Every Big Brother Twist and Power, Season by Season

Every named power and format twist Big Brother has run, season by season, from the first year to the one on air now. Nine of them — the ones that kept coming back — have their own full pages here; this index names each season’s version and links out rather than repeating the explanation.

Big Brother 1 (2000)

The first season did not have most of the game it is known for today. There was no Head of Household and no veto. Every other week each houseguest privately named two people they wanted gone, and whoever collected the most votes was marked for banishment — everyone tied, if more than two tied. The house never voted anybody out directly; it only decided who was at risk. The eviction itself was a live public phone vote between the marked houseguests, the only vote that removed anyone all season. At the end there was no jury and no final two: the surviving three stood in front of the public and the audience vote alone picked the winner. Eddie won with 59%, Josh took 27%, Curtis 14%. Weekly tasks set by production decided the house’s luxury budget, a mechanic that did not survive the rebuild either.

Big Brother 2 (2001)

The rebuild season, and the one that laid down the game’s actual skeleton. Head of Household arrived as a weekly competition, its winner alone choosing two nominees and sitting out the following week’s HOH entirely — a restriction still in force. For the first time the houseguests decided who went home rather than the public: everybody but the HOH and the two nominees voted, majority ruled, and the HOH broke a tie. There was still no veto, so a nomination made at the ceremony was final. Every evicted houseguest sat on the jury, unsequestered and free to go home and watch the show before coming back to vote; Will won 5–2. A quieter one-season rule let each finalist void a single juror’s vote before the reveal — neither is on record as having used it. This is also where the audience first gets a say in anything: America’s Choice arrives as a rewards-only vote, with no power over the game, and stays that way for years.

Big Brother 3 (2002)

Nominations stayed final almost the whole year. There was an earlier, weaker veto a nominee could win but not use on themselves, and it went unplayed all season — until Day 63, when the Golden Power of Veto arrived and lifted the restriction: its winner could remove any nominee including themselves, forcing the HOH to name a replacement. That is the version every season since has kept. Earlier, in Week 5, four already-evicted houseguests competed for a shot at returning based on how much each was willing to sacrifice; the two most willing went to a house vote, and the house brought Amy back over Eric 5–2 on Day 41. The jury was again every evicted houseguest with no sequestration — the largest and best-informed jury the show has run — and its lopsided 9–1 vote for Lisa over Danielle is what pushed the show to cap and sequester the jury the very next year.

Big Brother 4 (2003)

The season the weekly loop closed for good: the Golden Power of Veto, a late surprise in BB3, became a fixture from Day 1 — HOH, nominate, veto, replacement, house vote, every week. The jury was capped at the last seven evicted houseguests and sequestered for the first time, in a jury house cut off from the show rather than sent home to watch it, the standard that held for a decade. The casting twist — billed by the network as the X-Factor, and spelled the Ex-Factor in OBB’s own coverage ever since — brought five houseguests’ real-life exes in as additional cast members partway through the premiere: Jun and Jee, Alison and Justin, Erika and Robert, David and Michelle, Amanda and Scott.

It was meant to be four pairs. A thirteenth houseguest was removed during pre-season sequester for breaking the rules and contacting his girlfriend, Jee was cast in his place as Jun’s ex, and the twist went out with five pairs instead of the four the network had announced.

This season is where the name Diamond Power of Veto first appears, as the title of the final-four veto competition. Alison won it and used it on herself. The part that makes a Diamond a Diamond — the holder naming the replacement rather than the HOH — never actually fired, because at final four with Robert as HOH and Jun already nominated, Erika was the only legal replacement there was. Alison then cast the sole vote and evicted her 1–0. The power that would later overturn HOH decisions started life as a competition title with nothing to overturn.

Big Brother 5 (2004)

Branded “Project D.N.A.” (Do Not Assume) and built on two secrets the cast was not told at the premiere. The headline one: identical twins Adria and Natalie played the entire early game as a single houseguest, physically swapping through the Diary Room so only one was ever inside — ten swaps in all, at irregular intervals rather than on any schedule. The condition was survival: go five weeks without the house working it out, and both would enter as individual players. They made it. Natalie walked in as herself on Day 35, the same night Scott was evicted, taking the house from ten players to eleven. To keep the cast chasing the wrong pair, production had told them at the start that Drew and Diane were twins whose siblings were outside the house — a decoy, and some of the house spent weeks suspecting Holly instead.

