Changes to the Calendar

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas in my head about how next season, the Jeopardy! calendar might look different from this one. Before I proceed on this, let me make it absolutely clear: this is based entirely on the tournaments that were held in Season 41 all remaining part of the schedule. Recently on r/Jeopardy, we’ve gotten a post each from the “usual suspects,” u/Commercial_Union_296 and u/MattHanson1990, regarding potential changes for 2025-26 — the thrust of both being “restore the tournaments, and timing of them, that we had when Harry Friedman was in charge.” November Golf Foxtrot Hotel, from my vantage point.

Adding another week of Second Chance

There was some chatter a couple of months back about how many deserving Second Chance contestants there were. I even recall Sarah Foss floating the possibility of there being more than two weeks of that competition in Season 42.

If it goes to three weeks, and everything else is held equal – traditional format Champions Wildcard, 21 player Tournament of Champions, JIT format unchanged – it can fit in the window from the Monday after Christmas to the day before the first round of NCAA March Madness.

This has the salutary side effect of moving a less consequential episode to a highly preempted day. Last season, the final game of Champions Wildcard was bumped or not seen at all on 58 of the 71 CBS affiliates for the third round of the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open.¹ If you put in another week of Second Chance, it’s the fifth quarterfinal of Champions Wildcard that takes that hit instead.² For various reasons, this doesn’t work every season — but the option is available to the show in 2025-26.

Delaying the JIT

Another way you could shake up the schedule is to move the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament out of February and March, into April. The start date could be March 30 or April 6; TBS has next year’s men’s Final Four, so there’s no conflict with the title game on the latter date. Moving JIT there puts it closer to Masters, potentially leading in more naturally to the new showpiece of the franchise. (Potential drawback: overlapping with the latter stages of Celebrity Jeopardy! Season 4, if that series doesn’t go back to autumn.)

But I don’t think such a move would be done for that reason alone. If it happens, it’d be primarily in service of another goal…

Expanding the postseason, particularly Champions Wildcard

It’s no secret that the special play we got in Season 41 represents a retreat by Michael Davies from his original vision. With a longer qualification cycle for the next ToC, there’ll be more champions. As opposed to the 60 we had for the last one, that number might end up anywhere from the mid-70s (if the same average champion run as the S41 ToC holds) to the high-80s (if that average gets as low as it did at the start of this month, at the end of the string of one-day champions). That, and one fewer ToC spot thanks to there being two Celebrity Jeopardy! champions in the next one, means a bigger “donut hole” of champions not reaching the postseason, if its structure is unmodified.

Moving the JIT to April frees up sixteen episodes. It seems that with that extra time, the show could add a second Champions Wildcard. And there’d also be enough room to make them both the same 14-game format as those in Season 40 — nine quarterfinals, three semifinals, two-game total-point final. Based on his expressed disdain for the “traditional” quarterfinals (four highest scoring non-winners advancing), I imagine eliminating them would be a priority for Davies.

If Second Chance is maintained at two weeks, two 27-player Champions Wildcard events fit, and that’s true whether the ToC is again 21 players or expanded back to 27 as was the case two seasons ago. If a third week of SCC were added, you’d need to trim the CWC fields to 25 (in a 21-player ToC) or 23 (in a 27-player one). Each of these four options places a quarterfinal or semifinal of the first CWC on the PGA Tour preemption day, as opposed to one of the games of the final.

At the very bottom of the post, there’s an image showing in detail each of the four calendars. Up here, I’ll give you a table that shows, for each option:

• How many episodes it would run if the ToC final went the full distance

• How many champions it could accommodate

• The range of regular play games there would be (this accounts for the JIT as well)

For each of these four possibilities, the minimum regular play left over would be 166-169 156-159 games. While that 33 31-point-something weeks would be a drop from what Davies has said in recent months, it’s still more than the 30 weeks he had originally planned out in the summer of 2023. (This is on account of there not being a special play event in May, presumably to focus the viewership’s attention solely on Masters in that time frame.)

(EDIT, 2025-07-22: I didn’t do the math correctly initially, and overstated the regular play ranges by 10 games. Those numbers and the above image have been updated.)

A couple of lingering questions

At least, in my mind.

Is 23 or 25 viable for a CWC (or ToC, for that matter) — or must it be 21 or 27?

This comes to mind because of a seeming need to ensure equal buzzer preparation time for the quarterfinalists. It’s accomplished in the 21-player field by way of the “exhibition game” among the three seeded semifinalists. If only one or two players have byes, however, would a similar game (possibly with show staffers filling out the podiums) be adequate in the show’s eyes?

Does a 27-player ToC require enough three-or-more-game champions to fill its field?

There were only 20 3+ game winners in the last cycle; if we don’t get to 24 of them in this one (assuming there remains only one CWC), the show may not think it appropriate to put two-game winners directly into the ToC. But I caution, as I have many times before, about Davo having “red lines”; we know full well from everything he’s done over the last four years that “Jeopardy! has never done that before” is no barrier.

Does the introduction of next-day streaming next season render moot the constraints of widespread preemption?

This one is potentially the biggest, and the greatest unknown. I mentioned above the presumed constraints on the window for the postseason to air, owing respectively to ABC Christmas Day NBA coverage and CBS showing the first round of March Madness. Do those matter so much now, or at all, given that affected viewers now have mechanisms to catch the missed episodes the following day? Or will the show for the time being conform to the other commitments of its linear broadcast partners, as it has so often done in the past? Only time will tell.

One week of Season 41 left!

Will Scott Riccardi continue to hold sway on the Alex Trebek State à la Iga Swiatek on Centre Court last weekend? Or will someone take him out before the hiatus, like Amanda Anisimova did to Aryna Sabalenka? You know where and when to tune in to find out.

Full detail of four possible calendars if JIT is moved to April

1. The PGA Tour plays Wednesday to Saturday this week to keep clear of the NFL’s conference championship games that weekend; CBS airs three hours of coverage of the third round in the early evening Eastern time.

2. Assuming the five stations in Montana bump Jeopardy! to air local news at 6 pm, and accounting for the two permanent time changes in Rochester, MN/Mason City, IA and Corpus Christi, TX since last January, the golf on the evening on January 23, 2026 (5:00-8:00 pm ET) would affect J! in 59 markets, accounting for 20.78% of households. For comparison, the first two days of March Madness (12:00-5:00 pm and 7:00 pm-12:00 am) hit 54 markets, 21.88% of households.