Big Brother Luxury Competitions — Every Season, Every Prize

A luxury competition is a Big Brother challenge played for a prize rather than for power. No safety, no eviction, no Head of Household — just something the houseguests actually want. Movie screenings, shopping sprees, phone calls home, cash, a hot tub, and in one case a helicopter tour of Los Angeles.

What’s at stake: Prizes only. A luxury competition can’t save you and can’t put you on the block.
First played: Season 1, 2000 — a house-wide hunt for Emmy Awards tickets.
Peak era: Season 2 held nine of them, more than any season before or since.
The modern rule: Only five standalone luxury competitions since 2012 — every one of them late-season, every prize $5,000 or $10,000 cash.
Most recent: Big Brother 25’s Halloween competition, October 2023.

What Is a Luxury Competition?

Luxury competitions have been part of Big Brother since Season 1. They’re usually skill or puzzle challenges, often played in teams, and the reward is comfort rather than advantage — a screening, a party, a shopping spree, contact with the outside world.

That last one is the interesting part. In a house sealed off from everything, the most valuable prize on offer was frequently information. Season 2’s “All The News That Fits” paid out three minutes in the Diary Room with magazines, newspapers and a news broadcast. Its “Crack the Code” gave the winners internet access to read the fan sites written about them. Season 3’s final four were offered phone calls home. For a houseguest fifty days into a sequestered summer, that beat a hot tub.

Why Did Luxury Competitions Disappear?

The early seasons ran them constantly — Season 2 held nine. The record tells the rest plainly: after Big Brother 18 in 2016, the standalone luxury competition all but vanished. Big Brother 19 and 20 had none at all. When Nicole entered the Big Brother 20 house in 2018 believing she was there to host one, Big Brother Network wrote at the time that this alone should have tipped her off that something else was going on — the show had stopped doing them. It was actually Victor’s marriage proposal.

CBS never announced any of this. There is no press release, no stated policy, no official final season. The prizes simply moved. Once cash, trips and screenings started appearing inside HOH and Power of Veto competitions, a prize stopped being a freebie and became a decision: take the money and drop out of the comp, or hold on and take the power? That’s a far better television moment than a straightforward race for a movie ticket — and it costs the same to stage.

It also changed how houseguests treat prizes. Grabbing cash in front of the whole house paints a target, and modern players know it. During a Big Brother 20 HOH, production reportedly placed a $5,000 luxury container on the field — and not one competitor touched it. The show stopped offering free luxury around the time the players stopped wanting to be seen taking it.

The Modern Era: The Endgame Cash Drop

The standalone luxury competition never quite died — it changed jobs. Since 2012 there have been exactly five, and they follow a strict pattern: every one lands at Week 10 or later, most at Final 5 or Final 4, and the prize is always cash — $5,000 or $10,000. What was once a mid-season morale boost is now an endgame grenade, lobbed in late to test alliances just before the finale. Can your final-two partner be trusted after quietly pocketing ten grand nobody had to vote on?

The only exceptions to the pattern are Big Brother 17’s celebrity cruise giveaway and Big Brother 18’s carnival — both promotional spectacles rather than games, and the last of their kind.

Luxury Competitions by Season

Season 1 (2000)

The houseguests were told that tickets to the Emmy Awards were hidden somewhere in the house and they had to find them. Curtis won, spotting them hanging on the wall of the red room.

Season 2 (2001)

Nine luxury competitions, the most of any season.

Week 1 — “The Dirty Dozen.” An inflatable pool in the backyard filled with mud and 24 keys, 12 of them carrying houseguests’ names. Mike started alone, digging for the 12 keys with his name on them; as each other houseguest’s key surfaced, that person could join the search. Six minutes to find all 12 and return to the starting point. They made it, and won a hot tub.

Week 1 — “Bird’s Eye View.” The HOH was quarantined inside while the rest of the house had five minutes to pick a gourmet meal and spell it out using their bodies. If the HOH could read it correctly, they won the meal.

Week 2 — “Ride the Bull.” Men against women on a mechanical bull. Bunky, Will and Hardy against Nicole, Autumn and Shannon, thirty seconds each to advance, then a second round at higher speed.

Week 3 — “Cross Dressing.” Two teams on opposite sides of a clothesline, passing clothes across to each other. First team fully dressed in the other team’s color won. Kent, Bunky, Nicole and Shannon took it, winning laundry service.

Week 4 — “Spinning Discs.” Each houseguest picked a CD they wanted, then tossed ten blank discs at a floating bowl. Monica landed five and won her CD plus a stereo.

Week 5. The houseguests dressed dummies to look like themselves, and the dummies were hidden around the house. Split into men and women, blindfolded, entering from the backyard — first team to recover three dummies won their choice of luxury up to $100.