The quieter secret came out almost immediately. In the season’s first week, Michael — Cowboy — told the house that Nakomis was his half-sister, sharing a father he had never met. Neither had known before they walked in. It carried no power and no immunity, and it did not stop him voting her out at the end.

This is also the season that set the veto field at six players and let the people running the week choose them: the Head of Household and each of the two nominees hand-picked one player apiece. That single rule is what made the backdoor possible, and the house worked it out in August. BB5 also ran the show’s first accelerated multi-eviction week — two evictions across separate broadcasts in Week 9, not yet the single-broadcast format that arrived two years later (full double-eviction history here).

Big Brother 6 (2005)

“Summer of Secrets”: fourteen houseguests, seven secret pairs, every one of them arriving with a hidden real-life connection to exactly one other person in the house. Ivette and Beau were former co-workers, Kaysar and Michael neighbours, Howie and Rachel best friends, Eric and Maggie friends, Janelle and Ashlea ex-roommates, April and Jennifer sorority sisters, and James and Sarah were dating — Sarah a late substitute after his original partner pulled out days before lock-in.

The part that made it work: each pair was told they were the only pair. Every one of them walked in thinking they held the season’s single secret, and spent the opening weeks watching everybody else for a tell they had no reason to expect. Buried in the rules was a prize-doubling clause: if both halves of a secret pair reached the final two together, the winner’s prize doubled to $1,000,000. It never triggered. Maggie beat Ivette 4–3 in an ordinary final vote, making this the closest the show has come to a seven-figure prize.

A hidden Gold Room turned up early in the season holding three locked safes, their combinations won piece by piece through competitions over the following weeks. What was inside turned out to be prizes rather than powers — a trip, a pair of scooters, a reprieve from the food punishment — so it changed nobody’s game, but it is the earliest version of the hidden-room device the show would keep coming back to.

This is also the moment America’s Vote stopped handing out prizes and started changing the game. Four evicted houseguests were held in sequester and put to a public ballot, and on the night of the fifth eviction Kaysar came back through the door on 82% of more than five million votes — out on Day 33, back on Day 40. He was evicted again the following week. The veto field was still hand-picked. BB6 ran the accelerated-eviction format twice, still ahead of the single-broadcast Fast Forward that arrived the following year.

Big Brother 7: All-Stars (2006)

An all-returning-player season with a run of firsts. Week 1 ran two Heads of Household at once, required to agree unanimously on both nominees or lose immunity themselves — a one-week experiment never repeated in this run. The veto’s random draw starts here. The six-player field had been hand-picked by the HOH and nominees since BB5; BB7 replaced that with a blind draw, closing off the strategic lever the backdoor had been built on and adding the luck every backdoor since has had to survive.

Slop arrives this season too, replacing the peanut butter and jelly punishment of the early years, and it has been the have-not food in every season since. A hidden power solved through a three-part visual riddle let its winner overturn the sitting HOH’s nominations outright — the actual debut of the Coup d’État, not BB11. Boogie solved it in Week 6, held it through his eligible window, and never used it. A separate Vote Nullifier let James cancel one houseguest’s eviction vote, and he spent it on Janelle’s.

Julie Chen branded the season’s back-to-back Week 7 evictions “Big Brother Fast Forward” on air — Danielle and George both left in the same live broadcast on 31 August 2006, the first time the show compressed two full eviction cycles into one episode. (Every double eviction since, in order, is here.)

Big Brother 8 (2007)

Three houseguests — Dick, Jessica and Dustin — entered secretly ahead of the rest of the cast, each paired against a real-life rival already coming into the house: Dick and his estranged daughter Daniele, exes Dustin and Joe, hometown rivals Jessica and Carol. The trio was immune from the first eviction and picked the first HOH themselves. The season’s real twist ran underneath all of it: viewers secretly handed Eric a weekly task load all summer — who to target, relationship moves, and at least once his actual eviction vote — paying $10,000 for every five completed. He finished 20 of 28 for $40,000, and the audience only found out at the finale. (Full America’s Player history here.) BB8 also ran the show’s first penalty vote, when Jen broke a mandatory slop agreement in Week 7 and was evicted 6–0 with the automatic penalty added to the tally.

