Chilli butter pan-fried scallops, beef wellington with truffle mash, sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream ice cream – those were the courses that made Paralympian Lauren Steadman the celebrity cookery competition champion of Celebrity Master Chef 2026. That ended a tournament that felt different to the opening salvo. New faces at the judges’ table, an Olympic range of sports represented in the celebrity line-up, an aspirational show looking to put a turbulent 2025 behind it – here is how Celebrity Master Chef UK 2026 played out, who was involved, and what it told us about the competition.
Celebrity MasterChef UK at a glance
| Information | Detail |
|---|---|
| Broadcaster | BBC One and BBC iPlayer |
| Series | The 21st edition |
| 2026 run | Started Tuesday 18 August at 9 pm on BBC One, with a five-week run |
| Judges | Grace Dent and Giorgio Locatelli |
| Production | Shine TV, part of Banijay UK, in association with Ziji Productions |
| Contestants | 15 celebrities |
| 2026 winner | Lauren Steadman MBE |
| First-ever winner | Matt Dawson, 2006 |
A new look behind the counter
The most important thing ahead of the first course was who would be judging. Former contestant Grace Dent stepped in as a new judge in 2025 after replacing regular judge Gregg Wallace on his departure from the role in 2025. This year, Giorgio Locatelli replaced John Torode, who left the BBC in 2025.
Locatelli has genuine credentials. He achieved his first Michelin star in 1999, then a second in 2003, and he also evaluates Master Chef Italia. His restaurant, Locanda Locatelli, in London has been open since 2002. That didn’t mean he went soft on the celebrity contestants. “I’m strict,” he said before the series.
With Dent on board, the show was taking a different tone. The restaurant critic and author says she is a “long-standing fan” of Locatelli. Paddy McGuinness, Zoe Ball and Morgan Burtwistle, AKA Angry Ginge, have also been confirmed as the celebrity guest judges.
Who took part in Celebrity MasterChef UK 2026
The BBC’s own synopsis said singers and sports stars, actors and authors, comedians, entertainers and presenters, and the cast was true to that. The first heat was led by Jay McGuinness of The Wanted, winner of Strictly Come Dancing in 2015. “They all really enjoyed their experience of the show”, he told the final. Comedian Joe Pasquale, a previous winner of I’m A Celebrity, was in the same heat.
Later heats featured YouTuber Max Fosh, radio presenter Melvin Odoom, The Saturdays’ Una Healy and Sue Cleaver. Joining the ranks were Tom Simons, Nitin Ganatra, Emily Steel, Donna Preston and Eric Underwood, along with Lauren Steadman herself. The top three would be a genre mashup of sport and reality TV, as they were two boxers, Olympic medallist Emily Campbell, who was in the series, and Love Island’s Shakira Khan.
How the competition works
The structure is identical as ever. Three heat weeks (comprising three episodes each) challenge the cooks, then a semi-final determines which of them enters the final. During the final week, the final cook-off sees the remaining contestants show off their skills to celebrity chefs, with the three finalists then preparing a three-course meal for the judges.
Has enough pressure to rival Main Event or Master Chef: The Professionals, but thinner: Less fraught, more frazzled contestants who come from the bright lights of stadiums and stage, the studio, end up trembling just holding a plate of scallops.
The final, and the woman who won it
Dent and Locatelli named Lauren Steadman champion after all three finalists served their menus in the finale, which aired on Friday 18 September. When her name was called, she said, “I’m shaking,” and she compared the feeling to something she knows well. In her words, it was “literally up there with a Paralympic gold medal.”
That is a high bar. Steadman is a Paralympic paratriathlete and swimmer who won gold at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. She is also an MBE and has roots in Portsmouth.
Before the series, she was open about how little cooking confidence she had. She said she could compete at a very high level in sport and handle pressure, and hoped the show would give her the confidence that she could cook. A beef Wellington in a final suggests the confidence arrived.
A show with a habit of crowning athletes
Steadman is not the first Paralympian to win. Kadeena Cox won in 2021, and Greg Rutherford is also on the list of past winners. Sport has always suited this format, because elite athletes tend to take instruction well and cope with a clock.
The winners’ list is broader than that, though. Here are a few names from it:
- 2006: Matt Dawson, the former England scrum-half, won the first series, beating Roger Black and Hardeep Singh Kohli in the final.
- Series two: Nadia Sawalha
- 2023: Wynne Evans, the first winner from Wales
- 2024: Strictly’s Vito Coppola
- 2025: Ginger Johnson, the RuPaul’s Drag Race UK winner whose real name is Donald Marshall. Johnson beat Alun Wyn Jones and Dawn O’Porter in the final.
Where the show stands now
Series 21 proved the format was resilient to major shifts. When Wallace and Torode left in the same year, not everyone was sure if Master Chef could thrive without them. However, the newer double act continued to raise the bar while remaining welcoming; the hosting rotation provided the well-known faces, and the three competitors supplied a touch of everything. Whether Dent and Locatelli continue as a duo, we’ll see, and I can confirm nothing points to anything in 2027.
For the moment, the show has done what it’s always best at doing. Taken a bunch of talented people in another line of work, pushed them into a kitchen and a competition, and crowned a winner who clearly relished the whole thing.
Catching up on the series
In case you missed 2026, here’s what you need to remember: Lauren Steadman was crowned the winner ahead of Emily Campbell and Shakira Khan, with Grace Dent and Giorgio Locatelli now judging as a duo. The five-week series was on air from 18 August to 18 September, and you can catch up on BBC iPlayer or watch on the channel at any time. Last year saw Ginger Johnson taking home the crown, and the first to become winner was Matt Dawson in 2006. If you could jump straight to the final, if you haven’t watched Celebrity Master Chef UK before. And then catch up with the heats to see how the three finalists progressed to the final.
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