Throughout the years, Strictly Come Dancing has evolved to include new ideas, dances, and themes. We've seen that this season already as the Sunday Night Results Show underwent drastic changes - many of which were largely called out by fans after an overwhelmingly negative reception - before changing some of them back in the weeks after that. But it's all an attempt to change with the times.
Another change that this series will be employing is the Instant Dance Challenge - which will be debuting this Saturday on the Week 10 episode. It replaces Strictly's a-thon challenge, which usually featured the remaining six couples performing a dance they have already previously performed all on the floor at the same time. We had seen the Quickstepathon in 2015, the Cha Cha-Challenge in 2016, and the Pasodoblethon in 2017. After the disaster that was the Lindy Hop-athon in 2018, it was retired until it made a comeback in 2024's Sambathon.
Now, the Instant Dance replaces it. And this isn't a first for the franchise, as this particular challenge has already existed on other versions of Strictly internationally, including the US' Dancing With The Stars - which just featured one in the season 34 finale. Here's what you can expect.
What is the Instant Dance Challenge on Strictly?
As we mentioned above, the Instant Dance Challenge has become a fixture of multiple versions of Dancing With The Stars, so it's not new to the franchise - just to the original version of the show. Strictly has never featured it before, so it is a first for UK audiences. As for the rules, they are quite interesting.
Instant Dance will involve the six remaining couples choosing a dance style at random and performing it on the Saturday Night show, with hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman overseeing it. Last weekend's Results Show featured a VT in which each couple selected an envelope featuring the dance style they will be performing. Those envelopes will then be opened on Saturday night after each couple has danced their first routine, seemingly revealing the dance style and music that they will be dancing to. They will then have 10 seconds to prepare their routine, which will then be at least 40 seconds.
If it's like the US version of the challenge, the couples will have to have a quick change before stepping back out onto the dancefloor to perform the Instant Dance. They really do go all in on the idea of it being instant. And that could very well make for some absolutely chaotic television.
Once all six couples have performed their Instant Dance, the judges will announce their ranking of each performance. Just as we saw with the athon challenges on Strictly in the years beforehand, the highest-ranking couple will score 6 points while the one at the bottom will score 1 point. These points are then added to the couples' combined scores from the past two weeks. This is a different approach to the version in the US, which sees the judges score the contestants' Instant Dance like a main dance and adding that to the original dance's score.
What's going to be even more interesting is that we will technically have three scores on the combined Leaderboard at the end of the evening. The scores from last weekend's Blackpool Special have been carried over to this week (as there was no elimination last week after La Voix and Aljaž had to withdraw from the competition) so that will be combined with this week's scores, as well as the results of the Instant Dance. The votes from last week's show will also be combined with the votes this weekend, so there are a lot of elements in play this weekend. And that's going to make both the final Leaderboard - and the results of the public vote very, very interesting.
Best of Luck to all of the Strictly couples! We can't wait to see the Instant Dances in action!