Big Brother 9 (2008, winter)

“Til Death Do You Part”: all sixteen houseguests entered pre-paired as soulmates, two pairs genuine real-life couples and the rest matched at random, and for the first stretch the game ran on pairs rather than individuals. The first pair eliminated, Jacob and Sharon, did not go by a house vote at all — the winning Power Couple from the opening competition could eliminate a rival pair outright, no nomination and no vote, and used it on Day 3. Play reverted to individuals on Day 28. Neil left the house within days for personal reasons, and Sharon later returned to the game. Separately, a viewer vote sent James back in on Day 35 after he had already been evicted.

Big Brother 10 (2008)

Marketed as a return to basics with no twist at all — thirteen strangers, no returning players, no gimmick. America’s Player came back in miniature anyway: rather than a full-season role like Eric’s, viewers directed Dan through four tasks for $20,000 — campaign against Jessie, hug Jessie on camera, and cast his actual eviction vote for Jessie over Memphis. He completed all four and the house never knew.

Big Brother 11 (2009)

The season the Coup d’État came back, and this time it was used. America secretly voted the power to Jeff on Day 26; on Day 40 he activated it against sitting HOH Chima’s nominations, pulling Russell and Lydia off the block and naming Jessie and Natalie instead. Jessie was evicted 3–2. It remains the only time a non-HOH player has unilaterally rewritten a live set of nominations, and the power has never come back since. BB11 also formalised the modern have-not weekly competition in place of the old lose-a-food-comp punishment, added a rule letting the public vote in a replacement juror if a presumptive juror is expelled or quits — used when Chima was removed on Day 42 — and split the early cast into cliques that briefly gave a clique-mate of the HOH nomination immunity. The first two Pandora’s Boxes in the show’s history were opened here, by Kevin and Natalie.

Big Brother 12 (2010)

A planted houseguest, revealed to the house from Day 1, competed fully for HOH and veto while secretly working to sow chaos — this is the Saboteur’s only season. Annie was the original, eligible for a $50,000 bonus if she survived to Week 5; she was evicted on Day 13, 10–0, and never collected. A second Saboteur, Ragan, was assigned mid-season by audience vote under looser terms — $20,000 for two weeks of sabotage, no forced exit — and kept playing the real game normally through the finale.

Pandora’s Box becomes a recurring device here, opened four times — more than in any other season. Matt’s Day 35 opening publicly yielded a dollar and a warning card; secretly it held the Diamond Power of Veto, the mechanic’s second-ever use, which he cashed on Day 48 to remove himself and name Kathy. Brendon’s Day 43 opening sent him on a 24-hour spa vacation while his showmance partner Rachel secretly re-entered the house. Britney’s opening in Week 7 and Lane’s on Day 55 both traded cash against house-wide punishments — no silverware, sock-puppet-only communication, forced dancing on a loop.

Big Brother 13 (2011)

Six returning houseguests entered pre-paired into three veteran duos — Rachel and Brendon, Jeff and Jordan, Dick and Daniele — while the eight newcomers paired off inside the house. A pair’s HOH win gave both partners immunity, and pairs were nominated and evicted together until the field hit ten. Any houseguest whose partner left early received a Golden Key: guaranteed safety through the top ten, though they still had to vote. Dick left on Day 6 for personal reasons. Pandora’s Box opened twice — Porsche’s Week 8 opening split $10,000 with Kalia but reinstated the duo pairing for one unpopular week, and Rachel’s Week 9 opening brought a celebrity guest segment rather than a game reward. After Lawon’s Day 41 eviction, America’s Vote chose among four evicted houseguests for a shot at returning; Brendon won the public vote with 39.5% and then the re-entry competition.

