Nominations are the Head of Household’s weekly choice of which houseguests face eviction. At a nomination ceremony held in the house, the HOH names two nominees, who are then “on the block”. The block is not final until the veto ceremony, and only houseguests on the block can be evicted.
- Who nominates: the Head of Household, alone. Nobody else has a vote in it.
- How many: two, in a standard week. Some formats have put three or four up — see below.
- When: Friday, the day after the Thursday HOH competition. Late afternoon, in a standard week.
- On the feeds: no. The feeds go down for the ceremony — usually about an hour — and the result arrives when they come back.
- What happens next: the veto competition on Saturday, then the veto ceremony on Monday. Nominations lock when that meeting ends.
- Can the HOH be nominated: no. Winning HOH is immunity for the week.
- A pawn: a nominee who is not the target — put up to make sure the other nominee goes.
What happens at the nomination ceremony?
The Head of Household calls the house together and names two houseguests for eviction. It is short, it is formal, and it is the first of the week’s four set pieces — HOH competition, nominations, veto competition, veto ceremony. The HOH needs nobody’s agreement: no vote, no appeal. That is why the two days before it are the loudest of the week. It is the only window in which the decision can still be talked out of somebody.
When is the nomination ceremony?
Friday, in a standard week, in the late afternoon. The HOH competition is played on Thursday night after the live eviction, and by the next afternoon the house is called in. In 2010 the living-room screen simply read NOMINATIONS ARE TODAY; houseguests still talk about it that way, and “nominations are tomorrow” is the most common sentence on the feeds on a Thursday night.
Our own logs put the ceremony between about 4:20pm and 5:15pm house time in most recent seasons, with the feeds back by six. Older seasons ran later — a 2013 ceremony blocked the feeds from 5:20pm to 6:24pm — and the two-HOH season of 2014 held its ceremonies in the morning, because two sets of nominations had to be made before a Battle of the Block competition the same day. The first week of a season lands wherever the premiere puts it. This is the house schedule, not a published rule; it is what eighteen years of feed coverage shows. The rest of the week is laid out on the Power of Veto page.
What is said at the nomination ceremony?
A set opening, then a speech. The HOH begins by stating that this is the nomination ceremony and that naming two houseguests for eviction is one of the duties of the role. In the key-wheel years the safe houseguests were then named one at a time as the keys came out, and the two names never called were the nominations. Since 2014 the nominees’ own keys are turned and their faces come up on the wall. Either way the ceremony ends the same: the two names are read, the HOH gives reasons for each nominee in turn, and the meeting is formally adjourned.
The reasons are where the strategy shows. A pawn gets told they are a pawn, usually in code — this is not personal — because the whole house is listening and the target is meant to believe it. The ones that stick are the ones that abandon the code. In 2016 one HOH rehearsed his on the feeds at two in the morning: “at the end of the day homegirl is going home.” In 2024 the compliment that followed one ceremony was simply, “Your speech was hilarious. Very well said.”
Why are the live feeds down for nominations?
Because the feeds are cut for the ceremony, every week. It is broadcast material — it airs in Sunday’s episode — so the feeds switch to a holding screen when it starts and return when it is over. Feed watchers learn the nominations from the conversation that follows, not from the ceremony itself.
How long that takes is something nobody else has written down. From our own timestamps: a 2016 ceremony took the feeds down at 5:10pm and returned them at 5:55pm, 45 minutes; a 2019 one ran from 5:11pm to 6:01pm, 50 minutes; 2018 from 4:45pm to 6pm, an hour and a quarter; 2024 from 4:20pm to 5:31pm, an hour and eleven minutes. Call it an hour. The two-HOH ceremonies of 2014 were the exception and could eat a morning — one ran from 10am to 11:43am, and one ran past one o’clock — because four nominations were being made, not two.
Older coverage calls the long block trivia and the short one fish; both are defined on the glossary.
Who can be nominated on Big Brother?
Anybody in the house except the Head of Household. In a standard week exactly one person cannot be put on the block, and it is the person doing the nominating. That is most of what makes the Thursday competition worth winning.
Can the HOH be nominated?
No. Winning Head of Household is immunity from eviction for that week — not at the ceremony, not as a replacement after the veto. It lasts one week. The outgoing HOH is a normal houseguest the moment the next HOH is crowned, and in a standard week the one thing they cannot do is compete to keep the title.
Can the HOH nominate themselves?
No. The HOH’s own key is never in play. The immunity and the duty to nominate two other people arrive together, and there is no mechanism for giving either back.
Can a have-not be nominated?
