The Great British Bake Off Series 8: Recap, Bakes and Winner

Spoiler note: this recap names the Series 8 winner and covers how the season played out.

Series 8 is the reset button. This was the first series of The Great British Bake Off to air on Channel 4 after the show's move from the BBC, and it arrived with an almost entirely new cast around the tent: new hosts, a new second judge, and a wary fanbase watching to see if any of it would still feel like Bake Off. It mostly did. The full record of every series sits on our Great British Bake Off show hub.

Series 8 at a glance

The finalists

Twelve bakers began the series. The final three were Sophie Faldo, 33, from West Molesey, who won; Kate Lyon, 29, from Merseyside; and Steven Carter-Bailey, 34, from Watford, both co-finalists. Liam Charles, 19, from North London, was one of the series' most talked-about younger bakers and later returned to the Bake Off franchise as a presenter on its junior spinoff.

How a Series 8 episode played out

The Channel 4 move changed the faces around the tent, but not the format itself. Each week still built toward a Signature bake, a blind Technical challenge judged worst to best, and a Showstopper that usually decided the elimination. Star Baker and the Hollywood Handshake carried over unchanged too, which is part of why longtime viewers found the new series easier to settle into than the pre-launch anxiety around the move had suggested.

Notable moments of Series 8

Everything about this series was a first. Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins had declined to move to Channel 4 with the show, so Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding stepped in as the new hosts. Mary Berry chose to stay with the BBC rather than follow the show, opening the second judging chair for Prue Leith, who joined Paul Hollywood, the only person to judge every series before and after the move. The first Channel 4 episode drew an overnight audience of 6.5 million, the channel's best entertainment figure in years, though it was down from the roughly 10 million the previous BBC series had pulled in, a gap that generated plenty of its own headlines about whether the audience would follow.

Sophie Faldo's win closed out a series that, by its finale, had largely proven the format could survive the move. The tent, the challenges, and Paul Hollywood's handshake all stayed exactly as recognizable as before, even with a completely different set of faces delivering them.

What was at stake

The prize structure did not change with the move to Channel 4: still no cash, just a cake stand and the title. That consistency mattered for a series under this much scrutiny, since it meant the actual competition, the thing viewers were being asked to trust with a new cast of hosts and judges, was recognizably the same low-stakes, good-natured contest it had always been, even while almost everything around it was new.

Where to watch and what to read next

Series 8 aired on Channel 4 and is generally available through Channel 4's streaming service in the UK, with international access varying by platform. For the full story of the BBC to Channel 4 transition, read our Great British Bake Off fan guide, which covers the hosts and judges across every era. Every champion across every series is listed in every Great British Bake Off winner.

For the two series on either side of this transition, Series 7 was the last on the BBC, and Series 9 was the second full series on Channel 4. Prue Leith's arrival alongside Paul Hollywood defined this new era, and our Paul Hollywood profile covers their partnership. If the showstopper round makes you want a sturdier setup at home, a stand mixer is the one tool that most closely mirrors what sits on the benches in the tent.