Big Brother 14 (2012)

Four returning players — Dan, Britney, Boogie and Janelle — entered as non-competing coaches, each drafting three new houseguests and playing for a separate $100,000 prize. On Day 27, before that week’s eviction, each coach was individually offered a Reset Button to give up coaching and enter the real game for the full prize. Britney, Dan and Janelle pressed it, Boogie did not, and that week’s eviction was cancelled outright. Pandora’s Box opened three times: Frank’s on Day 49 hid a Golden Power of Veto in the backyard for the house to find, Ian’s on Day 56 brought an alum in to swap junk food for health food, and Ian’s second on Day 63 traded video messages from home for a private chat with another alum. That last one is the final Pandora’s Box the show has ever opened — fourteen years and counting. Ian later won the season’s Diamond Power of Veto.

Big Brother 15 (2013)

BB MVP: for the first three weeks America secretly voted a houseguest into MVP status, and that MVP privately named a third nominee on top of the HOH’s two. Elissa held it all three weeks. From Week 4 production scrapped the middleman and let the public vote directly for the third nominee without telling the house, winding the whole twist down by Day 49. Jeremy won this season’s Never Not Pass on the premiere. The jury expanded from seven to nine for the first time. A dual-purpose endurance competition let houseguests fight for HOH while the first four jury members simultaneously fought for a way back in — the first true jury buyback the show had run. Judd won his way back; Elissa won HOH.

Big Brother 16 (2014)

The debut season for Battle of the Block — two HOHs, each nominating a pair, the two pairs facing off for safety and a dethroning — which ran eight weeks before retiring. Also debuting: Team America, where the public voted three houseguests onto a secret alliance for weekly paid missions. Derrick collected on five missions plus the season-win bonus for $70,000, on top of winning the game outright. A golden button found in the former have-not room after Christine’s Day 77 eviction let the house vote to cancel and replay the HOH competition that had just decided the week; the house pushed it, and Frankie — whose HOH was wiped — was evicted on the replayed week. Nicole won the season’s jury battle back.

Big Brother 17 (2015)

Battle of the Block returned for a shorter five-week run before retiring for good. Identical twins Liz and Julia played as a single houseguest for the season’s first stretch, swapping in and out every few days without the cast knowing; surviving the first five evictions let both stay in as separate players, and Julia entered on her own around Day 43, taking the cast to seventeen.

BB Takeover was billed as a weekly, season-long guest-hosted twist and ran three weeks before being quietly dropped — Julie Chen later said producers had “so much going on” between the veto, dual HOHs and the twins. Week 1 brought in two Amazing Race alumni, Jeff and Jackie, as new houseguests. Week 2 is where houseguests raced to answer a ringing phone booth in sequence — the seventh to answer won The Last Laugh, the power to block three houseguests’ eviction votes outright. Da’Vonne won it, nullified Becky’s, Jackie’s and Jeff’s votes, and was evicted anyway on what remained. Week 3 swapped the have-not assignment for a party-task format tied to a luxury cruise-cabin prize, which Meg won. Separately, four jury members competed on Day 71 for one shot back into the house, and Johnny Mac won it.

Big Brother 18 (2016)

The densest twist load the show had run to that point. Glenn was eliminated on premiere night before the game properly began. Four houseguest-captained teams followed: a captain’s HOH win gave the whole team nomination immunity, while the other teams’ members became have-nots. Running underneath for the same four weeks was BB Roadkill, a secret separate weekly competition whose winner privately named a third nominee with nobody knowing who had done it — Frank won it twice, Victor and Tiffany once each, before it retired on Day 37. That same day the first five evicted houseguests fought in a duel bracket for one shot back; Victor won it. Houseguests later decoded clues to a hidden Secret Room holding envelopes, one carrying a Round Trip Ticket for automatic re-entry if its holder was evicted before Day 65 — it went unused and expired. Victor won a second buyback in Week 10, becoming the first houseguest to return to the house twice in one season.

Five America’s Care Packages ran weeks 6 through 10, the public choosing one houseguest each week for that round’s named advantage: Natalie won the Never Not Pass; James won the power to disqualify two houseguests from that week’s eviction vote; Nicole won Super Safety, worn as a costume; Michelle won Co-HOH, letting her personally choose one of the week’s nominees; and Corey won BB Bribe, $5,000 to offer another houseguest for a single in-game favour.

