Good news Love Island fans! ITV has just announced that there will be not one, but two series of the hit dating show next year. The programme is currently in its eighth season, airing on ITV2, but will be returning yet again with two new groups of Islanders in 2023.
ITV has confirmed that the ninth series will be run in the summer of 2023 as usual, with contestants spending eight weeks in a villa in Majorca. There will then be winter series of the show for its tenth season where singletons will be looking for love in a villa in Cape Town, South Africa.
This isn't the first time however the show has aired twice in one year. ITV previously aired a winter series of the show in January 2020, which saw islanders live in a villa in Cape Town, South Africa. Paige Turley and Finley Tapp won the series, scooping the £50,000 prize money.
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Love Island is currently broadcasting its eighth season across ITV2 and ITV Hub, which was launched earlier this month to a consolidated five million viewers across all devices, according to ITV - making it the biggest launch since 2019.
Consolidated data from ITV has also shown that Love Island is the biggest programme of the year so far for the 16 to 34-year-old demographic, which is hosted by Laura Whitmore and narrated by her husband Iain Stirling.
Love Island originally began in 2005, with one series in the same year and another in 2006. It was then relaunched in 2015 and since then has produced a number of long-term couples, with four weddings and seven babies among them.
Speaking about the plan for two series in 2023, director of reality commissioning and controller for ITV2 Paul Mortimer said: “Love Island has once again proved itself to be the nation’s favourite talking point across the summer.
"And we’re always blown away by the show’s ongoing impact and talk-ability amongst our younger audience. So, rather than just serving up a summer of love, we thought we’d make 2023 the year of love with two full series of the show.”
On the impact of the show, series two contestant Olivia Buckland, said: “Love Island changed every aspect of our life. From meeting someone, to falling in love, to getting to getting married and having a baby on the way and completely changing our careers.
“The experience opened up so many new and different doors, as well as so many new experiences for Alex and I. The best part was obviously meeting each other and now having a baby! The experience has changed us both as people and has given us such an individual life experience.”
Buckland, 28, met her now husband Alex Bowen on the show in 2016 and the pair recently welcomed their first child Abel. The two new series will air on ITV2 and ITVX – ITV’s new streaming platform – in 2023. ITVX is set to launch later this year with more than 9,000 hours of entertainment free to stream on the platform.
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