Coronation Street’s boss makes ‘unmissable’ statement ahead of major soap ‘first’
Next year, ITV will air a Corrie and Emmerdale crossover to celebrate the network’s new soap schedule
Coronation Street fans have been told that the show will be ‘unmissable’ when it’s involved in a major soap ‘first’.
Next year, ITV will air a Corrie and Emmerdale crossover to celebrate the network’s new soap schedule – which is being described as a ‘power hour’ for the two shows.
As fans know, Corrie currently airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8pm to 9pm. It transmitted twice a week when it started on December 9, 1960, before it went to three episodes a week in October 1989.
A fourth weekly episode was added in November 1996 before the addition of a fifth episode in October 2002. A sixth episode of Coronation Street was added in September 2017 before it then moved to three hour-long episodes a week in March 2022
Meanwhile, Emmerdale currently airs at 7.30pm on weekdays as half hour episodes, apart from Thursdays when the show runs for one hour. When Emmerdale began in 1972 it started as two days a week, in daytime.
The show went from three episodes to five episodes in 2000, and moved from five episodes to six episodes in 2004. Emmerdale’s one-hour-long episode of the week has aired on Sundays, Tuesdays and most recently, on Thursdays.
But ITV announced in February that from January 2026, Coronation Street and Emmerdale will move to a new scheduling pattern on ITV1, introducing a soaps power hour from Monday to Friday, with 30 minute Emmerdale episodes at 8pm, and 30 minute Coronation Street episodes at 8.30pm. Episodes will also continue to drop at 7am on ITVX, before transmission that evening.
To mark the change, it was previously announced that the special episode, to air in January, will have “everlasting consequences for everyone involved”, saying the two shows’ universes in Manchester and Yorkshire had been linked in an “ingenious way”.
They say the episode will be self-contained, but its events will have “repercussions for both communities and see them linked forever as familiar faces depart and exciting new characters arrive in both soaps”.
Speaking to the Metro at the Cure Usher Ball – a charity event hosted by Emmerdale actors Mark Jordon and Laura Norton in Manchester – Corrie producer Kate Brooks has now teased fans, but with very little information.
“It will be unmissable, that’s all I’m going to say! It’s very exciting. A lot of hard work has gone into making it brilliant,” she revealed to the publication.
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The Cure Usher Ball is an annual event that sees attendees come together to raise much needed awareness and funds for the charity Cure Usher.
The charity focuses on funding research into a cure for Usher syndrome, which is a condition which affects hearing, vision and, in some cases, balance. Children with Usher syndrome are born with some level of hearing loss and will go on to lose their sight as they get older.