Two of the UK’s most popular soaps, Coronation Street and Emmerdale, are to unite for a one-off special interactive episode, which will air in early 2026.
This historic hour-long episode will bring the residents of Weatherfield and the Dales together for the first time, kicking off the new year, and ITV’s new schedules, for both shows.
The episode will be largely self-contained and promises to be action-packed, with an “ambitious stunt” that will have “everlasting consequences for everyone involved” promised before the two sets of cast return to their more usual homes.
Digital Spy also reports that fans will have the opportunity to shape the plot of the upcoming crossover with a to be confirmed interactive element to choose which two characters, one from each soap, they would like to see meet.
Details of how viewers can influence the story will reportedly be shared next month on Coronation Street’s and Emmerdale’s social media pages.
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The BBC tried a similar interactive gimmick when EastEnders celebrated its 30th anniversary. Fans were given the opportunity to choose whether Denise Fox (Diane Parish) would reunite with her estranged husband Jack Branning (Scott Maslen) or her secret lover Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara).
This is not the first time there has ever been a soap crossover, but it is expected to be the first at this scale.
Channel 4’s North West soaps Hollyoaks and Brookside made several cross-show references in their history, while In 2010 Children in Need aired a charity crossover between the stars of EastEnders and Coronation Street, titled “East Street.”
Back in November 2021, meanwhile, there was a week-long series of soaps crossovers when characters in Casualty, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Coronation Street, Doctors and Holby City made references to each other in an attempt to draw attention to climate change ahead of the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
So far, however, Coronation Street and Emmerdale casts have only made reference to each other or seen each other on fictional social media videos. The new collaboration appears to promise a much more involved degree of interaction than this between the stars of ITV’s most popular soaps.
Following the crossover, Coronation Street and Emmerdale will return to their new airing schedule for 2026, with new half-hour episodes of Corrie at 8pm and Emmerdale at 8.30..
