Strictly Come Dancing’s New Trio to Take Flexible Presenting Roles

Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe have said they will not have fixed roles when they take over Strictly Come Dancing later this month, replacing Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman.

Daly and Winkleman departed the programme at the end of the 2025 series.

Daly introduced the dancers and judges from the dancefloor, while Winkleman conducted the post-dance debriefs upstairs in the “Clauditorium”.

Willis told Richard Osman on The Rest is Entertainment podcast that no individual was being replaced and that the trio’s responsibilities would remain open for now.

The presenters also dismissed reports that Radebe would work as a “roving reporter”, with Willis saying there would definitely be no backstage role of that kind.

Widdicombe said the three would be “like Total Football”, moving around the programme and stepping into different areas as needed.

Radebe, a former Strictly professional dancer who already knows much of the cast and crew, said he would do “a little bit of prying and find out the truth”. He described his new role as “very, very exciting”, although watching the professionals rehearse would give him a “little bit of a tinge” of FOMO.

The decision to place all three presenters together was a producer-led “wild card” that surprised them.

Willis said the audition process included a chemistry test to assess how the trio interacted as a group.

She said producers presented it as their final experiment: “What happens if we do three?”

Willis explained that the approach was so experimental that the presenters had not been given a script. “We’re going to sit down, get it up on the screen and have a little tinker all together,” she said.

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