Seven steers the course at 2026 upfront presentation
Jeff Howard addresses the crowd at the Seven Upfront
Much like Nine’s upfront this time last week, Seven’s 2026 presentation, held at Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney, was largely a reminder to advertisers that it controls one of the biggest and most-trusted media networks in the country — and it’s locally owned, to boot.
In terms of this article, let’s rip the band aid off early: there was no real talk of the impending merger with audio company Southern Cross Austereo. That news came less than three weeks ago, and was likened by Seven’s chief content officer Brook Hall, in a conversation with Mumbrella before the event, to “when someone announces they’re pregnant at your wedding”.
There were also no off-the-wall programming announcements, or major upgrades to Seven’s advertising offering. The message — again, as with Nine — was “it’s business as usual, and business is good'”. That’s paraphrased, obviously. Only a mob boss could get away with a one-liner like that in public.
Let’s start with the new programming coming to Seven in 2026.
After joining Seven in 2024 and promptly being put to work across three different TV shows, Dr Chris Brown will be fronting two brand-new shows in 2026.
The first is the long-awaited Once In A Lifetime, which was announced at Seven’s 2024 upfront, and again at the 2025 one, and quietly dropped from both years’ schedules. The ambitious series will (finally) see our favourite doctor joined by various celebrities (such as Mick Molloy, Kate Ritchie, Matt Preston, and Amanda Keller) on various wildlife journeys, where they help animals, marvel at scenery, and crack wise. It sounds like a fun show — if they can manage to find room in the schedule for it in 2026.
The other Dr Chris vehicle is My Reno Rules, a new renovation show where “four hardworking teams of Aussie battlers go head-to-head, breathing new life into two neighbouring rundown houses in a picturesque Melbourne suburb.” Basically, if The Block and Love It Or List It had a baby, this would be it.
And speaking of godless format breeding experiments, Caught In The Middle is Seven’s new “ultimate quiz battle” It pits a two-person team against one hundred opponents in a giant LED arena that sounds a lot like the lovechild of two Nine shows — The Hundred with Andy Lee and The Floor. Luckily, Caught In The Middle was devised by the same team that invented The Floor, meaning the cease and desist letters will probably be left unsent.
There’s also SAS: Australia v England, a co-production with UK’s Minnow Films that seemingly exists only to further stir the rivalry between the two countries that this summer’s Ashes series (also a Seven property) will bring into focus.
Most tantalising of the new shows is a new un-named program starring Mick Molloy and Glenn Robbins, and produced by Molloy Boy Productions.
As Brook Hall told Mumbrella, the promotional plan for this show is to tease it slowly over the summer. Molloy self-produced the pilot, and pitched it to Seven, who jumped at it. (“The best pilot we’ve seen for something new in many, many years”, Hall says.)
Hall is coy about the details, only revealing to Mumbrella: “It’s not a quiz show, it’s not reality, and it’s not scripted — but it’s fucking funny.” Sold!
“I think if we can make it work here, these guys might have a successful format that will travel around the world, because it’s transferable.”
Less tantalising are two head-scratching music documentary commissions — “Tina Arena: Unravel Me”, and “The Mental As Anything Story” — both of which probably could have been Spotlight episodes. The latter of was also announced at last year’s upfront.
2026 will also see the return of Seven’s well-tested favourites: Home and Away, Better Homes and Garden, The Voice, The Chase, Australian Idol, The Front Bar, Farmer Wants A Wife, My Kitchen Rules, 1%, The Morning Show, and Sunrise are all due to the return in the new year, and the year after that, repeat to fade.
Seven also has a substantial sport offering. Aside from loads of cricket — which as meantioned features an Ashes series between Australia and England — next year’s AFL coverage will see the first AFL Origin match-up since 1999, with Victoria taking on Western Australia on February 14, a nice Valentine’s Day scheduling clash sure to spark marital disharmony in at least two states.
There’s also Supercars, LIV Golf, the AFLW, various displays of horse-whipping, the NFL — including the Super Bowl — and the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, in which Australia has the type of unfair advantage that will be sure to attract patriotic viewers in green and gold droves.
7plus now hosts Cricket Gold, which the network touts as the world’s first 24/7 free ad-supported channel dedicated solely to cricket, as well as an addition 6,000 hours of non-cricket content.
And, in what seems like an encroachment on Nine’s hallowed turf, Seven has announced it has the Rugby League World Cup from next October, which slots in beautifully between the end of the AFL and the start of the cricket summer.
In terms of shiny advertising toys, Seven has launched 7GeoPlus, a new geo-targeting technology that allows advertisers to deliver location-relevant messaging across all platforms, and announced a new partnership with Westpac DataX, which can directly link advertising exposure on 7plus to actual, factual real-world sales, “connecting media investments to results at the point of sale, whether that be instore or online, across more than 50 product and service categories.”
All in all, things are on track for Seven in 2026.
It’s also heartening to see Seven and its free-to-air rival Nine playing nice in 2026, clearly realising it’s no longer Sunrise vs Today, but Sunrise and Today vs a number of endless other options, mostly delivered by global behemoths paying taxes offshore. Plus, Foxtel just launched a 24/7 Seinfeld channel, which is serious competition for everyone, everywhere, all the time.
As I mentioned, Seven’s chief content officer Brook Hall spoke to Mumbrella on Tuesday afternoon, ahead of the event, and warned there wouldn’t be the usual array of fun, pointed shots at Nine seen in previous years.
“There’s a lot of times where, at these things, these messages used to be about how Seven is great or Nine is great or whatever, everyone trumpeting their own thing. I think the big thing that we’re really trying to do collectively as an industry is — it’s not a sexy headline — but break that myth that free-to-air is in some type of decline.
“We’ve got data here … our broadcast audiences are getting bigger. We still touch over 90% of Australians all the time. We are a very big, powerful industry that is in growth.”
Hall says this surprising claim makes Australia a global anomaly.
“The very strong commercial networks in this market have kept the viewing going up, and we’re not only competing with these global titans, but we’re much bigger than them still – even in the under 40s.”
He continues “It’s not about Seven being great. It’s going, ‘this industry is really healthy’, and we’ve got to make sure that people, not just the media, but the agencies, understand that we’re defying that world trend [of broadcast decline] and we’re in audience growth.”
Hall’s theory on “what sets both us and Nine apart, not just in Australia, but globally” is they have maintained a blend of sports, news, and entertainment — unlike the majority of other networks, that have largely picked a lane. “In a lot of the free-to-air players around the world, sport has disappeared or news has disappeared,” he said.
“I think a lot of people forget, we’re all three of those – and we’re big.”
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