The Great Australian Bake Off: A Fan Guide

Of all the international Bake Off adaptations, the Australian one has had the strangest broadcast life and one of the most loyal followings. The Great Australian Bake Off takes the familiar formula, amateur bakers, a big airy shed instead of a tent, signature and technical and showstopper challenges, and runs it with a distinctly Australian looseness: the humour is drier, the hosts are stand-up comedians, and nobody is too precious about a collapsed pavlova. Here is how the show got here and who runs it. The complete season by season record lives on our show hub.

A false start, then a revival

The show premiered on the Nine Network in July 2013, hosted by Shane Jacobson and Anna Gare with judges Dan Lepard and Kerry Vincent, and despite crowning a champion it was not renewed by the network. That could have been the end. Instead, pay-TV channel LifeStyle Food picked the format up in 2015 and gave it the version fans now think of as the real show: judges Maggie Beer and Matt Moran, an institution of Australian food and a heavyweight chef respectively, with comedians Claire Hooper and Mel Buttle hosting.

That lineup held for five seasons across 2015 to 2022, an unusually stable run that made Beer's warm "well done, darling" energy and Moran's tougher palate the show's twin poles.

The 2023 refresh

When the show returned in 2023, Foxtel rebuilt the front bench entirely. Pastry chef Darren Purchese and cook and broadcaster Rachel Khoo took over the judging, with comedians Cal Wilson and Natalie Tran hosting. Wilson's death in October 2023 was a genuine loss for the show; the 2024 season, filmed before she died, aired as her final hosting work and paid tribute to her. From the 2025 season, comedian Tom Walker joined Natalie Tran as co-host.

What sets the Australian version apart

The bones are pure Bake Off: three challenges an episode, a weekly elimination, no cash prize, and a finale that crowns Australia's best amateur baker. But the casting skews eclectic even by franchise standards. The nine champions so far include an architecture graduate, a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, a nurse, and a pastor, and the show has a habit of finding bakers whose lives outside the shed are as interesting as their showstoppers. Every winner, season by season with dates and details, is in our Great Australian Bake Off winners roundup.

How to get into it

The Beer and Moran years (2015 to 2022) are the comfort-viewing core of the catalogue, and the 2023 onward seasons are the easiest to find streaming through Foxtel's platforms. Start with any season opener; the format explains itself in twenty minutes, and by the first technical challenge you will have picked a favourite. Nine seasons in, the Australian shed has quietly become one of the strongest outposts of the Bake Off empire.