Strictly Come Dancing
British television series

Strictly Come Dancing (commonly referred to as Strictly) is a British dance contest show in which celebrities partner with professional dancers to compete in mainly ballroom and Latin dance. Each couple is scored by a panel of judges. The title of the show is an amalgamation of 1992 film Strictly Ballroom and long-running TV series Come Dancing. The format has been exported to 60 other countries under the title Dancing with the Stars, licensed by BBC Worldwide, and led to a modern dance-themed spin-off Strictly Dance Fever. The Guinness World Records named Strictly as the world's most successful reality television format in 2010.
The series was presented by Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly from its inception; Claudia Winkleman joined Daly as a lead presenter from the 2014 series, having hosted results shows in place of Forsyth since 2010. Forsyth continued to host special episodes with Daly until November 2015. Daly and Winkleman left the series in 2025, with the presenting line-up for 2026 announced on 19 May 2026 as Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe, and Johannes Radebe.
The series has been broadcast live on BBC One since 15 May 2004, airing on Saturday evenings. From series 2 onwards, the show has been broadcast in the run up to Christmas.
The public source identifies “Strictly Come Dancing” as british television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Strictly, Come and Dancing.
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This entry incorporates text from “Strictly Come Dancing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.