style competition.
However, it does appear that Big Brother Season 27 casting is underway. Casting applications are being accepted now, according to the BigBrothercasting.tv website.
Beyond that, we’ll have to wait for whatever tidbits CBS or Julie Chen Moonves might share about the series as Season 27’s premiere approaches.
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