Tess Daly, Claudia Winkleman to leave Strictly Come Dancing

Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman have announced that they are to step down as hosts of Strictly Come Dancing at the end of the current series.

The news comes after a turbulent few years for the top-rated show, which has seen dancers and celebrity contestants hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Daly has hosted the show since it launched in 2004, initially alongside the late Sir Bruce Forsyth before being joined by Winkleman in 2010.

Winkleman herself has also been involved with Strictly since 2004, first as host of the companion show It Takes Two until she stepped up to the main show.

In a joint statement on social media, the pair wrote: “We have loved working as a duo and hosting Strictly has been an absolute dream.

“We were always going to leave together and now feels like the right time.

“We will have the greatest rest of this amazing series and we just want to say an enormous thank you to the BBC and to every single person who works on the show. They’re the most brilliant team and we’ll miss them every day.

“We will cry when we say the last ‘keep dancing’ but we will continue to say it to each other. Just possibly in tracksuit bottoms at home while holding some pizza.

“Tess & Claud”

In a statement, Strictly‘s exec producer Sarah James said: “Tess and Claudia are quite simply the best duo of presenters in the business and we are so lucky to have had them as our Strictly anchors for so many years.

“They have championed countless celebrities on the dancefloor, led us all through two series during the pandemic but more importantly they have a deep and genuine bond with the show and every single member of the team.

“The Strictly Family is often referred to and these women are the matriarchs of that family. We have been together and supported each other for a long time – through pregnancies, births and deaths and to say we will all miss them terribly is an understatement.

“Tess, Claudia, THANK YOU for everything, it’s not over yet – let’s enjoy the rest of this fabulous series together. I would say Keep Dancing, but you never actually started!”

The pair’s final show on screen will be the Christmas special, which will air on Christmas Day. However, that episode is pre-recorded in early December, meaning that their last filmed appearance as hosts will come in the finale of the current series – scheduled for Saturday, December 20.