New series of The Traitors is really, really brutal, says Claudia Winkleman

Claudia Winkleman said the contestants of the new series – which starts on New Year’s Day – play it in an ‘extraordinary way’. Photograph: BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge

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.