The Challenge (TV series)

The Challenge casts are season specific as the cast varies from season to season. The casts are made up of contestants originating from one of The Challenge's related TV programs and, in a few seasons, previously unknown contestants. The cast usually contains both "veterans" (or vets) and "rookies". Veterans are thought of as players that have won at least one Challenge season or have appeared on several seasons of the show; Rookies refer to newer players. Many recent alumni come from various reality shows such as Big Brother, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Ex on the Beach, and Geordie Shore.

A season's typical multitude of cast members are usually divided up into separate teams or pairs according to a certain criteria, which varies from season to season. The criteria that teams have been arranged by over the show's history have ranged from gender, the contestants' original show, heroic/villainous status and ex-romantic partners of contestants. Each of the opposing teams compete in numerous missions in order to win prizes and advance in the overall game. Following each mission, a team or a cast member is voted into an elimination round to take on the least successful team from the previous mission, or the winning team gets to choose a team for elimination to face off against another team determined by different circumstances. In elimination rounds, they must compete against one another to determine which one is eliminated from the season. Each season has its own, very distinct elimination round, distinguished from those of other seasons in title, design, and general atmosphere. Determining which two teams or two cast members are sent into the episode's elimination round frequently leads to drama and dirty gameplay; this is due to the show's contestants being in charge of who is thrown into elimination rounds. Like that of The Real World, sporadically throughout the course of each episode, various contestants are seen privately expressing themselves through reality TV confessionals about the events taking place on the show.

Some seasons, however, have used entirely different formats from the typical: The Island is one Challenge in particular that adopted many features atypical to Real World/Road Rules Challenge, instead taking concepts like that of another reality television game show Survivor; as another example, the first season (Road Rules: All Stars) ironically only included contestants from The Real World and consisted of a much smaller cast before the show was completely restructured in its second season. Except for season one, a monetary prize has always been the award for winning the final mission.

In March 2010, prior to the airing of the 19th season, MTV aired a special spring break spin-off of The Challenge in Acapulco, Mexico.[4] Challenge alum coached teams of college-aged friends in various challenges of old and new, while Fresh Meat alumnus Evan Starkman and The Real World: Key West alumna Paula Meronek served as broadcasters, with T. J. Lavin as the host. Camila Nakagawa, a contestant of the winning team, went on to appear on future challenges, with her debut Challenge being Cutthroat. To date, Camila is the only player to appear on the challenges.

The Challenge: Champs vs. Stars (originally known as The Challenge: Champs vs. Pros) is a special recurring mini-series of The Challenge.[5] In each multi-week event, alumni from The Challenge compete against celebrities to win money for charity.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

The Challenge: CT's Getting Married is a two-part special revolving around the wedding of Challenge star Chris "CT" Tamburello and Lilianet Solares. MTV released the trailer and premiere date on November 20, 2018. The two-week special premiered on December 11, 2018 and concluded on December 18, 2018.[12][13]

In 2020, Road Rules: USA – The First Adventure alumnus Mark Long started asking his social media followers if they'd be interested in seeing former cast members of The Challenge coming together for a new version of the series. The movement was titled "We Want OGs". After his idea went viral, he announced a partnership with Bunim/Murray Productions to further develop his project and began gauging interest from potential former cast members.[14] On February 24, 2021, the show was officially announced as The Challenge: All Stars.[15]

In February 2022, a new series of seasons collectively titled "War of the Worlds" series was announced to air later in the year. The series will comprise four new editions of The Challenge – three new international versions for Australia, Argentina, the UK as well a new American edition set to air on CBS with CBS reality show alumni. All editions of the series will air locally on a Paramount affiliated network and be available globally to stream on Paramount+. This will follow with a fifth season in which winners will compete again on another season titled The Challenge: War of the Worlds which will air exclusively on Paramount+.[16][17][18]