If you’ve ever finished a season of Married At First Sight (MAFS) and thought there’s no way they could top the drama the following year, history will prove you wrong. Time and time again, the reality show everyone loves to hate has found ways to introduce new challenges, relationship dynamics and participants who make you wonder “where do they find these people?”.
Ahead of the 2026 season, relationship expert John Aiken has teased that there are four new elements that will truly shake up the experiment — as if we needed any more of an excuse to tune in.
“It’s one hell of a season. It’s gonna take your breath away,” he told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
The Boss Babes
The first of these big changes is the arrival of a new group who refer to themselves as “The Boss Babes”. John revealed that while previous seasons have featured men behaving badly, this year will showcase a group of strong-willed women who “lack self-awareness”, “like to be in control” and are “very blunt with their language”.
“There are about five of them. They band together, and they essentially try to dominate the entire experiment,” he told P.TV. “They go at men, women, anyone who stands up to them. They come at the experts, and they see themselves as being very empowered.
“The language they use at times is really, really hurtful, and some of them just simply walk out. They don’t have any time for the experts whatsoever, and that is a dynamic we haven’t seen before. We’ve had individual rivalries, but nothing en masse like this, and it has a very high school element to it.”
John added that the group will get under the skin of both the participants and viewers watching at home, and “create a lot of dialogue about what is and isn’t appropriate”.
“Once you get through the weddings and see the first dinner party, you’re going to know exactly who the boss babes are,” he said. “In fact, you’re going to see that early at the hens’ do, because those sort of personalities, they’re so powerful, they’re so alpha, they’re so dominant in a room that you’re going to sit there and go, ‘Oh yeah, I can see where this is headed’.”
The bisexual bride
The second major element this season is the introduction of the show’s first bisexual bride. The reality show has seen a handful of same-sex couples in the past — and made history in 2022 when Liam Cooper was the first bisexual groom — but John says Julia Vogl is the first openly bisexual female participant.
“She says, ‘Guys, I don’t mind whether you match me with a man or a woman, I just want to be surprised’,” John detailed. “So you watch her story, and she’s walking down the aisle, and she doesn’t know whether she’ll have a man or a woman turn around. So that is intensely interesting.”
As interesting as this “twist” sounds, it’s clear to see, based on the even number of men and women in the cast, that Julia will likely be matched with a man. However, if she makes it all the way to Final Test Week, my guess is that producers will send her on a date with a woman in an attempt to cause drama.
Revelations Week
Another new addition this season is Revelations Week, which John teased will reveal a lot about the participants in the early stages of their relationships.
“It’s a new format where we get them early on in the experiment to break up into groups, men and women, and we look at their relationships, the red flags, the green flags of the participants that we’ve matched them with, and they get feedback from people in their groups,” he shared.
“And what’s challenging is that some of them are very good at taking feedback, but a lot of them aren’t, and so it creates a lot of anger and animosity.”
Sounds like absolute chaos, and I cannot wait to tune in.
The pink and blue trend
The fourth element that John said will have a strong impact on the experiment is how TikTok once again shows up “in a pink and blue way”.
“So one of one of the women says, ‘John, I need you to match me with a guy that makes me feel baby pink’. And at that point, I had no idea what she was talking about, and she said, ‘Listen, he’s got to be blue’,” he explained.
“And so what you’re what you find out is that she has very particular standards of what pink and blue jobs are in a relationship, and what her man must do and what she must do to make a relationship work.”
Basically, the pink and blue trend plays on traditional gender norms and will definitely spark conversation amongst viewers. 28-year-old public servant Mel Akbay said in her MAFS bio that she’s “looking for a ‘blue’ man for her ‘pink’ self”, so it will definitely be interesting to see how her views impact the experiment.
The chaos kicks off Monday, February 2, on Channel 9 — but in the meantime, you can check out the full cast here.
