As well as the 15 celebrities being put through their paces, there are going to be some extra new faces entering the Strictly Come Dancing ballroom this year.

Following the much-publicised exits of Strictly hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman at the end of 2025, the show has unveiled its new presenting team, with the usual duo of hosts being bumped up to a trio.

Yes, this time around, TV presenter Emma Willis, comedian Josh Widdicombe and Strictly professional Johannes Radebe are taking over at the helm of the long-running dance show.

With just weeks to go until their first live show, the three-piece team recently took part in a press event attended by HuffPost UK, where they lifted the lid on how their trio came to be, what fans should expect from them as hosts and how they’re feeling about stepping into the ballroom together for the first time.

Here’s everything we learned…

Well, to be honest, they’re still not sure either.

“I wish we knew!” Emma claimed. “We’re having loads of production days where we kind of go in and we play around and just feel it out really, aren’t we?

“So, nothing’s really set in stone at this point. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, it will all come to light.”

One thing they have ruled out, though, is that rumour one of the new presenting roles is specifically a backstage “roving reporter”.

“It’s not true,” Josh insisted. “It’ll be the three of us in the auditorium, divided up equally. And we’re kind of playing around with it and enjoying finding out our roles.

He added: “Anything where we’re together just feels so good. We don’t want it to feel like it’s divided up because the thing that works so well is that we love working with each other and the chemistry is just brilliant.”

“But you’ll be the judges of that come September!” the comic quipped.

“One of the great things about the three of us coming in is that it’s not like-for-like,” Josh pointed out.

He admitted: “You’d be mad not to feel pressure taking over Strictly, because it’s a British institution. It’s like becoming England manager or prime minister or something like that – only I’d say this is more important.

“Tess and Claudia were legends – you’re following people that literally got MBEs for doing it! And they’re television legends. But, Strictly is about the show, right? We’re just holding it together.”

Emma agreed: “You can’t step into someone else’s shoes. They did their jobs impeccably for many, many years and they sailed that ship beautifully. And we’re not here to step into their shoes and replace them, we’re just here to kind of hold the ship steady. And have a good time.”

Johannes also took a moment to pay homage to Sir Bruce Forsyth, who was the show’s original host when it launched in 2004.

“To Sir Bruce, Tess and Claudia, thank you for giving us a template,” he said. “They had to figure it out, but now we can learn from them.”

Josh added that both Tess and Claudia had been in touch with them to send “really nice messages” of encouragement ahead of their tenure beginning.

“It was quite a long process,” Emma said. “And rightly so, because they really wanted to make sure that they were thorough in meeting all the people they wanted to meet – and doing screentests which, you know, they don’t happen a lot, screentests or chemistry tests.”

As for what these tests involved, Josh recalled: “You turned up and it was… I don’t know what you’d call it. Just a room, I suppose you’d call it, that’s all it was. It was a room with a table with a sparkly cloth, with Motsi and Anton sat behind it, playing themselves.

“And then Joe, the producer, doing an incredible impression of Craig Revel Horwood next to them. And a great Shirley impression…”

“We literally just did a fake show,” Emma continued, describing the experience as being “like a Blue Peter version of Strictly”, while Josh compared it to “Strictly made on a budget of six pounds”.

Josh continued: “They’d show a video of a dance, and then, the floor manager from Strictly would pretend to be a contestant, and you’d interview him as if he was Ed Balls.

“You were reacting to these classic dances, and then you’d send them upstairs – or they’d be sent upstairs to you because you’d have a go at both roles – and by ‘going upstairs’ that meant ‘going three paces across the room to the next person that’s just stood there’. And then, you’d interview them.”

“We weren’t together in the first round, and in the second round, the three of us were put together,” Josh revealed, admitting that “we were just really laughing from the moment it started”.

If you were a little taken aback when the presenting line-up was confirmed earlier this year – rest assured that so were they.

“They did say to us when we went in, ‘we’ve gone a bit rogue here, because a three was not something we’d ever really thought of, but seeing what we’ve seen, we just wondered if you three might work quite well together’,” Emma confessed. “And it turns out, we did!”

“It was actually terrifying to do it,” she admitted, despite her vast experience in live TV, as host of live shows like Big Brother, The Circle and The Voice, as well as This Morning and even the Brit Awards.

“Even the script read-through, I had a script read-through the week before the chemistry test, and I couldn’t read the script, I was so nervous. And I read hundreds of scripts all the time! But I literally could barely speak.”

She continued: “It was almost like it was the first script I’d ever read, and I lost any bit of confidence I had. It was like some kind of parallel universe where I’d never done it before!

“And [that was] partially, I think, because I haven’t screen-tested for anything for a really long time, so I haven’t been in that situation for a while. But it was actually really nice to kind of feel that again, and to feel those nerves, and to feel the want to do something.”

She added: “I felt like a beginner again. It was weird. And then, going into the chemistry tests, it was really exciting, but really nerve-wracking, I think we all felt that.”

Emma later claimed: “I was very diplomatic with myself from the beginning [of the audition process]. I was like, ‘I’m mega grateful that I’m in the mix, I don’t for one second think that I’ll get it, so I’m not going to overthink it, and I’m just going to go through the process, and that will be will be’.

