Britain’s Got Talent has finally shown its true colours – it’s doomed to end like X Factor

After three months of build-up, Britain’s Got Talent has finally crowned its 2026 winner, and the result has just doomed the show’s future for good. The live ITV final saw Matty Juniosa, Anastasiia and Salsa, LMA, Fabian Fox, Liwei Yang, Ted Hill, Sonny Green, Rafferty Coope, Celestial and The Hawkstone Farmers Choir fight it out for one last time on the main stage. The finalists gave it their all in the TV spectacular in the hopes of bagging themselves the £250,000 cash prize and the prestigious slot at the Royal Variety Performance later this year.

Until the live show, spoken poem artist Sonny Green was a clear favourite to win. During his emotional semi-final performance, he brought judge KSI to tears and earned Simon Cowell’s golden buzzer. But he wasn’t the only front-runner in the race.

Other fans felt that Matty Juniosa could take the crown after he wowed the judges with his powerful rendition of Prince’s classic 1984 hit, Purple Rain. But ultimately, on the night, neither of them won.

Instead, the victory went to Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone Farmer’s Choir, making history as the first choir to ever win the competition since its inception. And I think there’s one very big reason for this. Popularity.

As a showbiz journalist, I’m well aware that most reality TV shows are ultimately just large-scale popularity contests, but one advantage the choir had over its other contestants last night was Jeremy’s vast following.

The motoring journalist promoted his choir extensively over the past three months, sharing several videos from his Oxfordshire farm where he asked his huge fanbase to vote for them to win. Videos were also shared from his various other business accounts on X, as well as promoting them in his weekly column in The Sun.

This was a hugely unfair advantage against the other contestants, who are mostly unknown to the general public. None of them had even 10% of the fiercely loyal following the veteran broadcaster has, let alone a weekly column in a national newspaper.

I had no issue with them auditioning on the show; I thought it was a lovely story to see the choir, which originally formed for Clarkson’s rude beer adverts, put themselves back out there as a serious organisation on national television. It was a great way to keep British farming in the public eye and raise awareness for the difficulties farmers are facing today.

But to see them go on to win felt like they were taking away an opportunity from all the other contestants who haven’t had their moment in the spotlight. The choir has already had a taste of fame by working with the former Top Gear star; they’ve been on television and made a name for themselves.

This competition was created to discover hidden gems across the UK who wouldn’t ordinarily have a chance to make their dreams of fame and fortune come true. This victory just feels like it’s taken all the magic out of the show in favour of favouritism and celebrity status.

What made the ITV show so popular in the late noughties was its ability to discover incredible artists and performers and catapult them to stardom. Think of Susan Boyle, Calum Scott, Ashleigh and Pudsey and Diversity.

SuBo went from living in a small council house in Blackburn, caring for her elderly mother, to making music with one of the biggest names in the music industry. She is the success story the show should strive to find in every series, not pushing out forgotten artists who have already had their time to shine.

If ITV bosses don’t make some big changes, they will see their audience drop off dramatically and will no doubt suffer the same fate as X Factor. Viewers don’t want to see the carefully curated contestants; we want to see the unsuspecting underdogs transforming into the performers they never thought they could be.