Week 6 — “All The News That Fits.” Three teams of two answered questions about the outside world. Bunky and Will won three minutes in the Diary Room with magazines, newspapers and a news broadcast.

Week 7 — “BlockBuster.” First houseguest to free a movie ticket from a block of ice and drop it in the ticket bin won a screening of American Pie 2. Bunky won and took Monica up to the HOH room to watch it. The name would return twenty-five years later as the BB Blockbuster, though the modern version has nothing to do with prizes.

Week 8 — “The Great Escape.” Each houseguest built a doll in their own likeness and rigged it to a balloon basket with string and helium. Get your basket over the fence line and win a helicopter tour of Los Angeles. Bunky and Will won.

Week 9 — “Fire and Ice.” A Survivor crossover. The backyard was covered in snow and scattered with lettered blocks. Houseguests and Survivor players competed wrist-tied, spelling out their show’s name in a block tower, then untying themselves and diving into the pool for keys to hang on torches. First team to hang all four won $15,000. The Survivor team won.

Week 9 — “Crack the Code.” Each houseguest paired with a Survivor player to unscramble a message on the living room TV, revealing a location in the house holding a computer mouse. The winners got internet access to look up the fan sites people had made about them. Hardy and Sue won.

Season 3 (2002)

Week 1 — “Luau Luxury.” A test of how well the houseguests knew their own environment. Production removed items from the house and teams had to identify what was missing. Amy, Lisa, Tonya, Eric, Marcellas and Gerry won.

Week 6. The houseguests raced to find CDs hidden around the house, each one carrying part of a clue. Solving it sent them to the backyard to claim the prize: a private concert from Sheryl Crow.

Week 10 — the phone call auction. The final four hunted for hidden phones and $1,000 earmarked for a loved one. Then, one by one in the Diary Room, they were offered escalating cash instead — $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 — with the catch that if anyone accepted, everyone else got nothing. Danielle stopped at $5,000, Amy at $10,000, Jason at $15,000. Amy took the $5,000 and the phone call.

Week 10 — “Surf’s Up.” The final four took turns on a surfboard. Jason and Amy lasted longest and won an ocean cruise outside the house.

Season 4 (2003)

Week 1 — “Shiny Hiney.” Winner not recorded.

Week 3 — “The Spin-O-Matic.” Won by Allison.

Week 5 — Foam Party. Won by the whole house.

Week 7 — “Fashion Fire Pit.” Won by the whole house.

Week 9 — “Escape From the Big Brother House.” Won by Allison and Jun.

Season 5 (2004)

Week 7. Diane won a $1,000 gift certificate.

Season 6 (2005)

Week 4 — “Big Brother Movie Marquee.” Sarah, Jennifer and Rachel won a movie night, screening Four Brothers.

Season 7 (2006)

Week 4. James, Diane, Will, Janelle and Danielle won a screening of Talladega Nights. Mike couldn’t compete because of an injured foot, but was allowed to watch the film with them anyway.

Season 8 (2007)

Week 8. The house split into men and women. Amber, Jameka, Jessica and Daniele won a two-minute shopping spree.

Season 9 (2008)

Week 6. Chelsia, Sharon, Joshua and Sheila won a screening of the film 21.

Week 10. Sharon and Ryan won a VIP screening of What Happens in Vegas in Hollywood, with a shopping spree and a chance to meet the cast afterwards.

Season 10 (2008)

No luxury competitions recorded.

Season 11 (2009)

Week 2 — “Who Knows the Ugly Truth?” Hosted by Big Brother 10 winner Dan Gheesling, with the houseguests answering questions about the opposite gender. Chima and Casey won a screening of The Ugly Truth.

Week 4. Actor Jeremy Piven appeared to host, with the houseguests split into teams of four competing for a screening of The Goods and Have status for the week. Russell won $10,000 and joined Jordan, Natalie and Jessie for the screening.

Season 12 (2010)

Week 4. Played for an advance screening of The Other Guys. Winner not recorded.

Week 9 — hide and seek. The final four were given 90 seconds each to hide a coin bearing their name somewhere in the house. Britney hid hers best and won $10,000.

Season 13 (2011)

Week 3 — “Same Name.” The houseguests had to identify a celebrity from clues to win an advance screening of the new TV series Same Name. Jordan guessed David Hasselhoff off just two clues and picked Kalia, Shelly and Jeff to join her for the screening — with Hasselhoff himself in attendance.

This competition replaced the week’s Have/Have-Not competition, which is why Big Brother 13 had no have-nots in Week 3 — the only week that season with the whole house eating normally by design.

