Melanie Walters is doing Strictly.
The Swansea-born actress, adored as Gwen West in Gavin & Stacey, was announced on Wednesday as the fifteenth and final celebrity joining Strictly Come Dancing 2026, which starts on BBC One and iPlayer in September.
For an actress who has spent 15 years in pantomime, the timing of the show has always been the problem.
“My Strictly ‘fix’ has always been watching in a dressing room rather than my front room,” she said. “This year I am completely thrilled and happy to swap my fairy wand for sequinned dance shoes. I just hope I don’t follow Cinderella and leave one on the Ballroom stairs.”
“I cannot wait to take part in this absolutely iconic show, it’s so exciting. See you in September!”
Her Gower MP was among the first to celebrate. “Very excited for my Gower constituent Melanie Walters,” Tonia Antoniazzi posted. “Fabulous news, we will all be watching.”
Walters has been Gwen, Stacey’s mild-mannered, omelette-obsessed mother in Barry, since Gavin & Stacey began in 2007, reprising the role for the 2024 Christmas special that drew one of the biggest audiences in the show’s history.
Her career runs far wider: Coronation Street, Being Human, Doc Martin and Beyond Paradise on television, Submarine, Resistance and Save the Cinema on film, and stage runs from Blood Brothers to Educating Rita.
Most recently she has appeared in two series of the BBC’s Death Valley, and was announced in May in the cast of Santa Maria, the first S4C and ITV drama co-production, which has been filming in and around Swansea and Mumbles.
She joins a completed 2026 line-up of EastEnders’ Lacey Turner, Dani Dyer, singer Delta Goodrem, hair stylist Chris Appleton, Cach Mercer, Will Best, Paralympic great Dame Sarah Storey, Jaime Winstone, Bethany Antonia, former footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips, TV dog trainer Graeme Hall, Lawrence Robb, Olympic skeleton champion Tabby Stoecker and John Nellis.
It is a new-look Strictly she is walking into. Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and former professional Johannes Radebe take over as hosts this year, after Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman stepped down at the end of last year’s series.
The judging panel is unchanged, with head judge Shirley Ballas joined again by Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke.
And Swansea has sent someone up those famous stairs before. Paralympic champion Ellie Simmonds, a former Olchfa Comprehensive School pupil, danced in the 2022 series.
Speaking to Swansea Bay News before her first live show, she called Strictly “the show of all shows”, and set herself the simple aim of not being first out.
The BBC says further news on the series, including the professional pairings, will be revealed through the rest of the summer.
The new series begins on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in September, with the launch show traditionally filmed in early autumn.
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