Wayne Rooney, Manchester United’s all-time record scorer with 253 goals, is heading for the Australian jungle. The 41-year-old tops the 2026 cast of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, which opens on Sunday, November 16, two years after his wife Coleen finished runner-up on the same show.
Coleen Rooney lasted all 22 days of the 2024 series and finished second behind McFly singer Danny Jones. Now her husband gets his own shot at the Bushtucker Trials, the stomach-churning tasks campmates take on to earn food for the group.
Who is going in with him
Eleven campmates are on the confirmed list so far, all due in camp from Day 1:
- Wayne Rooney, former England captain and manager
- Joanna Page, best known from the sitcom Gavin & Stacey
- Ade Adepitan, the former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player turned presenter
- Ricky Wilson, lead singer of Kaiser Chiefs
- AJ Odudu, the Big Brother presenter
- Mariella Frostrup, journalist and broadcaster
- Claire Sweeney, actress
- Chloe Burrows, TV personality and radio DJ who found fame on Love Island
- Leomie Anderson, model
- Sharky, the YouTube content creator
- Jack Skipper, comedian and social media star
Past series have often added surprise late arrivals a few days in, so the camp may not stay at eleven for long.
Why Rooney is the headline name
Few British sports stars have a résumé like his. Rooney scored 53 goals in 120 games for England and held the national scoring record from 2015 until 2023, when Harry Kane passed him. At club level he won five league titles with Manchester United, where his 253 goals in all competitions remain the club record.
His managing career has been rockier. He took charge of Derby County, D.C. United in Washington, Birmingham City and, from May 2024, Plymouth Argyle, a spell that ended within months. That gives him a free winter for the first time in years, and the jungle has a long habit of turning sports names into household entertainers.
For international readers new to the show: it began on August 25, 2002, when the first series was filmed near Tully in Queensland. Since 2003 it has been made at a site near Murwillumbah in New South Wales, apart from the 2020 and 2021 series, which moved to Gwrych Castle in Wales during the pandemic. Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have hosted every series except 2018, and the show averages more than 9 million viewers a series in the UK. Each celebrity names a charity that receives a donation from the money raised by viewer votes.
The Rooney family scorecard
Here is the simple math the household now faces. The 2026 run is scheduled from November 16 to December 7, the same 22-day stretch Coleen survived in 2024. To beat her, Wayne has to go one place better than second, which means winning outright and following 2025 champion Angryginge as King of the Jungle. Anything less and Coleen keeps bragging rights at home.
ITV’s year has been busy with reality TV; Badiyaa recently covered how Big Brother UK handled thousands of viewer complaints about Omar, and how a twins’ three-turn Voice Kids UK audition found a second life online. More celebrity TV is on our Entertainment page.
The first episode airs on ITV on Sunday, November 16, with the final set for Monday, December 7.
Further reading
Image: All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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