Big Brother Past Winners

Twenty-seven seasons. Twenty-seven winners. And, since Big Brother 2, a jury of people they played against deciding whether they get the money. This is every Big Brother US champion since 2000 — who they beat, the final vote, and what happened on finale night.

Big Brother winners quick facts

• Seasons completed: 27. Big Brother 28 is airing now.
• The prize: $500,000 for twenty-two seasons. $750,000 since Big Brother 23.
• Unanimous wins: Four — Dan, Cody, Xavier, Chelsie.
• Closest possible: Seven seasons decided by a single vote.
• Two-time winners: None. Nobody has ever done it.
• Never nominated all season: Two winners — Derrick and Cody.

Who has won Big Brother?

Winner, runner-up, final jury vote, and that season’s America’s Favorite.

How much do Big Brother winners actually get?

$500,000 for the first twenty-two seasons. $750,000 from Big Brother 23 onward. Almost every winners list on the internet still says half a million — it hasn’t been half a million since 2021.

• Grand prize: $500,000 from BB1 through BB22. $750,000 from BB23 onward.
• Runner-up: $100,000 in Big Brother 1 only. $50,000 from BB2 through BB22. $75,000 from BB23 onward.
• America’s Favorite: $25,000 from introduction until BB22. $50,000 from BB23 onward.

That $100,000 runner-up figure gets repeated as an “early seasons” prize. It isn’t. It belongs to Big Brother 1 and nowhere else — that season paid $500,000, $100,000 and $50,000 to a top three chosen by public vote. From Big Brother 2 the runner-up got $50,000, and it stayed there for twenty-one years.

The million-dollar season that never happened

Big Brother 6 ran the Summer of Secrets twist, in which pairs of houseguests arrived with a hidden connection. Buried in the rules was a clause: if both halves of one secret pair made the final two, the prizes doubled to $1,000,000 and $250,000.

It never triggered. Maggie beat Ivette 4–3 and took the standard $500,000. It remains the only time Big Brother has come close to a seven-figure prize.

Do Big Brother houseguests get paid?

Yes — a weekly stipend for the time they’re sequestered, jury included. Around the Big Brother 12 and 13 era it worked out near $9,000 to $10,000 for a full run.

The catch, which almost nobody knows: the final two don’t get it. Reach the end and your stipend disappears into your placement prize. Which produces the strange result that in a tight year, a well-placed juror with a comp win or two can leave with a figure not far off the runner-up’s.

There’s also loose money everywhere — Pandora’s Box cash, luxury competition prizes, the $5,000 and $10,000 envelopes that turn up in comps. Jordan’s Big Brother 11 total was logged at the time as $501,726: the prize, plus the change she’d picked up along the way.

Big Brother winner records

The four unanimous wins. In twenty-six jury seasons it has happened four times — Dan in Big Brother 10 (7–0, the first), Cody in Big Brother 22 (9–0), Xavier in Big Brother 23 (9–0), and Chelsie in Big Brother 26 (7–0).

Seven seasons decided by one vote. Big Brother 5, 6, 12, 13, 18, 19 and 20. Four 4–3s and three 5–4s. Two of them belong to the same man: Paul lost Big Brother 18 by one vote and Big Brother 19 by one vote, in consecutive years, to Nicole F and then to Josh. No other finalist has lost even one season that way, let alone two.

Never on the block. Derrick went the whole of Big Brother 16 without being nominated. Cody did it in Big Brother 22 — and so did Enzo, meaning that season produced a final two neither of whom had ever sat on the block.

Most nominations survived. Taylor was nominated six times in Big Brother 24 and won anyway. No winner has ever survived more.

The purest social win. Will took Big Brother 2 without a single Head of Household — and the veto didn’t exist yet, so there was nothing else to win either. It’s why every player since who avoids competitions on purpose gets compared to him.

Coming back and winning. Four people have returned to a later season and taken it: Boogie (BB2 ? BB7), Rachel (BB12 ? BB13), Nicole F (BB16 ? BB18) and Cody (BB16 ? BB22).

Winning twice. Nobody. Eight past champions have re-entered a numbered season after winning and none has ever won again. Dan came closest, losing Big Brother 14 to Ian as runner-up. Evel Dick withdrew from Big Brother 13. Rachel came back for Big Brother 27 and was removed by the White Locust twist, becoming that season’s first juror. Twenty-seven seasons, and there is still no two-time Big Brother winner.

Is the Big Brother jury bitter?

Every season somebody says the jury voted with their feelings instead of their heads. It is the oldest argument in Big Brother, and the feed archives show it fully formed by 2008 — stated not as a complaint about one result but as a general law of the show. A week before the Big Brother 10 finale, feed watchers were writing that juries most often vote on emotion, and that they hated to see a winner chosen that way. One of them put it in verse.

Then the jury went 7–0 for the best player in the house.

What makes it more than fan grievance is that houseguests play around it. In Big Brother 11, with a week to go, Natalie was building her endgame on the assumption that the jury would vote emotionally. She lost 5–2. Dan, the night before his own finale, predicted three specific jurors wouldn’t think too hard about the game. All three voted for him.

The record is genuinely mixed. Press coverage has explicitly called it in two seasons — Big Brother 14, where the jury was described as siding with hurt feelings against Dan, and Big Brother 19, where The Hollywood Reporter called it a bitter jury choosing Josh over Paul. But Big Brother 20’s runner-up went the other way entirely, telling reporters afterwards that Kaycee’s path had been less bloody than his and that she deserved it.

The best summary of what the jury is actually being asked belongs to Ragan, rehearsing it to the cameras in Big Brother 12 before delivering it to Lane: are you here to give away half a million dollars, or to win it? The proof is in the pudding — the person sitting next to you on finale night is how you decide.

What is America’s Favorite Houseguest?

The other prize, and the only one the audience controls. It started in Big Brother 7 as a $25,000 award that only jurors could win — America’s Choice, voted from the seven people in the jury house. Janelle took the first one.

It opened up in Big Brother 11 to everyone who’d been in the house, pre-jury included, and became America’s Favorite Houseguest. Jeff won it that year and again in Big Brother 13. It doubled to $50,000 in Big Brother 23 alongside the grand prize increase.

Because it’s decided outside the house, the only way to influence it is to perform at the cameras — and houseguests have been doing exactly that for eighteen years, with varying subtlety. April planned a charitable stunt out loud in Big Brother 10 and said maybe America would see it and give her the award. She didn’t get it. Adam delivered an unmediated stump speech straight down the lens at the grill in Big Brother 13. Helen used it as currency inside the Big Brother 15 house, telling GinaMarie she’d win it while angling for her jury vote — GinaMarie’s ally read it correctly and said she was blowing smoke.

Frankie inverted the whole thing in Big Brother 16, arguing the house should let him win the actual game because a winner can’t take America’s Favorite, so it was in everyone’s interest to let him finish first or second. Zach’s reply is not printable. Donny won it.

And in Big Brother 24, Taylor did the thing that isn’t supposed to be possible: she won the season and America’s Favorite. Nobody else has ever taken both.