One of the BBC’s most groundbreaking queer shows needs our support next week

With June well underway, Mighty Hoopla completed, and hot girl summer just beginning, there’s only one thing missing from this wonderful time of year…

Thankfully, we won’t have to wait much longer for it!

This LGBTQ+ dating show, the first of its kind in the UK, is back on Tuesday June 23, for its fourth and final season.

BBC confirmed the news last week, after speculation online from eager fans who were waiting for it to drop.

I Kissed A Boy/Girl (IKAB/IKAG), fronted by Dannii Minogue, has made for ground-breaking TV over the last three summers, making its inclusion on the roster of British TV absolutely crucial.

So, you can imagine the upset when it was announced in March that the BBC show was cut due to ‘funding challenges’.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard that we had a return date for the show (Picture: BBC/Two Four/James Stack)

At this point, the one remaining comfort was that the newest series of IKAG would still air, although details remained scarce about when it would be back on our screens.

Back in February, we were teased with a short video shared by BBC Three featuring the show’s host, Dannii, and narrator, Charley Marlowe.

The caption to the flirty clip read: ‘Happy Galentine’s to the gals who like gals 💘 Meet us in the Masseria soon? 💋’

Like a date who tells you they’ll ‘message you at some point’, this vague indication left us in turmoil as we waited to hear something… anything… to get us excited.

Now, we know that it’s on its way, and very nearly here. However, we did have reason to be concerned…

In previous years, the series has started in early-mid May, meaning it fittingly comes to a close around Pride month, just in time for the parties and parades that take place over summer.

So when June rolled around, and we’d heard nothing, it felt strange.

Many see London pop festival Mighty Hoopla as one of the events that kicks off the queer summer calendar, as the girls and gays descend upon Brockwell Park in Brixton for two days of buzzball-fuelled, (cowboy) chaps-heavy, nostalgia-filled fun.

Here, it’s not unusual to spot the cast of the previous series of IKAB/IKAG, as they experience getting noticed for the first time in public while enjoying an American TV personality from the noughties perform their top track (or two) to an adoring camp crowd.

Being the fans that we are, my friends and I have often asked for a photo with the cast we’ve come to know and love after watching them kiss, fight, and make up in their gorgeous Italian masseria.

Callum and Aron were two of the amazing cast members from I Kissed A Boy season 2 (Picture: Charlotte Minter)

Last year, while waiting for Heidi Montag to grace the main stage in a pink Union Jack leotard with her 2010 hit I’ll Do It, we reminisced with the IKAB boys about our favourite moments from the season so far and let them know how amazing it had been to see such representation on screen.

Unfortunately, because IKAG did not air at its usual time this year, we were robbed of this opportunity at Hoopla 2025, and we were forced to chat amongst ourselves while watching Real Housewife of Salt Lake City Meredith Marks produce a DJ set to a sea of icon-obsessed reality lovers.

Of course, we had a lot of fun (how could we not, in those conditions?) – but we were missing our girls.

We treated our day as a sort of fact-finding mission, asking anyone we bumped into who might have a morsel of information about the show if they knew when it would be airing.

Dannii is the perfect host for this LGBTQ+ show (Picture: BBC/Two Four Broadcast Ltd.)

Despite hitting the jackpot with a few run-ins, we left none the wiser.

Two and a half weeks on from the Brixton festivities, and we can finally get excited about the show returning.

I’ve already saved the date and invited my friends over for a viewing party – something that Charley has urged her TikTok followers to do, to show ‘how amazing and needed it [the show] is’.

Ex-IKAG contestant, Amy Spalding, has pleaded with her fans to do the same. In a video uploaded onto her social media, she said: ‘We gotta feed the dykeonomy, and the dykeonomy will feed us.’

So, let’s celebrate the final season of this celebration of queer love, and make some noise for the first (and hopefully not the last) LGBTQ+ dating show.

I Kissed A Girl returns on Tuesday June 23 on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer.

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