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ITV announces new soaps schedule for 2026

February 4, 2025

ITV has announced that, from January 2026,  its flagship soaps Coronation Street and Emmerdale will move to a new scheduling pattern on ITV1, introducing a soaps ‘power hour’ from Monday-Friday, with 30 minute Emmerdale episodes at 8pm, and 30 minute Coronation Street episodes at 8.30pm. Episodes will continue to drop at 7am on ITVX, before transmission that evening.

The start of the 2026 schedule will be marked in style with a “never before seen stunt” as part of a week of special episodes.

The new schedule chimes with research insights that show 30 minute episodes attracted higher audiences in 2024, and deliver more digestible installments of continuing drama that better fits with changing viewer habits. Coronation Street and Emmerdale have a combined weekly reach of over 8 million viewers.

ITV’s Managing Director of Media and Entertainment, Kevin Lygo, commented: “The new commissioning pattern is viewer-led.  We already give more choice than ever to viewers on how they watch us through ITVX and we want to present their favourite soap to them, in the most digestible way. In a world where there is so much competition for viewers’ time and attention, and viewing habits continue to change, we believe this is the right amount of episodes that fans can fit into their viewing schedule, to keep up to date with the shows. Research insights also show us that soap viewers are increasingly looking to the soaps for their pacey storytelling. Streaming-friendly, 30 minute episodes better provide the opportunity to meet viewer expectations for storyline pace, pay-off and resolution.”

“Whilst viewing is growing on ITVX, we know a significant proportion of our soaps’ audience still watch us via the schedule. This new pattern is in the DNA of the soap genre – nobody else does 30 minute drama this successfully. It creates a soap power hour that’s consistent, and easy to find in the linear schedule, for the UK’s biggest soaps. This new commissioning pattern will mean five hours of soaps a week, rather than the current six. We are conscious this will have an impact for the people who work on the soaps team. We will support our colleagues in ITV Studios as they work through these changes, and will do what we can to mitigate the impact on our people. These changes are motivated by doing what we believe is best for the continuing success of these important programmes in the long term. They also create headroom in the overall programme budget for investment in programming that can help ITV grow reach in a very very competitive market,” added Lygo.

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