Commissioning opportunity: YouTube entertainment

Commissioning opportunity: YouTube entertainment – BBC Showground (w/t)

Deadline for applications: 21 September 2026

We’re developing BBC Showground (w/t), a new YouTube-first home for entertainment formats that make audiences laugh out loud: bold, returnable content that’s fun, uplifting and easy to recognise, with audience and a strong sense of community at its heart.

It will focus on the behaviours and interests of 16–34 year-olds, while remaining inclusive of all ages, showcasing distinctive, homegrown entertainment and talent, voices and perspectives from across the UK.

We are offering UK based production companies with a track record in returning digital entertainment for younger audiences a paid-development opportunity for the channel.

Approximatelysix companies will be selected to receive £5,000 each to develop at least one returning format.

Following the development stage, we will select three companies to each receive a commission for at least one returning format of five or more episodes, subject to final approval.

Each episode should be over 15 minutes in duration, working to an indicative production cost of £30,000-£35,000 per episode.

The editorial brief

The channel is being commissioned around 16-34 year-old behaviours and interests, while remaining inclusive of all ages.

We want entertainment that feels contemporary, playful and culturally fluent, carrying big-hearted mischief, dry wit and a distinct BBC sense of warmth.

Whether an idea takes place in a single contained setting or out across the UK, audiences should feel inside the relationship, the game or the challenge, and part of a recurring world they want to return to.

Each episode should work as a self-contained story with its own satisfying beginning, middle and end. We are not looking for continuing narrative strands, elimination formats or series that rely on viewers following an ongoing competition.

What we’re looking for

We want YouTube-first funny entertainment formats which present clear, playful and repeatable ideas, bringing different people and worlds together to create unexpected chemistry.

Start with an unexpected pairing

Bring together creators, familiar BBC faces, emerging comedians and real people in combinations that immediately make audiences ask “What happens when these people have to do this together?”

We want formats that can introduce the next generation of BBC talent alongside familiar BBC faces, using the format to reveal people in new ways rather than relying on existing fame alone.

Have a clear format engine that drives the humour

Every format should have one simple rule, ritual, task or mission that naturally creates funny beats and gives audiences a reason to return. The format should be bigger than any one pairing: strong enough to work with different combinations of talent, while revealing something new each time.

Reveal character

The strongest ideas should bring out something audiences haven’t seen before: chemistry, rivalry, awkwardness, generosity, surprising ability or complete incompetence.

Feel recognisable

Every format should have a signature that audiences quickly learn and anticipate, whether that’s a recurring question, entrance, challenge, prop, performance device or reveal. The production can be lean, but the experience should never feel ordinary.

Invite audiences in

Viewers should feel inside the experience rather than watching from the back row. The strongest ideas create opportunities for audiences to play along, predict outcomes, recognise recurring jokes, suggest future ideas and become part of an ongoing community around the channel.

Range of executions

We’re looking for a broad range of executions, from contained formats built around one location or recurring set-up to ideas that take talent into communities, workplaces and locations across the UK.

Contained formats might include games, interviews transformed by a simple rule, improv, stand-up, sketches, roasts, quizzes and performance ideas. We are particularly interested in contained formats that demonstrate how a simple repeatable idea can create consistently entertaining episodes without relying on television scale. Creative reference points include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AmeliaDimoldenberg" rel="nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Chicken Shop Date for its dry wit and instantly recognisable social ritual, Hot Ones Versus for its escalating mechanic that exposes relationships, Game Changer and Make Some Noise for playful theatricality, improv and recurring format signatures, and Stand-Up On The Spot, for reshaping stand-up through audience interaction and improvisation.

Location-led ideas might include shared missions, unfamiliar skills, public challenges or encounters with communities, workplaces and institutions across the UK. Rather than simply using the UK as a backdrop, we want ideas where people, communities and place actively shape what happens. Creative reference points include Keep the Meter Runningwhere one simple rule allows people and place to determine the episode, Celebrity Substitute where contributors drive the entertainment, and Recess Therapy for its warm, socially observant and intergenerational humour.

These references are intended to illustrate tone, mechanics and audience experience, they are not formats we expect producers to replicate.

