EXCLUSIVE: Seven's Majella Hay reveals the secret recipe behind My Kitchen Rules' enduring success

At three or four in the morning, after another My Kitchen Rules instant restaurant has been served, scored and argued over, the crew packs up a stranger’s dining room. Later, Majella Hay calls the executive producer to ask what might happen next time.

“The executive producer will give me a buzz, and I’ll go, so what do you think is going to happen next, Instant Restaurant? And I’ve now stopped asking because I kind of get this pause, which is like, how do I know, Madge? I’ve got no idea, because even what we thought would play out in Instant Restaurant changes all the time,” Seven’s director of content, unscripted, told Mediaweek.

That unpredictability has served the show well. Seven says MKR reached more than 9.4 million Australians across Seven and 7plus in 2025, its biggest season since 2019. Four new sponsors have signed on for 2026, while viewing on 7plus continues to grow.

“We’re really lucky with MKR because it’s such a strong format,” Hay said.

READ MORE: My Kitchen Rules adds four new brand partners for 2026 return

The audience keeps coming back

The 2025 season averaged 966,000 viewers per episode across Seven and 7plus, up 5% on 2024. Seven said its streaming audience rose 98% year on year and has more than tripled since 2022.

The grand final averaged 1.17 million viewers across broadcast and streaming and reached more than 2.29 million people. Its 7plus audience of 185,000 was up 58% on the previous year’s final.

Those figures give Seven a strong pitch to advertisers. The reason people watch, though, has changed little since the show launched in 2010: contestants cook in their own homes, with rival teams and judges Manu Feildel and Colin Fassnidge at the table.

“You see them in their own home. You see them in their own kitchen. It really feels like a normal dinner party that anybody could be lucky enough to host on a Friday or a Saturday night, but just with two enduring celebrity chefs at the end of the table,” Hay said.

A normal dinner party, give or take the cameras, the judges and someone crying over a sauce.

Sponsors pull up a chair

Spotlight, Woolworths and SharkNinja return for 2026. New partners Jaecoo, Kaboodle Kitchens, Ingenia and Dettol are joining them.

“There are lots of integrations that aren’t just kind of plonked on top of the format. It’s really a discussion with brands and the executive producers of how we make this feel like we’re in this together, and making it feel as natural and organic as it can,” Hay said.

“Then also just looking at how we can let the drama come through, because the cooking is what sparks the drama. So both of them work hand in hand.”

Hay said the conversations begin when a client brief arrives, with Seven’s sales team and the show’s producers working through where a brand fits. The partnerships extend beyond the program itself.

“In Woollies, you will see, you’ll hear MKR on Woolworths Radio. You’ll see recipes, you know, inspired by the show in the Woolworths magazine,” she said. “It’s just that extension of what you’re getting on telly and being, you know, available to everyone, everywhere.”

Plenty to serve on social

Seven is also building on the social strategy it introduced last year. Hay said the contestants, their kitchens and the clashes around the table give the team plenty to work with between episodes.

“There are so many moments with MKR that are just begging to go out on socials,” she said. “The whole cast is almost a snapshot of Australia every year. Not just geographically, but just in types of people and, you know, the multicultural backgrounds of people.”

“And food is such a unified way to bring people together. So if you come from the basis of that, I think it’s just a natural progression for us to be doing more on socials, to be doing more bespoke and to just be finding our audiences where they are.”

Hay calls the new season’s opener “probably the funniest first episode we’ve had in a while”. She has seen the grand final, too. For once, she knows how the story ends.

“I can never pick it right through to the grand finale, which I watched the other day, and I’m not going to give you any spoilers, but even right through to the very last frame, I was like, wow, that’s the way it goes down.”