Season 14 (2012)

No standalone luxury competitions — but Season 14 is where the prizes visibly moved inside the power comps. In the Week 6 HOH “Swamped,” Boogie (Mike Malin) abandoned the race entirely to fill a $10,000 side container while Shane (Shane Meaney) won the actual HOH. Three weeks later Shane won the “Time Flies” Veto plus an attached luxury prize: leaving the house to attend the Kellogg’s Tour of Gymnastics Champions and meet the US women’s Olympic team, taking Danielle (Danielle Murphree) with him. The luxury competition didn’t need its own slot anymore — it had moved in with the Veto.

Season 15 (2013)

Week 10 — “10K.” A surprise competition with the houseguests digging through balloons and confetti for the pieces to spell out “10K.” Spencer (Spencer Clawson) — who spent a record nine stints on the block that season — won the $10,000.

Season 16 (2014)

Week 12 — the jury comes back to play. With five houseguests left, the jurors returned to the house for a luxury competition. Each remaining houseguest backed a juror; Hayden (Hayden Voss) won the contest, earning $5,000 for himself and another $5,000 for Victoria (Victoria Rafaeli), who had picked him. The jurors were kept strictly separated from the active players throughout — no outside information allowed to leak in.

Earlier, in the Week 10 HOH “Sloppy the Snowman,” Derrick (Derrick Levasseur) pulled the Season 14 move — stepping out of the HOH race to grab a $5,000 side prize while Caleb (Caleb Reynolds) took the power.

Season 17 (2015)

Week 3 — the Gronkowski cruise. During Rob Gronkowski’s BB Takeover week, a chance competition — pick the right cup — sent one houseguest on a party cruise with Gronk himself. Meg (Meg Maley) won it, the only competition she won all season.

Late in the season the Week 12 HOH doubled as a luxury comp, played until both prizes were claimed: Vanessa (Vanessa Rousso) took the HOH, and Liz (Liz Nolan) took a trip out of the house to an Ariana Grande concert, with Ariana’s brother and former houseguest Frankie along for the ride.

Season 18 (2016)

Week 8 — the Big Brother Carnival. The backyard became a county fair, with Ziggy Marley performing and the houseguests playing carnival games for cash and prizes. The top prize was a tech package — a 50-inch television, tablet and smartphone — reportedly won by Paulie (Paulie Calafiore) in a dunk-tank game called “Dunk-A-Hunk.” It was the last event of its kind: no season since has staged a full luxury spectacle.

Season 19 (2017)

No luxury competitions recorded. This is the season the free prize died and the priced one replaced it: on premiere night, $25,000 was offered to whoever grabbed it first, and Kevin (Kevin Schlehuber) pressed the button — which obligated him to throw the first HOH and triggered the twist that brought Paul back into the game. All season, “temptations” offered cash and safety with consequences attached. The luxury was never free again.

Season 20 (2018)

No luxury competitions recorded — and this is the season that proved the point twice. A $5,000 luxury container was reportedly placed on the field during an HOH competition and went completely unclaimed; nobody wanted to be seen taking it. And when Nicole walked into the house believing she was there to host a luxury competition, the real event turned out to be Victor proposing to her. By 2018, a luxury comp was less plausible than a marriage.

Season 21 (2019)

Final 4 — “Change of $cenery.” The house itself was the puzzle: production altered the house and the final four had to work out how many things had changed. The answer was 18. Jackson (Jackson Michie) guessed 17, closest of the four, and won $10,000.

Season 22 (2020)

Final 4 — “Clash of the Comics.” The all-star season turned its own BB Comics Veto into a luxury game. Each of the final four drafted a team of comic-book alter egos from the season’s cast, then watched the characters fight it out in simulated battles. Nicole (Nicole Franzel) won $10,000 when her drafted “Da’Dream” (Da’Vonne) knocked out Cody’s “The Cali-Fury” — and out in the jury house, Memphis (Memphis Garrett) collected $10,000 of his own when his alter ego “Mem-FIST” won the whole bracket.

Season 23 (2021)

No luxury competitions recorded. The season’s entire reward economy ran through the High Roller’s Room instead — BB Bucks, awarded by viewer vote and gambled on powers, not comforts.

Season 24 (2022)

No luxury competitions recorded. The luxury budget lived inside the Veto: one reward-and-punishment comp handed out $5,000 and a trip to London alongside the penalties.

Season 25 (2023)

Week 13 — “Trick or Treat.” A Halloween special at the Final 5: houseguests handed candy to each other and took it away, and whoever held the most when the music stopped won. Matt (Matt Klotz) finished with the biggest pile and took $5,000 — the most recent standalone luxury competition Big Brother has played.

Season 26 (2024)

No luxury competitions recorded. The A.I. Arena — later the BB Blockbuster — filled the schedule with a third weekly competition, and it plays for survival, not prizes.

Season 27 (2025)