The TV star and author said: “It’s time to let someone else have a go, and I’m very excited to hand over the House keys to the lucky new host.”
09:00, 03 Mar 2026Updated 11:31, 03 Mar 2026
Richard Osman is stepping down from BBC2’s House of Games(Image: BBC/Remarkable TV/Graeme Hunter)
Richard Osman has quit House of Games after a nine year run and will hand over to a new host after filming one final week of shows. The series is hugely popular with the BBC2 audience since launching in 2017. Series nine, which is currently on air, pulls in 1.6 million viewers.
The former Pointless presenter, who quit that show in 2022 in order to concentrate on his career as an author, said: “It has been such a great pleasure, and honour, to present House of Games for the last nine years, with the absolute best team in television. But it’s time to let someone else have a go, and I’m very excited to hand over the House keys to the lucky new host.”
TV host Richard Osman said: ‘It’s time to let someone else have a go'(Image: PA)
BBC daytime boss Rob Unsworth said that Osman, 55, was integral to how popular House of Games has become with the audience.
“Richard Osman has established House of Games as one of our best-loved shows,” he said. “His contribution to its success is impossible to overstate, and we couldn’t be more grateful for his work over the last nine years.
“But as we wish him even more success in the future, we also look forward to sharing with viewers who the House of Games’s next resident will be – and will have more on that soon.”
House of Games has been a hit since launching in 2017(Image: BBC/Remarkable TV/Graeme Hunter)
One option is a panel of rotating hosts – which is what happened when he quit Pointless three years ago in order concentrate on his Thursday Murder Club novels, which have proved to be bestsellers with the first turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg.
At the time Osman said that the books had “become such a juggernaut around the world I simply couldn’t keep up with my schedule”.
His co-host Alexander Armstrong said: “In a statement, Armstrong said: “Daytime television’s loss is international best-selling crime fiction’s gain. I say that like it’s a consolation – I’m going to miss the big man next to me Monday to Friday.
“But at least I still get him at weekends – and weekdays if you’re watching on Challenge.”