RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Leaves the BBC — All Stars Lands in 2027

The BBC has confirmed that RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is leaving the broadcaster after eight seasons. But before anyone starts planning a funeral for the format, read the second half of the news: the show has a new home, and it is about to get a spin-off it has never had before.

The announcement landed on Wednesday night, 9 September, through the show’s Instagram account. Future seasons of the UK edition, along with its international spin-off RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs The World, will move to WOW Presents Plus, the streaming service owned by World of Wonder — the production company behind the entire Drag Race franchise. The news follows reports that the format would be among the casualties of the BBC’s ongoing cost-cutting drive, and the corporation has now confirmed it.

Where Drag Race UK Is Going Next

WOW Presents Plus is not a random landing spot. World of Wonder has run the platform for years, using it as a home for Drag Race spin-offs, behind-the-scenes series and international editions that never quite fit a traditional broadcaster’s schedule. Moving the UK flagship there keeps the show inside the same creative family that has produced it since day one.

The practical details matter for viewers. The current eighth season will continue to air as normal on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer, and the BBC says existing episodes will remain available once the transition is complete. Once the move is finished, subscribers on WOW Presents Plus will be able to stream all eight seasons of Drag Race UK, plus all three seasons of UK vs The World.

The First Ever UK All Stars Arrives in Autumn 2027

Here is the part that has fans genuinely excited. The franchise is not simply relocating — it is expanding. A brand-new Drag Race UK All Stars will premiere in autumn 2027, exclusively on WOW Presents Plus. It will be the first All Stars edition built specifically around queens who first walked the UK runway, and it marks a structural shift for the British arm of the franchise.

World of Wonder made the pitch loudly in its announcement: “Start your engines, All Stars!” the company wrote, adding that the new show arrives “hot off the heels of the iconic season eight premiere” and that “a new era of Drag Race UK is on the way.”

The international angle is just as significant. WOW says the new All Stars season will be available in virtually every market where the platform operates — and, for the first time, in the UK itself, where viewers will also be able to revisit the full back catalogue.

Why the BBC Let It Go

The BBC has been blunt about the reason, and it is money, not content. The corporation is working towards £500 million in savings over two years. Its chief content officer, Kate Phillips, has outlined plans to cut commissioning spend by £80 million in the 2027–28 financial year, and director-general Matt Brittin has told staff that “the scale of savings requires tough choices.”

In a statement, a BBC spokesperson said the corporation had to make “some very difficult choices, none of which have been taken lightly,” before confirming the move: “We can therefore confirm, together with World of Wonder, that RuPaul’s Drag Race UK will be leaving the BBC and moving to WOW Presents Plus.” The spokesperson went on to thank RuPaul, World of Wonder and “everyone involved, both on and off screen,” describing the show as ground-breaking and expressing pride in all eleven series.

That “eleven series” figure caused some confusion in early coverage, with several outlets reporting that the show had run for eleven seasons. The maths is simpler than that: eight seasons of Drag Race UK, plus three seasons of the UK vs The World spin-off, which adds up to eleven series across the wider UK brand.

Drag Race UK is not an isolated loss. Earlier this year the BBC also dropped I Kissed a Boy — which made history as the UK’s first gay dating show — along with its counterpart I Kissed a Girl, citing the same funding pressures.

What the Queens Are Saying

Tia Kofi, who won Drag Race UK vs The World in 2024, took the argument to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday. “I think the mistake is that they seem to be dropping programmes that they consider to be for more niche audiences, which I just don’t think makes a lot of logical sense,” the drag queen and singer said. “The niche audiences are the ones who are very much staying on and watching these things.”

Tia Kofi pointed out that mainstream television still offers drag and queer performers something the streaming world does not automatically replicate. “[These shows] offer people a platform when they wouldn’t have that. There aren’t really those alternatives for drag performers in the UK.”

Bimini, a breakout star of the second season, summed up the emotional response on X. “Drag Race UK is leaving the BBC. I’m actually so sad about this,” they wrote, recalling filming more than six years ago while broke and unsure of what they were doing. Bimini also aimed at something bigger than a television schedule, noting that trans people in the country are “being legislated about and shouted about more than ever” and that visibility still matters. Their conclusion was pure drag resilience: “Drag was here before the telly. It’ll be here after.”

La Voix, one of the show’s best-known graduates, posted a tribute that captured what the move actually costs. “I know the show will live on, on WOW presents uk, but it’s a loss to not have this represented on main terrestrial tv,” she wrote, thanking the queens, crew, producers, judges and everyone behind the scenes for “the memories, the opportunities and the friendships.”

The Representation Question Hanging Over It

Since Drag Race UK launched in 2019, it has done what a free-to-air slot does best: turned British drag into a mainstream fixture. The show put RuPaul and Michelle Visage on UK screens each week alongside Graham Norton and Alan Carr, and it made household names out of performers including Danny Beard, Tia Kofi, Baga Chipz, Tayce, Victoria Scone, Bimini and the late The Vivienne, who won the very first season.

A paywalled platform is a different proposition from a channel everyone can switch on. Jordan Burrow, a contestant on the second series of I Kissed a Boy, described the decision as a snapshot of “where we’re at within the queer community.”

The knock-on effect on the wider franchise is also unclear. The BBC declined to comment on whether future seasons of other international editions it carries, including Canada’s Drag Race and RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, would continue to air.

It is worth keeping the scale of this thing in perspective. RuPaul’s Drag Race began in the United States in 2009 and has since spawned editions in the UK, Canada, Down Under, France, España, Italia, Germany, Sverige, Belgique, México, Brasil and Thailand — an unusually wide footprint for any modern reality format. The UK version has been one of the most successful of the lot.

What Happens to the Current Season

Nothing changes for viewers in the short term. The eighth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK launched in September 2026 and continues on BBC Three, with new episodes arriving on BBC iPlayer. The BBC has said it is certain “viewers will enjoy the eighth series,” and by every indication the current season is being treated as a proper send-off rather than a quiet fade-out.

After that, the runway moves. For anyone who has followed the UK iteration since 2019, the shift to WOW Presents Plus is a real change in how the show will be watched — no more Thursday night free-to-air appointment viewing, and no more accidental discovery for viewers who stumbled across a lip-sync while channel-surfing.

What it is not, at least for now, is the end of Drag Race UK. The show has a home, a date for its first All Stars season, and a production company publicly framing this as an upgrade rather than a retreat. Whether fans end up seeing it that way will depend on one thing the BBC can no longer offer: how easily the next generation of British drag talent gets found in the first place.