'The Great British Baking Show' Season 16's Bakers Are Freshly Risen
'The Great British Baking Show' Season 16 cast
Love Productions
After nearly two decades on the air, The Great British Baking Show is something of an institution in British culture. For its first decade, it also debuted like clockwork in the same spot in the calendar, right after the three-day bank holiday at the end of August. Even when the show moved from the BBC to Channel 4, the new network ensured it arrived in the same place it always did, to help ease the transition. It wasn't until the pandemic that the show wound up pushed back to the end of the month, due to the new truncated filming schedule.
That's not been the case in America. When the series was on PBS, it wasn't treated like a national show, but rather as a local addition that went wherever stations felt like it: alongside their cooking shows, alongside their British Shows, or just where there was a convenient slot to fit it, and, as previously discussed, it aired seasons out of order. When Netflix took over, it binge-dropped the first two seasons as a unit, only to realize that the only way the show would continue to be the hit they thought they'd purchased was to turn it into a weekly series, which just so happened to coincide with the end of the decade.
Since the decision to proceed despite the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Baking Show has maintained its debut at the end of September. Even after the show returned to its original 10-week filming schedule in the spring, rather than the five-week version in July, Channel 4 kept the show in the later spot for continuity's sake. However, Channel 4 has finally decided it's time to return to the old ways, especially since the last few seasons have been such disasters.
Will it help? Probably not. As we've noted multiple times, the problem with The Great British Baking Show is Paul Hollywood, and debuting the series at the beginning of September instead of the end is unlikely to change that. But it does mean the new crop of Bakers is here and freshly risen for our enjoyment.
Here is the 2025 class of Baking Show contestants for Season 16.
- Aaron: 38-year-old Senior Systems Architect from London
- Hassan: 30-year-old Analytical Research & Development Scientist from South Yorkshire
- Iain: 29-year-old Software Engineer from Belfast
- Jasmine: 23-year-old Medical Student from London
- Jessika: 32-year-old Service Designer from London
- Leighton: 59-year-old Software Delivery Manager from Surrey
- Lesley: 59-year-old Hairdresser from Kent
- Nadia: 41-year-old Hairdresser from Liverpool
- Natalia: 32-year-old Office Assistant from East Yorkshire
- Pui Man: 51-year-old Bridal Designer from Essex
- Toby: 29-year-old Business Development Executive from Warwickshire
- Tom: 31-year-old Creative Entrepreneur from London
(Americans: Please note Leighton, which is currently favored for girls in our country, is a guy; conversely, Pui Man is a woman.)
As always, Judge Paul Hollywood will bully everyone into letting him have his way, while Prue Leith will be the judge who acquiesces once again for Season 16. Alison Hammond returns as host with Noel Fielding, bringing what sanity they can to the proceedings.
The Great British Baking Show Season 16 (which Netflix still pretends we all call "Collection 13") debuts on Tuesday, September 2, at 9 p.m. BT on Channel 4. We currently anticipate that it will be available on Netflix in the United States the following Friday, September 5, 2025; however, as usual, Netflix hasn't yet officially announced it, and probably won't for another week. The series will stream weekly, with new episodes landing in the U.K. on Tuesdays and the U.S. on Fridays through October.
As a reminder, The Great British Baking Show Seasons 1-7 are available to stream on Roku. Seasons 8-15 (still misnumbered under the "Collections" moniker) are available to stream on Netflix outside of the U.K. The Great Canadian Baking Show, Seasons 1 through 8, is also available on Roku, as is the spinoff, The Great British Sewing Bee, Seasons 1 through 10, and The Great Pottery Throw Down. (Seasons 1 through 5 are streaming on HBO Max; Seasons 6, 7, and the 2023 and 2024 Holiday specials are on Roku.)