Yes. Being a have-not is a food and sleeping punishment; it has never carried protection from the block. The only have-not mechanic that touches eviction is the penalty vote for breaking the rules, which is added to the vote, not to the nominations.
Can somebody be nominated two weeks running?
Yes, and it happens every season. There is no limit on how many times a houseguest can be nominated and no cooling-off period. Surviving the block once buys nothing the following Friday.
Does anyone have automatic safety?
Only the HOH, unless a twist says otherwise — and twists have said otherwise often. Many seasons since 2009 have run a mechanic that put a second name out of reach: team immunity when a team-mate wins HOH (2009, 2016, 2021), a safety competition that protects its winner and a plus-one for the week (2020), a power that makes its holder immune from one nomination ceremony of their choosing (2018), a temptation that buys three weeks of safety (2017), a care package that makes its winner immune for the week in exchange for a costume (2016). None of them changed the ceremony. They shrank the list of names the HOH was allowed to say.
How many houseguests go on the block?
Two. That has been the number in every ordinary week since the second season. The exceptions are all twists, and all worth knowing because they change what the block means.
- Season one — no Head of Household. Every houseguest nominated two people, the two with the most nominations were “marked for banishment”, and the public voted one out.
- Couples and pairs — in the couples season (2008) the HOH couple nominated two couples, putting four people on the block; in the duos season (2011) the HOH nominated one pair, so the block held two people who were also partners; in the “besties” weeks of 2022 the HOH nominated a whole set, two or three people at once.
- Two HOHs, four nominees — the Battle of the Block seasons of 2014 and 2015. Two Heads of Household each nominated two, and the winning pair of the four came off the block and dethroned the HOH who put them there.
- A third nominee from a competition — a “roadkill” competition whose winner privately named a third nominee (2016), a temptation competition whose last-place finisher went up as a third nominee (2017), and a viewer-chosen third nominee every week of the online-only season (2016).
- Three nominees, one saved — in 2024 and 2025 the HOH nominated three, and the three played a competition that took one of them off the block before the veto. Two faced the vote as normal.
- A first week that ran backwards — in 2023 the opening competitions were played to avoid nomination: the losers of four competitions were the four nominees, and the first HOH’s job was to take two of them off.
- The final four — the ceremony still puts two up, but with four left the veto holder, not the HOH, holds the only vote. The veto page covers it.
What is a pawn, and what does “on the block” mean?
On the block means nominated. A pawn is a nominee who is not the target. The block is the pair of chairs the nominees sit in, and it is where you have to be to go home — only nominees can be evicted, and nominees do not vote. The pawn is the other chair: somebody put up so the vote has a safe place to go.
Why would anyone agree to it? Because it is offered as a favour that costs nothing, and because refusing tells the HOH you do not trust them, which is a worse place to be than the block. The house knows the counter-argument by heart: pawns go home. Ian, in 2020, on the feeds: “The last time I was a pawn if I didn’t win veto I would be 500K poorer.” The good pawn is picked for temperament as much as loyalty. Joe, in 2022: “Nicole is one of the strongest pawns, she has the maturity to handle being on the block and not folding…”
Between the ceremony and the veto is the pawn’s problem and the target’s chance. Both nominees play in Saturday’s veto competition automatically, and Monday’s ceremony can take either of them off the block and put somebody else on. The replacement nominee, the backdoor and the meeting where nominations lock all belong to the Power of Veto page.
How has the nomination ceremony changed?
The decision has always belonged to the HOH. How the house found out has changed twice.
The key wheel, 2001 to 2013
Every houseguest had a key, and the keys hung under their portraits on the Memory Wall. Before the ceremony the HOH loaded the keys of everyone who was safe into a round nomination box and left two out. At the table the HOH pulled the first key and read the name; that houseguest was safe, and pulled the next; and so on round the room until the box was empty. The two whose keys never came out were the nominees, and they learned it by elimination as the box emptied. Each pull came with a sword-like sound effect on the broadcast, and the order was the only editorial the HOH got: last key out was the person being sweated.
It also leaked. The safe keys went back into their slots in the wall afterwards, and feed watchers learned to read the nominations off the two empty hooks before anyone had said a word. The whole apparatus is on the Memory Wall page.
Faces on the wall, 2014 onward
The sixteenth season retired the wheel. From 2014 the HOH turns the two nominees’ keys in a box at the table and their portraits come up on the Memory Wall screens as the names are read. The suspense of the empty box went with it, and the house vocabulary quietly flipped: a key in the box had meant safe; now it meant nominated. By 2022 a houseguest threatening to nominate somebody said it as “I will happily put Alyssa’s key in the box over them.”
