While there is a while before Strictly Come Dancing returns to the Saturday night schedules, there has been some exciting news unveiled to tide fans over.
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The BBC has officially confirmed this year’s professional dancer line-up, with fan-favourite stars returning to the ballroom for another exciting year.
For the upcoming series, Dianne Buswell, Nadiya Bychkova, Amy Dowden, Karen Hauer and Katya Jones have all been confirmed to return to the dance floor.
Alongside them also returning are Neil Jones, Nikita Kuzmin, Gorka Marquez, Luba Mushtuk and Jowita Przystal.
While there was a question mark as to whether Johannes Radebe would be returning following his dip into the theatre world with the Kinky Boots UK tour, the South African dancer will be headed back to Elstree for another season.
He will be joined by Aljaž Škorjanec, Kai Widdrington, Nancy Xu, Carlos Gu, Lauren Oakley, Michelle Tsiakkas and Vito Coppola.
And they won't be alone! Two brand new professional dancers will make their Strictly Come Dancing debut, with details to be revealed closer to the return of the show.
The latest outing was the BBC's biggest unscripted series in 2024, with the main show averaging 8.8 million viewers across the series, with 10.1 million tuning into the final.
2024 saw more people tune into Strictly on BBC iPlayer than ever before, with a fifth of all audiences watching on the platform.
Sarah James, executive producer at BBC Studios said: "The excitement is already building ahead of the new series and in addition to welcoming back our fantastic returning Pros, we are looking forward to welcoming two brand new Professional Dancers to the line up who will help bring another unforgettable series of dazzling dance and loads more besides to viewers later in 2025."
While Kalpna Patel-Knight, Head of Entertainment at the BBC added: "The Strictly Professional Dancers are the beating heart of the programme, showcasing to viewers in every corner of the UK their world class talent by lighting up the famous Strictly ballroom every Saturday and Sunday night. Here’s to another fab-u-lous series!"
Katelyn Mensah is the Senior Entertainment Writer for Radio Times, covering all major entertainment programmes, reality TV shows and the latest hard-hitting documentaries. She previously worked at The Tab, with a focus on reality TV and showbiz news and has obtained a BA (Hons) in Journalism.
