Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman have announced they will leave Strictly Come Dancing at the end of the current series, bringing an end to their long-running tenure as co-hosts of the BBC dance show. The duo confirmed the news in a joint statement on Instagram, saying they had decided “the time is right to step aside and pass over the baton” after 21 years.
Daly, who has hosted the show since 2004, originally co-presented alongside Bruce Forsyth before Winkleman joined as permanent co-host in 2014. Winkleman had previously hosted the companion show Strictly: It Takes Two and the Sunday results shows. The pair said they would continue to host until the end of the 23rd series, which is currently airing.
In their statement, Winkleman described Strictly as “the greatest relationship of my career” and said she felt it was “best to leave a party before you’re fully ready to go”. Daly, who received an MBE for services to broadcasting in June, thanked the BBC and the show’s crew, adding: “We will cry when we say our last ‘Keep dancing!’ but we will continue to say it to each other.”
The departure comes amid a turbulent period for the show, which has faced multiple scandals in recent years. In 2024, a misconduct investigation led to professional dancers Giovanni Pernice and Graziano di Prima leaving the show after complaints of bullying and harassment. More recently, the BBC launched an investigation into alleged cocaine use by two stars, and an unnamed male contestant was arrested on suspicion of rape and non-consensual intimate image abuse, though the BBC confirmed he was not involved in the current series.
The BBC has not yet commented on potential replacements for Daly and Winkleman, whose partnership has been praised for boosting female representation on television.