What we’re not looking for

• Television programmes made smaller or shorter for YouTube.
• Conventional panel shows, game shows or factual entertainment with digital talent.
• Formats built around one creator collective or dependent on one specific personality.
• Funny people hanging out without a clear repeatable format.
• Straight stand-up sets, sketch compilations or performances simply filmed for YouTube.
• Ongoing elimination or continuing narrative formats where audiences need to follow a season-long story.
• Celebrity interviews or location visits with only a superficial challenge attached.
• Formats driven primarily by noise or aggression.

Eligibility criteria

We welcome applications from UK independent production and digital companies.

• At least one relevant returning entertainment format aimed at 16-34 year-old audiences published within the previous 12 months.
• Experience designing mid to long-form content for YouTube or another major digital platform, including SVODs.
• Evidence that the work targeted or demonstrably reached the desired audiences.
• Experience delivering multi-episode content, rather than only one-off videos, promotional clips or short social assets.
• The production-management, compliance, health and safety, contributor-care and business affairs capability required to deliver a BBC commission.

Newly formed companies may qualify through the recent credits of their named senior team, provided they can demonstrate the production infrastructure required to manage a returning BBC commission.

Individual creators, sole traders and informal production teams may only apply in formal partnership with an eligible production company, that should act as the lead applicant.

How to apply

The deadline for applications is 12pm (noon) on 21st of September 2026.

Applications must be submitted

• Complete the application form

If you have any questions around your application, please email the Digital Commissioning team, or companies based in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales can also speak to their relevant BBC entertainment commissioning contact in that nation.

Note, applications cannot be submitted

The BBC is committed to accessibility and inclusion. If you require reasonable adjustments or support throughout the application process, please let us know and we will work with you to accommodate your access requirements.

Applicants will be asked to provide:

1. Eligibility criteria

• A brief description of your company and relevant experience.
• Up to three recent credits that demonstrate you meet the eligibility criteria above.

2. A creative response

Your creative response should be no more than 1,000 words in total and include:

A short response (max. 500 words) explaining what your company would bring to this proposition.

One topline format idea (max. 500 words) to give us a sense of how you might respond to the brief, including: 

• A working YouTube title
• A one-line premise.
• The format mechanic or ritual that makes the idea repeatable.
• The type of BBC face, creator or emerging-talent pairing it could support.
• How the idea could reveal character and give audiences a reason to return.

At this stage, we are not asking for a completed treatment or format bible, confirmed talent or a detailed production budget.

Process and timetable

During paid development, each company will develop one lead format, including its format engine, episode structure, talent approach, title and thumbnail proposition, audience-participation model and indicative production plan.

Following development, we will commission at least three returning formats. Final decisions will consider:

• Fit to commissioning brief, strength, clarity and repeatability of the format.
• Distinctiveness within the YouTube entertainment market.
• Appeal to younger viewers and potential for wider enjoyment.
• Strength of the ritual, theatrical identity and community proposition.
• Production feasibility and value for money.

Timetable

• Brief published: 27 August 2026
• Deadline for applications: 21 September 2026
• Companies selected for paid development: w/c 5 October 2026
• Final development presentations: w/c 16 November 2026
• Production commissions communicated: w/c 23 November 2026
• Production and delivery: w/c 15 March 2027

All dates are subject to change, producers will be notified of any revisions in due time.

Terms

All content produced might also be published across iPlayer and must align with BBC standard commissioning and delivery requirements.

• The commission will be contracted on the BBC’s digital terms.
• A paid-development award does not guarantee a production commission.
• Submissions from supplier partnerships are welcome. In the case of a partnership, one supplier must be designated as the lead partner.
• The BBC reserves the right at any time prior to commissioning, and without incurring any liability to the affected suppliers, to accept or reject any proposal, or to annul the process, rejecting all proposals, without incurring any liability to any of the affected parties.
• All costs incurred directly or indirectly in responding to this brief will be borne solely by the producers.
• Proposals must remain open for acceptance for 180 days from the award.
• The offering of inducement of any kind in relation to obtaining this or any other contract with the BBC will automatically disqualify a producer and may constitute a criminal offence.
• The producer warrants that the concepts and ideas submitted as part of the proposal (in whole or in part) do not infringe any third parties’ rights and agrees to indemnify the BBC against any and all claims resulting from the use of these concepts and ideas.
• The BBC reserves the right to perform any appropriate due diligence (including but not limited to health and safety assessments and/or or financial due diligence) at any stage of this commissioning process prior to the award of a final contract. The producer will provide all assistance required in order to achieve this.

Please note the BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

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