Northern Irish social media star John Nellis has been announced as the latest contestant to join the new series of Strictly Come Dancing.<\/p>\n
Originally from Newcastle in County Down, Nellis is one of Ireland and the UK’s biggest football content creators, with a combined audience of more than 15 million followers on YouTube.<\/p>\n
His videos have featured some of the biggest names in world sport, including Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo and, more recently, Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland \u2013 which amassed more than 13 million views on YouTube.<\/p>\n
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He is the 14th celebrity to be announced for the upcoming 2026 series of the BBC One dancing programme.<\/p>\n
He said: “I\u2019m still in disbelief that I\u2019ve been selected for Strictly and, if I\u2019m honest, I\u2019m a little nervous as I\u2019ve never danced before.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s such an incredible opportunity and I\u2019m going to throw myself into every moment.<\/p>\n
“I can\u2019t wait to meet everyone, learn a new skill and, hopefully, be much better at family parties by the end of it.”<\/p>\n
Nellis left his job as an air traffic controller to pursue content creation full-time and since then has become one of the leading creators in sport, winning the sport creator of the year gong at the 2024 TikTok Awards for the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n
He will join actress Lacey Turner, TV personality Dani Dyer, Australian singer Delta Goodrem, hairstylist Chris Appleton, Love Island star Cach Mercer and TV presenter Will Best in the Strictly ballroom.<\/p>\n
A post shared on the Strictly Come Dancing Instagram account revealed the news on Tuesday and said: “Social media star @johnnellis has kept his eye on the ball, now all eyes are on his fancy footwork. Welcome to #Strictly, John!”<\/p>\n
Other celebrities who will feature in the 2026 series include Paralympic athlete Sarah Storey, actress Jaime Winstone, House Of The Dragon star Bethany Antonia, former footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips, TV dog trainer Graeme Hall, Emmerdale\u2019s Lawrence Robb and Olympian Tabby Stoecker.<\/p>\n
Strictly Come Dancing will return to screens on BBC One in September.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Irish social media star John Nellis has been announced as the latest contestant to join the new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-851579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}