Jeopardy! Next Week (Sept. 14–18, 2026): Season 43 Premieres Monday With Matthew Riggle and a Relit Set

Short version: Jeopardy! is new every night next week for the first time since July. Season 43 starts Monday, September 14 in your usual weeknight slot, Ken Jennings hosts all five nights, and two-day champion Matthew Riggle comes back for game three. There is no tournament and no primetime hour attached to it — just five regular games, the way the show ran before the summer.

What is on Jeopardy! next week, day by day?

Every one of those is a first-run half hour on your local station. Nothing next week is an encore, which has not been true since the last week of July.

Monday, Sept. 14: what happens on the Season 43 premiere?

Riggle, a community college math instructor from Madison, Alabama, walks back out with two wins and $64,400 already banked. That is an average of $32,200 a night, which is champion pace rather than a pair of lucky escapes.

The Jeopardy! Fan's box scores have him at 47 correct responses against six wrong, one for two in Final Jeopardy!, and an average Coryat of $21,300. He has also been waiting 52 days — Season 42 ended July 24 — which is the longest gap any reigning champion has had to sit through in years.

One thing you will notice before the first clue. The set has been relit for the new season: the columns now carry vertical lines and the color palette is warmer, a change executive producers Michael Davies and Sarah Whitcomb-Foss described on the September 3 Inside Jeopardy! podcast as a glow-up rather than a rebuild. The board, the buzzer and the scoring are untouched.

Tuesday, Sept. 15: does anything carry over from last season?

Money and the streak do. Postseason standing does not.

Season 42 had enough qualifiers that producers ended the qualification window instead of rolling the leftover weeks into the new season. In plain terms: every win from September 14 onward builds a clean Season 43 board, so you can count Tournament of Champions contenders from night one instead of untangling two seasons of carryover.

👉 If you follow the streak math, this is the first September in three years where the scoreboard starts at zero for everybody except the champion.

Wednesday, Sept. 16: is Celebrity Jeopardy! on next week?

No, and not this fall either. ABC moved Celebrity Jeopardy! off its fall schedule when it announced premiere dates in July; the show is now expected in 2027 with dates still unannounced.

The Wednesday hour goes to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire instead, starting October 7 at 9 p.m. ET. So through the rest of September, the syndicated half hour is the only Jeopardy! on television.

Thursday, Sept. 17: how do you find out who is playing?

Jeopardy.com posts the night's three contestants — name, hometown, occupation — on the morning of the broadcast, not in advance. Nobody has next Thursday's lineup today, and any site claiming otherwise is guessing.

We put up a preview for each night at about 10 a.m. ET with the players and the air time, and the result after the East Coast broadcast. Both live in the Jeopardy! section.

Friday, Sept. 18: what is at stake by the end of the week?

If Riggle runs the table he finishes Friday on seven wins. That is the range where champions stop being a nightly curiosity and start being a postseason lock.

If he loses on Monday, the week belongs to somebody nobody has heard of yet, which is how most Septembers go. Either way the five nights are worth watching in order, and we log each one in results.

What time is Jeopardy! on in my city?

There is no national answer. Each station picks its own slot, and the spread is wider than people expect.

Those are the big-market slots as of the July 2026 check of Matt Carberry's long-running station list, and the two shows sit in adjacent half hours almost everywhere. Check local listings before the premiere anyway — station-level moves happen most often at the start of a season, and our air-time guide explains how to look up your own station by ZIP code.

Where can you stream Season 43?

New episodes land on Hulu and Peacock the day after they air. The official site keeps clips and the Final Jeopardy! clue; full past seasons run on Pluto TV.

What should you watch for this season?

Two things beyond the premiere. The relit set and the clean qualification board are the confirmed changes, and Davies has said out loud that he wants a live version of the show — "Live is terrifying for a quiz show producer," was his framing, with the argument that they have to do it anyway. No date exists for that.

The tournament calendar is the other. Last week closed out the old season's postseason on ABC: Andrew He took the Invitational final 2–1 and Yogesh Raut won Masters. Last week's schedule post has the full run of those encores.

FAQ

What is on Jeopardy! next week?
Five new Season 43 episodes, Monday September 14 through Friday September 18, in the usual syndicated weeknight slot. Matthew Riggle returns Monday as the two-day champion.

Is Jeopardy! new next week?
Yes. All five nights are first-run. The summer encore stretch ended Friday, September 11.

What time is Jeopardy! on?
Most markets run it at 7 or 7:30 p.m. ET, a few in the afternoon. See the table above, then confirm with your local listings.

Wheel of Fortune starts its own new season the same night, with a new opening game — that week is broken down in Wheel of Fortune Next Week, and the nightly giveaway rules are in our SPIN ID and bonus puzzle explainer.

Sources

Jeopardy.com — Season 43 premiere date and nightly contestants · TV Insider — Season 43 premiere date and streaming · TV Insider — producers on the Season 43 changes · Fikkle Fame — set and qualification changes · ABC fall 2026 premiere dates — Celebrity Jeopardy! moved off the fall schedule

By the Game Show On Air desk · Updated Sept. 16, 7:15 a.m. ET