“But when I had to go into that script read-through, I could barely get a word out of my mouth! I was like, ‘this isn’t what will be will be’! This is absolute terror!”

Johannes joined Strictly in 2018 – and while he didn’t get a celebrity partner until his second series, he’s had one ever since, and has gone on to become one of Strictly’s most popular series.

So, was it a difficult decision to step away from being a Strictly pro in order to become its new co-host?

“Darling, it hit me three weeks ago when the professionals went into the rehearsals for the season,” he told HuffPost UK. “And I’m experiencing FOMO as I’m speaking to you, yes. Especially now that the celebs have all been announced, I’m like, ‘oh my goodness’.”

Johannes admitted: “I would have loved to dance with Lacey, because she has said she’s wanted to do the show for a long time, and it just so happens that when I’m not doing it, she is.”

There is one upside, though.

“I’ll be able to rest my bunions and my back!” he enthused. “But I’ll definitely miss that part of the show.”

Josh then claimed that Johannes was “worried about the lack of exercise” now he won’t be training with a celebrity partner everyday, to which he conceded: “I am, it keeps me fit!”

Overall, though, he insisted that it “doesn’t feel like I’m going anywhere” as he’s “still part of the family”.

“The cake is still the same, but the icing is different,” he suggested.

While Johannes is a former pro and Josh previously competed on Strictly’s Christmas special, Emma, conversely, has never even been in the show’s iconic ballroom before.

That’s not for lack of trying, though.

“Being a contestant has been on my mind for about seven years,” she revealed. “Every year, I go, ‘I really want to do it’. And it’s never worked out.”

Emma continued: “A few years ago, I actually went and had a ‘dance day’, where you kind of go and feel it and see if you want to give it a go. Is that what they call it? A ‘dance trial’. You can do a ‘dance trial’.”

So, “about three of four years ago” she went along to one of these trials with the BBC.

“And I walked into the room and [Johannes] was my partner!” she revealed.

While Josh interjected to tease the pair about why their dancing relationship never made it to our screens, Emma insisted: “It just didn’t work out diary-wise.

“I was absolutely gutted, because I always said if ever I danced, I’d really want it to be with Jojo. But now, I get to dance with him in a different way.”

“There’ll definitely be more dancing in this launch show than there ever was in Strictly Come Dancing,” Johannes teased, with Josh noting: “Emma’s terrified. Why are you terrified?”

“Because we have to dance,” she lamented. “Me and Josh have got to go and dance. We’ve got to go and learn it next week, haven’t we? Oh god.”

“I’m looking forward to that!” Johannes beamed, before clarifying: “That will be the opening of the whole show, where it features the cast of 2026. That means the judges, the contestants, the pros and definitely the three of us.”

Emma also pointed out that the number was “not a whole dance with just me and Josh”, but they’d instead be a “tiny part” of a routine involving “everybody that’s taking part”.

“Three counts of eight,” Josh added. “24. Huge.”

“Strictly is never the same, is it? I feel like every year, we have twists and turns and surprises,” Johannes claimed to HuffPost UK.

“And I think this year [thats’ the case] more than ever. And, it does become monotonous when we just do the same thing, year in and year out.”

Emma noted that while “the heart of Strictly will always be the same”, a show “can’t be on air for over two decades and never change anything or anyone”.

“It’s not that we’re not changing it, because you don’t want to change it! But little tweaks every now and then, it’s good,” she added, while Josh teased that there could be “more surprises” in store like last year’s well-received “Instant Dance” challenge (which will be back in 2026).

Josh admitted that the “most nervous” he’s felt at the prospect at taking over as Strictly’s new host was in “the month where we weren’t doing anything”.

“The moment we’re in a room together, it just feels like, this is going to be really fun,” he told his co-hosts.

Emma said: “We’ve got a lot of time together in the coming weeks. That’s something that was really important to all of us, that we spend lots of time together and we got to know each other really well, just so that whole process feels as smooth as possible.”

“My mama, she probably told the whole township,” Johannes shared. “This is the biggest gig, of course, that I’ve ever landed in my life. So you can imagine, everybody back home has just been absolutely wonderful.

“People have celebrated on our behalf back home in South Africa, they had a party when I told them that I got this job. Everybody came together, so it’s just lovely to know that they understand the magnitude of this all.”

Josh shared that his eight-year-old daughter Pearl was “so excited” about his “once in a lifetime opportunity”, before noting: “Also, it means I can’t go on tour, which is much better for my family.”

Emma then said: “[My family] were all over the moon. You know, we watch it every week, and my kids have grown up watching it, so they were all [excited].

“One of my kids cried, the other one told me how proud they were of me. And my youngest was slightly gutted because she thought that my news was going to be that I was pregnant. And so, I had to let her down with the fact that I’m not, but I am going to work on Strictly, and she was quite happy that at least there was some form of good news coming.

“My parents have watched it since it began, and they were overjoyed, and Matt [Willis, her husband and Love Is Blind co-host] was just like, ‘I’m so proud of you’. It was lovely!”

Strictly Come Dancing returns to our screens later this month.