Big Brother 19 (2017)

The season opened with a button in the backyard and $25,000 on the line: pressing it forfeited the money and unleashed a twist. Kevin pressed it, and the twist was Paul, returning from the previous season as a seventeenth houseguest. Paul then handed out Friendship Bracelets granting Week 1 safety, and pointedly left five people without one.

From there the season ran on temptations, each power carrying a built-in cost. The Den of Temptation ran three weeks: America voted weekly for a houseguest to enter a private room and choose whether to accept a powerful item, each one carrying a mandatory curse for the rest of the house. Paul accepted the Pendant of Protection in Week 1 — immunity through three eviction cycles — at the cost of forcing Ramses to name himself a future third nominee. Christmas accepted the Ring of Replacement in Week 2, a one-time swap into any veto competition, then tore her Achilles before she could use it. Jessica accepted the Halting Hex in Week 3, the power to cancel one of the next four evictions, and spent it in Week 5 to save herself and Cody.

That acceptance unlocked a Temptation Competition across weeks 5 to 7: a voluntary side comp where the winner got safety and whoever finished last became the third nominee. Mark won twice, Cody once. On Day 30 the first four evicted houseguests returned for a live Battle Back and Cody beat Paul in the deciding duel to re-enter. Weeks 8 to 10 ran the Tree of Temptation, where the first houseguest to reach the Diary Room when the tree turned red could claim an apple holding a power or a punishment — only one was ever claimed, Mark’s Save-A-Friend, which he used to hand Paul immunity.

Big Brother 20 (2018)

The BB App Store ran the first three weeks: a weekly public vote decided which houseguest got a power app and which got a punishment app, delivered through in-game phones. Sam won Week 1’s Bonus Life, a chance to return if evicted within the next four evictions, which auto-triggered without her choosing it and sent Kaitlyn to a return competition she lost. Tyler won Week 2’s The Cloud, immunity from nomination usable once in an eight-week window, and never used it before it expired. Bayleigh won Week 3’s Identity Theft, the power to secretly overwrite the HOH’s nominations, and was backdoored and evicted with it still unplayed. The punishment side had names too: Hamazon buried Fessy in ham deliveries, Yell! put a character in Rachel’s ear criticising her gameplay for 24 hours, and Read It! had Haleigh reading Hamlet aloud in costume until she finished.

Weeks 6 and 7 ran a separate H@cker Competition: an anonymous side comp whose winner could secretly swap one of the HOH’s nominees, hand-pick a veto player, or nullify one eviction vote, with the house never knowing who held it. In Week 10 the first four jury members competed to re-enter and Scottie won.

Big Brother 21 (2019)

A Day 1 vote named Jackson Camp Director, giving him immunity from the first eviction and the power to banish four houseguests to compete for their spot back. Three of the four returned; David did not. That set up Camp Comeback: for weeks 2 through 5, evicted houseguests did not leave the house at all, moving instead into a separate room where they could not compete or vote, until four had piled up and fought head-to-head for the single chance to rejoin. Cliff won the Path to Redemption re-entry challenge on Day 30 and came back; David, Ovi and Kemi left for good.

The Whacktivity competition handed out three named side powers. Ovi won one to force a fresh nomination ceremony and never used it. Jack won one to force a full re-draw of the veto field and cashed it in Week 4. Christie won one that would have upgraded the next Golden Power of Veto into a Diamond Power of Veto, and it expired unused. Around Day 51 America’s Field Trip sent three houseguests into a public-voted mini-competition: Jackson won immunity, Analyse took a costume punishment, and Christie became a third nominee who could not be replaced even if the veto saved someone. In Week 9 a separate public vote named Nick America’s Prankster, letting him alone name a single nominee rather than the HOH naming two; he named Christie.