The wall’s key slots outlived the wheel by three seasons — still there on the new screens in 2014, gone at the 2017 house reveal without a word said about it. They have not come back.
Before there was an HOH
The first season had no ceremony because it had no Head of Household. Houseguests nominated in private, two names each, and were not allowed to discuss it; the public did the evicting. The HOH-nominates-two structure arrived with the second season and has been the spine of the game since.
Nominations from the archive: the two days before
The broadcast shows a ceremony. The feeds show the forty-eight hours before it — the target changing, the pawn talked into the chair, the promise that does not survive to Friday. Six of them, from our own coverage, written the night it happened.
Keeping a promise and breaking it at once — Big Brother 13, 19 August 2011
The problem. Jeff had won HOH and had given Dani his word. His first night in the room was spent working out how to keep the promise on paper and get her out anyway.
The plan. Put up two people who were not Dani and let the veto do the rest. Jeff: “If I put up them I keep my word to Dani and if anyone other than Dani wins the veto… she’s gone.”
The catch. Jeff, working through the hole in it: “If she’s going to play anyway… if she wins the veto you can’t use the veto to change my nominations.”
Our post. The HOH room, first night, working out the nominations
Talked out of her own plan — Big Brother 15, 15 August 2013
Plan A. Aaryn’s first pair was Spencer and Elissa. Aaryn: “I’ll tell her Elissa needs to go home because she treats me like garbage, if one of them come down then Spencer will go up.”
Plan B. McCrae talked her into Helen and Elissa instead — so Helen could not win the veto and pull Elissa down, and so the person the house actually wanted gone was already sitting in a chair.
Meanwhile. Minutes earlier Helen had been in the bedroom building Aaryn up. Helen: “You are Janelle… you are better than Janelle. You’ve gone from everyone in this house hating you to everyone admiring you, OK.”
Our post. The nomination plan, and the conversation that happened while it changed
“I don’t want to use anyone as a pawn” — Big Brother 18, 11 August 2016
The instinct. Victor, hours into an HOH win: “I think we put up two girls and see what happens in the veto. I don’t want to use anyone as a pawn.” A sentence later: “I’m good with putting two girls up and one’s a pawn for the other.”
The pressure. Paul spent the night moving him towards a bigger pair. Paul: “We have the numbers to get them out. Just trust me! Please, please just trust me.”
The objection. Victor, who would be the one wearing it: “You’re not the one that’s going to take the wrap for it, I am.” And then: “Alright, alright… I can’t confirm anything with you but…”
The pawn who took it back — Big Brother 21, 23 August 2019
The offer. Christie had volunteered, repeatedly, to sit as a pawn against Nick. Jackson: “If I recall correctly she was sitting right here — use me, I’ll be a pawn, I’ll go after Nick, I’ll be a shot for that guy.”
The morning after. Holly had won HOH hours after keeping Christie in the house, and the offer was being walked back. Holly: “I didn’t think she was wanting us to cash that in so early. I mean she offered time and time again.” Then: “Christie, she’s already going back on her word.”
The decision. Holly: “I won’t risk firing blanks at Nick for the second time in this game.”
Our post. Nomination morning in the HOH room
Two pairs, and the least blood — Big Brother 24, 22 July 2022
The shortlist. A besties week, so nominations came in pairs. Turner: “It’ll be Brittany and Michael or Nicole and Taylor. If I put Nicole and Taylor up I don’t [want] Nicole to be mad. She must know.”
The reasoning. Turner: “The main goal is probably Brittany but more so Taylor, it’s the least amount of blood being spilt.” Joe, wearily: “I hate next week Taylor goes. I’ve been hearing that for three weeks now.”
The warning. Kyle, quietly, to Brittany, as she relayed it: “You might be put up as a pawn to ensure… don’t give Taylor a chance to take Nicole down.”
“Please don’t put me up” — Big Brother 27, 29 August 2025
The plea. Nomination eve, in the lounge. Vinny: “I would do f—ing anything to just get by one more week. Anything, f—ing anything, dude, I’ll f—ing beg. Please, man, please don’t put me up.”
The logic. Keanu explained exactly why the pawn seat had his name on it. Keanu: “The only reason that’s even a consideration in my brain is because you’re the only person here that would actually use a veto on her.”
The target. Keanu: “I want Morgan to go home. She’s the only person I really want to go home.” And: “I need her game to end. Nothings set in stone until tomorrow, so we’ll see.”