walford wave EastEnders axed from BBC One TONIGHT in last minute schedule shake-up

EASTENDERS has been axed from BBC One in a last-minute schedule shake-up.

The soap has been rocked by endless schedule changes due to the BBC‘s coverage of the 2026 World Cup.

However, with the confirmation this morning that Keir Starmer had formally resigned as the country’s Prime Minister, the soap has officially been booted from the main BBC channel in a rare occurance.

Owing to live news coverage of his 10 Downing Street departure as well as the BBC’s commitment to showing the first two of tonight’s football matches, soap EastEnders has been ditched from the BBC One schedule.

It had originally be planned to be broadcast on BBC One at 8:30pm.

However, it has now been axed from BBC One entirely and moved to sister channel BBC Two in a brand new 9pm timeslot.

Today, BBC One’s schedule has been displaced since 1pm to focus on rolling live news coverage of Keir’s departure as well as Andy Burnham‘s arrival into London from Manchester as he become the hot favourite to take over from the outgoing PM.

The Beeb have then aired an early evening news special from 4:30pm until 5:30pm in order to begin coverage of Argentina and Austria‘s match in the World Cup from 5:30pm – 30 minutes later than originally planned.

The coverage of that match will air until 8:30pm before BBC News takes over once more for another 60 minutes for a further special broadcast as well as an early broadcast of their usual News At Ten output.

It had originally planned to screen 30 minutes of news coverage from 9pm following that evening’s episode of EastEnders at 8:30pm but has been extended owing to the day’s events.

BBC One will the switch to football coverage once more from 9:30pm to screen France v Iraq which has a kick-off time of 10:00pm.

EastEnders will air on BBC Two in full at 9pm and is already available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

The soap is expected to return to BBC One with its second episode of the week tomorrow evening in the usual time of 7:30pm.

Two further episodes are also due to be screened on Wednesday and Thursday – also both in the same 7:30pm timeslot.