Big Brother 16 Head Of Household Competition Preview Shows Only 8 Houseguests Playing

Big Brother Season 16 will premiere in a matter of hours, and CBS has given us a preview of the first Head of Household competition. What's especially notable about this beachy comp, which seems to recycle the log-rolling challenge that we've seen in past seasons, is that it only features eight players competing.

What's the deal here? Looks like there are four guys and four girls:

HoH comp

There are 16 confirmed houseguests this season, and we know that one of the twists for Season 16 is that there will be two Heads of Households each week, though we don't know exactly how that's going to work, beyond that each HoH will nominate two houseguests. It's possible that the house has been broken up into two teams or "households." There's been some speculation about that, fueled in part by word of the two-HoH twist and the fact that the memory wall has been drastically changed, as it's now made up of two screens (instead of individual screens, one for each houseguest):

memory wall

Will the house be divided in two and forced to compete one team vs. the other? If that's the case, maybe what we're seeing in the video above is one of two competitions to determine the Heads of Household. The log roll is an endurance-style competition, requiring a bit of coordination and stamina to stay upright.

We'll hopefully find out why only half of the houseguests are seen in this clip when tonight's episode airs. The Season 16 premiere is being split up between tonight and tomorrow night, so there's a good chance the series will be holding back some of its twists for tomorrow's episode. In the meantime, CBS released a bunch of bathing suit photos of the houseguests. Check them out in the gallery below! Big Brother 16 premieres Wednesday, June 25 (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT) and Thursday, June 26 (9:01 – 10:00 PM, ET/PT) on CBS. The Live Feeds (opens in new tab) begin broadcasting online tomorrow night.

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site.