Big Brother 22: All-Stars (2020)

A weekly Safety Suite competition, open to everyone but the sitting HOH, let its winner claim personal safety on condition they also named a Plus One who got safety too — at the cost of a themed punishment for that Plus One. Kaysar won Week 1 and chose Janelle; Christmas won Week 2 and chose Ian; Enzo won Week 3 and chose Christmas. Later, three named BB Basement powers were up at once: Christmas won the Blocker, protecting one named houseguest from ever being a replacement nominee across three veto meetings, and never needed it; Dani won the Replay, letting an ineligible outgoing HOH compete in the very next HOH, and used it on Memphis; David won the Disruptor, a secret anonymous save off the block, and quietly used it on himself.

For one week the season ran a Neighbour twist, with a returning alum hosting the HOH and veto competitions and putting a power-or-prizes choice in front of the players — a format change for a single week rather than a standing power. And on 1 October 2020 the show ran the only triple eviction in its history: two back-to-back fast-forward rounds inside one two-hour broadcast, three houseguests gone in a night.

Big Brother 23 (2021)

The season opened with four four-person teams; a team’s HOH win made the whole team safe, and each week the non-immune teams sent one member into a Wildcard competition for personal immunity and a game-altering decision. Christian won Week 1 and spun a wheel that handed Xavier immunity; Sarah Beth won Week 2 and turned down an offered team swap; Tiffany won Week 3 and turned down a team-safety trade; Claire won Week 4 and chose personal immunity through jury over her team’s safety. That format ended after four weeks and was replaced by the High Roller’s Room, a side economy where America voted weekly to hand out BB Bucks, spendable on casino-style games for escalating powers — among them a veto-outcome bet that won Kyland a second personal veto, a roulette game that let Alyssa pull Derek off the block and replace him with Xavier, and a coin flip that let Claire secretly overthrow Tiffany as HOH. The season also ran back-to-back double evictions in consecutive weeks, a first.

Big Brother 24 (2022)

A randomly drawn Night 1 power, the Backstage Boss Pass, gave its holder weekly immunity plus the ability to bring three others backstage under the same immunity — at the cost of none of the four being able to compete or vote. Pooch drew it and brought in Alyssa, Brittany and Paloma; the twist was scrapped when Paloma left the game on Day 8. Festie Besties debuts here, not in BB23 despite the similar-sounding season, running weeks 3 through 5 as matched pairs and then trios: an HOH’s own set was safe and nominated a rival set, but if a third, non-nominated set won a set veto, the whole nominated set survived and the HOH had to name a new one. Week 7 split the remaining house into two physically separated groups running fully independent weeks — Big BroChella indoors, Dyre Fest outdoors — each with its own HOH, nominations and eviction, producing two evictions from one week without a traditional double.

Big Brother 25 (2023)

The longest season the show has run at 100 days, framed as the BB Multiverse and divided into themed stretches. Two houseguests entered with a secret nobody else knew: Cirie and Jared were mother and son, and played most of the season without the house working it out. The premiere also sent houseguests into the Nether Region, a separate space that shaped the opening week.

The jury rolled back from nine members to seven, an explicit callback to the BB4–BB14 standard timed to the twenty-fifth season, and it has held at seven since. America voted four houseguests into a secret side competition for the BB Power of Invincibility, letting its winner nullify one of the next two evictions; Matt won it on Day 30 and used it to save Jag after Jag had already been evicted, forcing an HOH re-vote. In Week 7 a Zombie twist brought Cameron back into the game after a double eviction had already removed him. In Week 11 the HOH’s identity was kept secret from the house for the entire week — Jag held it and anonymously nominated Blue and Felicia — and, breaking the rule that a sitting HOH cannot play the following week, was eligible again immediately. The same week ran two full Powers of Veto at once with the field expanded from six players to eight.

Big Brother 26 (2024)

The season’s headline change: from Week 1 to the start of jury on Day 52, the HOH named three nominees instead of two and all three competed live for a safety win, leaving the remaining two for the standard house vote. That is the A.I. Arena, and the direct ancestor of the following season’s permanent BB Blockbuster. The whole season was framed by an artificial-intelligence character presiding over the house, and the twists followed the theme: Week 1 handed out an Upgrade and a Downgrade to two players, a Deepfake HOH let Quinn secretly control nominations behind another houseguest’s name, America’s Veto put a veto in the audience’s hands and Makensy in possession of it, and Tucker earned $20,000 as the AI Instigator for spreading planted rumours through the house.

