The Traitors is the BBC's most talked-about game, and the talking is the problem if you're abroad. Every banishment, every murder, every round table is all over your phone before you've found the episode.

The BBC has confirmed the next civilian series, with Claudia Winkleman back at Ardross Castle. It hasn't named the night yet. Here's how to be ready for it wherever you live.

The Show You Can't Watch a Day Late

Most television keeps. You watch it on Sunday instead of Saturday and nothing is lost. The Traitors doesn't keep, because it isn't really a programme so much as a running argument the whole country is having at once.

Episodes go out on consecutive nights. Each one ends on a banishment, and each morning opens on a murder, so the group chat has two verdicts to shout about before breakfast. Somebody at home has always seen it before you, and somebody always says who went.

The civilian series is where this bites hardest. There are no famous faces to carry the headlines, so the story is the players themselves, and the whole pleasure is not knowing. Watch it three days late from Spain or Portugal and you're watching a show whose ending you already know.

That's why the goal isn't just access. It's being on the same clock as everyone back in the UK.

What the BBC Has Confirmed, and What It Hasn't

A few things are settled. The next civilian series is confirmed, applications closed in July 2026, and filming takes place over the summer and autumn at the castle in the Scottish Highlands. Claudia Winkleman hosts. The BBC has signed the show up to at least 2030, one civilian series and one celebrity series a year.

The start date isn't one of them. Plenty of sites will tell you when the series "always" begins, but the BBC hasn't said, and we'd rather leave a blank than print a guess. When it's announced, this page will carry it.

What comes first is the celebrity edition. The Celebrity Traitors has been back on BBC One since Thursday 1 October 2026, and it's the same castle, the same host and exactly the same problem for anyone watching from overseas. If you're set up for one, you're set up for the other.

Why BBC iPlayer Turns You Away Abroad

iPlayer works out where you are from the IP address your internet connection hands over. If that address isn't British, the programme doesn't start. You get the message about iPlayer only working in the UK, and that's that.

It isn't about you. It doesn't matter that you're a British citizen, that you have a house in Surrey, or that the same account played the last series without a hitch. The check is on the connection, not the person.

It's also why the problem follows you from screen to screen. The television, the tablet and your phone all sit behind the same router, so they all hand over the same foreign address, and they all get the same refusal.

Why a VPN App Gives You One Good Night

A VPN app is most people's first try, and it often works for an evening. Then it doesn't, usually mid-series, usually the night everyone's talking about.

The fault isn't the app. It's the sort of address the app lends you. The big providers push thousands of customers through shared servers in commercial data centres, and the BBC knows those ranges well. They get blocked in batches, and hopping to another UK server just moves you to a different address on the same list. We go through the mechanics in our guide to why ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark stop working on iPlayer.

There's a second catch that's specific to a nightly show. Even when a shared server connects, it's carrying a crowd, and a live round table is the last thing you want stalling. Pause to reconnect and the banishment has already landed on X.

The Fix Is the Address: a UK Residential IP

What actually works is a connection that looks like an ordinary British home, because that's what iPlayer is built to serve. A pre-configured SmartHub VPN router does exactly that, connecting through a genuine UK residential IP, an address from a real ISP line rather than a hosting range.

There's nothing for a blocklist to match, because the address is the everyday kind. iPlayer sees a household in Leeds or Cardiff and gets on with the programme.

Because it works at the router, the whole house is covered at once. An expat living room is a mix: a smart TV, a Fire TV Stick, a games console, phones, a tablet. A VPN app is a separate install and a separate thing to switch on for every one of them, and some of those devices can't run one at all. The router covers the lot with nothing to install, and nothing to remember before the episode starts.

It doesn't unlock anything you haven't got. It only changes what your connection looks like, so the account you already have works the way it does in Britain.

On the Television, Not a Laptop

A round table deserves the big screen. If your television abroad doesn't carry iPlayer, or you'd rather not rely on the set's own apps, a Freely box behind the router is the tidy answer. Both boxes we supply, the Netgem PLEIO and the Manhattan Aero, run BBC iPlayer alongside the live UK channels, so BBC One plays on the sofa the way it did at home.

If the picture keeps stalling rather than being blocked, that's a different and fixable problem, and our guide to watching BBC iPlayer abroad without buffering covers it.

Get Set Up Before the BBC Names the Night

Not knowing the date has one upside. There's no cutoff to chase, so an order placed now is running and tested long before the first episode, and it carries the celebrity series on BBC One from 1 October while you wait.

We ship a complete, pre-configured setup worldwide. Plug the router into your internet abroad, connect your television or Freely box, and open iPlayer as you would in the UK. International orders usually go by UPS Express to keep delivery and customs quick, and UK orders ship with DPD, normally next-day after dispatch.

The same setup carries the rest of the BBC's autumn too, including Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday nights. One router, every show, every screen.

Watching The Traitors Abroad: FAQs

Can I watch The Traitors abroad?

Not on an ordinary foreign connection. The Traitors airs on BBC One and streams on BBC iPlayer, and iPlayer reads your IP address before it plays anything, so from outside the UK it stops you at the door. A VPN router carrying a UK residential IP makes your connection look like a normal British household, and iPlayer behaves as it does at home.

When does the new series of The Traitors start?

The BBC has confirmed the next civilian series and the show is signed up to at least 2030, but it hasn't announced a start date yet. That's a reason to get set up now rather than later: order the router today and it's tested and running well before the first episode lands, whenever that turns out to be.

Can I watch The Traitors live abroad rather than on catch-up?

Yes. With a UK residential IP in place, BBC One streams live inside iPlayer exactly as it does in Britain, so each episode reaches you as it airs, allowing for your local time. On a show where the banishment is all over social media within minutes, that's the whole point.

Why doesn't my VPN app work on BBC iPlayer any more?

Because of the address it gives you, not the app. Most VPN apps route thousands of customers through shared data-centre servers, and iPlayer recognises those ranges and blocks them. A residential IP is the kind of address a real British household uses, so there is no hosting range for iPlayer to spot.

Final Thoughts

The Traitors is built to be watched together, and the moment you move abroad you're the one person in the group chat who hasn't seen it yet.

A VPN router on a UK residential IP puts you back in the room: the round table live, the murder the next morning, no scrolling past the verdict on your way to the sofa. It covers every screen in the house, and it'll still be working for the next series, and the one after that.

Every Round Table, From Anywhere