Was The Apprentice 2026 a hit or a miss?

12 weeks ago, a record equalling 20 candidates set out to win Lord Sugar’s £250k investment and mentorship.

Tonight, red hot favourite Karishma Vijay beat Pascha Myhill to give us the eighth female winner from the last nine series of the BBC show.

But beyond the 28-year-old beauty brand owner, was the latest series of The Apprentice  a hit or a miss?

The format

A lot of things have changed since 2005, but the format of The Apprentice is not one of them.

A lot of the tasks are predictable and rely too heavily on selling and negotiation. Has anyone heard of AI?

One of the biggest changes came in 2011 when the winner of series 7, Tom Pellereau, won a £250k investment from Lord Sugar rather than a £100k job, but precious little of significance has changed since.

Failures, love & millionaires: What happened to The Apprentice winners?

As someone who is old enough to have watched series 1 of The Apprentice  there has been an obvious movement towards it being an entertainment reality show rather than a serious business show, with a lot of filming in the house.

Lord Sugar

The 79-year-old billionaire has signed up to host at least another two series of The Apprentice  by which time he will be in his 80s.

It is hard to think of anyone else hosting the show if Lord Sugar retires, but I said the same thing about Strictly Come Dancing when Bruce Forsyth stepped down as the presenter.

The exception would be if Baroness Brady succeeded him. That would be interesting.

Lord Sugar’s jokes and puns have not got any better, but they are so bad they are actually quite good. I am already missing him from our TV screens.

Baroness Brady

Baroness Karren Brady is almost as much a fixture in The Apprentice as Lord Sugar.

She is the Craig Revel Horwood of the show and comes across as a bit blunt in her comments on the candidates.

Did she smile in series 20? Karishma was clearly her favourite from task four onwards.

Tim Campbell

As the first winner of The Apprentice, Tim Campbell MBE is perfectly placed to be one of Lord Sugar’s advisers.

He understands the pressures the candidates are under, but I am struggling to think of any memorable moments he was involved in during the series. He needs a bigger role.

The candidates

There were a record-equalling 20 candidates in this series, but not many of them were very memorable.

Levi Hague probably regrets appearing on the show at all after making the wrong sort of headlines over a series of offensive historical social media posts that he has subsequently apologised for.

Karishma Vijay was the one candidate who was both super talented and memorable. She deserved to win.

Pascha Myhill, who made a lot of the fact she was the youngest candidate in the process, did well to reach the final but was never going to win.

I actually thought the second best candidate in the process was Rothna Akhtar. She was unlucky to miss out on making the final five and grew in confidence during the series. I hope she makes a success of her baking business.

Finally, wheeler dealer Kieran McCartney was the funniest candidate in the series by a mile and I would not be surprised to see him in another reality TV show.