In Week 9 the backyard was re-themed JANKIE World for a one-off double-veto week: a standard Golden Power of Veto and a separate JANKIE Veto were both in play, the second gated behind a carnival-game qualifying round. Angela won the Golden Veto and pulled Kimo off the block; Leah won the JANKIE Veto but failed the qualifier, leaving it unusable, and named T’Kor as the replacement anyway.

Big Brother 27 (2025)

The season ran on a hidden hand. A figure called the Mastermind fed powers and instructions into the house all summer, and was revealed at the finale to be not one person but three former houseguests working together. Rachel entered as a seventeenth houseguest. A BB Break-In competition distributed three secret powers into the house, and the season named several more: a Chain of Safety, a Mystery Competitor power that let Keanu send a former houseguest to compete in his place, a Mystery Veto that fell to Kelley, an HOH Interrogation power that let Mickey dethrone Rylie outright, and a BB Buyoff that Zach held and never spent. The post-jury stretch was branded the Mastermind’s Month of Mayhem.

BB Blockbuster made the previous season’s A.I. Arena a standing fixture: three nominees every week, veto working as normal with a third replacement named if it is used, and the three nominees competing live on Thursday for safety, leaving two on the block for the vote. In Week 9 the show set the format aside entirely for a chain-elimination game with no nominations, no veto and no house vote at all — each houseguest set a completion time on a maze and named who ran it next, the window shrinking each round, and whoever failed to finish in their window went home on the spot. The chain ran down to Rachel, who drew the shortest window, failed, and became the season’s first jury member without ever sitting on the block.

Big Brother 28 (2026)

The BB Time Capsule ran six rounds across weeks 2 to 7, and rather than inventing new powers it dug up old ones. This year’s Diamond Power of Veto came out of it — the mechanic’s fourth confirmed instance, after BB4, BB12 and BB21. Devens pulled it with a six-week window, then cashed it in at the Week 6 veto ceremony to pull Dee off the block and name Kamu, who was evicted that Thursday. The Time Capsule also produced a BB Bribe, which Dee offered and Yash turned down, and the Never Not Pass, which went to Drew. In Week 8, on the show’s 1,000th episode, a Medieval Times week eliminated Haley by competition rather than by house vote. BB Blockbuster continues as the standing three-nominee format.

Celebrity Big Brother (US)

Season 1 in 2018 compressed the whole game into 26 days with an unsequestered jury and a five-person finale. A power hidden in one contestant’s random gift bag let the holder immediately dethrone the sitting HOH and take the role themselves — Keshia drew it and dethroned Shannon on the spot. That same season viewers chose among three named veto variants for Week 3; the VIP Veto won the vote, and Ross used it once, on himself.

Season 2 in 2019 kept the compressed format and added a Power of the Publicist, which Tamar held and never used, and a premiere twist built around a guest who entered the house presented as a houseguest and was not one.

Big Brother: Over the Top (2016)

An online-only spin-off with the audience running most of the game directly, and still the most viewer-controlled season the franchise has produced. A weekly America’s Care Package handed out a different named power each week rather than repeating one — a Save-A-Friend, a Pick-A-Veto that set a double-veto format for the week, a Safety Servant worn as a costume, a power that blocked three houseguests’ eviction votes, a Co-HOH, a Double Eviction Veto, and a final package that advanced its holder straight to the final four. On top of that, a weekly viewer-chosen third nominee ran alongside the HOH’s two, a standing public ballot counted as one extra vote at every eviction, viewers picked the have-nots, and a Safety Ceremony replaced traditional nominations. At the finale America — not a jury — voted the winner directly among the final three, the first time since BB1.

Big Brother: Reindeer Games (2023)

A holiday spin-off that replaced the format almost entirely. Nine returning players did not live together at all. Each episode ran three challenges culminating in a Santa’s Showdown, where the challenge winner earned safety and chose which two rivals faced off — a head-to-head competition, not a house vote, decided who left. There were no nominations, no veto, no eviction vote and no live feeds, and it was hosted by former houseguests rather than Julie Chen. Six episodes across December 2023, with $100,000 at the end.

Big Brother Canada

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