It appears that the Big Brother house will stay empty until the houseguests move in next summer for season 28.
Big Brother executive producers Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan told Entertainment Weekly in a story published Friday, October 17, that CBS does not plan to air Celebrity Big Brother or Big Brother: Reindeer Games this winter.
“It doesn’t look like it,” Grodner, 58, said. “I think it would be fantastic, but it’s just other factors beyond our control. But you can ask CBS.”
With the Winter Olympics airing on NBC in February 2026, fans speculated that another Celebrity Big Brother season could be coming. CBS aired seasons 1 and 3 of the spinoff opposite the 2018 and 2022 Olympics, respectively. Celebrity Big Brother 2 aired in 2019, and the competition-based Reindeer Games played out in December 2023.
Though Celebrity Big Brother, which is a condensed version of the game that is crammed into three to four weeks, isn’t nearly as cutthroat as Big Brother proper, it has still leant itself to plenty of memorable moments.
In season 1, Metta World Peace, seemingly unaware of how the game worked, accidentally voted out Chuck Liddell during a live eviction. In season 2, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci entered as a “fake houseguest,” and in season 3, fans witnessed Lamar Odom on the live feeds talking endlessly about how he hoped to reconcile with Khloé Kardashian.
Fans also seemed to like Reindeer Games, which Big Brother 18 winner Nicole Franzel won, but Grodner cited December as a notoriously difficult month to build ratings. Fortunately for those who want to keep hope alive for another season, the format can lend itself to any time of year.
“Oh my God, we would love it to come back,” Grodner said. “We think it deserves to be out there, whether it’s in the winter, whether it’s summer games, spring games, or, you know, Halloween Horror Games, or whatever.”
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“We designed a format that could be skinned in any way,” Meehan added. “It could be a Halloween stunt, it could be a Christmas stunt, it could be for Valentine’s Day, or even Easter Games could be fun.”
The problem with moving it around, Meehan said, is that it would be hard to draw a consistent audience.
“I think you have to teach an audience that it’s there,” he explained. “Because I think our fans would love the show if everyone knew exactly when it was on. Because people are such [creatures of habit]. It’s like, ‘What’s on in the summer?’ and you show up and it’s there. When you’re trying to teach people new things, it takes a minute [for] everyone [to] know that this exists.”
One thing Reindeer Games has going for it, however, is the opportunity to bring back popular houseguests. In addition to Nicole, 33, Reindeer Games featured fan favorites Taylor Hale, Frankie Grande, Britney Haynes and Danielle Reyes, as well as past winners Xavier Prather and Cody Calafiore.
“We didn’t hear anything negative about it,” Grodner said. “It would be great to see other alumni play, but it’s not in our control. We will produce it wherever anyone wants it. It just comes down to availability in the schedule.”
