Cooking Shows Next Week (Sept. 14–20, 2026): Halloween Baking Monday, Jake Kelley Wins MasterChef Wednesday

Update, Friday, Sept. 18, 10:40 a.m. ET: No new cooking hour on FOX or Food Network tonight, so this grid ends where it started the weekend: Halloween Wars episode 2, “Things That Go Buzz in the Night,” Sunday, Sept. 20 at 9 p.m. ET, and Halloween Baking Championship episode 2, “Into the Wild,” Monday, Sept. 21 at 9 p.m. ET. Monday also belongs to the next grid, which is up now: cooking shows Sept. 21–27, the week Hell’s Kitchen season 25 premieres (Thursday, Sept. 24, 8 p.m. ET on FOX) and Bake Off reaches Netflix (Friday, Sept. 25). Jake Kelley won MasterChef season 16 on Wednesday — menus and the full elimination table are on our season 16 tracker.

• Monday is the premiere. Halloween Baking Championship season 12 opens Sept. 14 at 9 p.m. ET on Food Network, two hours, ten bakers, $25,000.
• Wednesday was the ending. MasterChef crowned Jake Kelley on Sept. 16, closing the Global Gauntlet run that started April 15.
• Tuesday is the busiest night of the week: four hours of new cooking television, two on FOX and two on Food Network.
• Sunday is confirmed now. Halloween Wars season 16 — an all-stars run billed “Back from the Dead” — has episode 2 dated Sept. 20 at 9 p.m. ET.
• Thursday is empty. Hell's Kitchen does not start until the following week.

Two weeks ago this grid had almost nothing new on it. Next week it has a franchise premiere, a season finale, a two-hour Gordon Ramsay wrap-up and at least one new Bobby Flay hour, and then a Thursday with nothing at all.

Here is the whole week on one screen, then the reasoning night by night.

Times are ET/PT. Food Network episodes land on HBO Max the next day; FOX episodes land on Hulu the next day.

What's on Monday?

The one appointment of the week. Halloween Baking Championship returns for season 12 with a two-hour premiere at 9 p.m. ET, which is the network's usual way of saying it expects the biggest audience of the night.

Ten bakers compete for $25,000. John Henson hosts; Stephanie Boswell, Aarti Sequeira and Zac Young judge. The season is staged inside a fictional Museum of Unnatural History, and the premiere episode — “The Museum of Unnatural History” — opens in the foyer with a challenge Food Network is calling Best Halloween Ever.

👉 Set the recorder for two hours, not one. Every Halloween Baking premiere in recent memory has run long, and this one is dated as a double.

The season sits at 9 p.m. Mondays from here. There is more on the format, the prize and the full judging panel on our baking championships page.

Why is Tuesday so crowded?

Because two networks put their heaviest food hours on the same night, and one of them is signing off.

FOX runs a two-hour Kitchen Nightmares block at 8 p.m. — episodes 11 and 12, “Wick 'n Ore Kitchen & Tap” and “Firenze Restaurant & Pizzeria.” Listings show no episode 13, which makes those the last two of season 10.

Opposite it, Food Network has Bobby's Triple Threat at 8, episode 4, “Titans vs Danny Garcia.” At 9 comes the second episode of Bobby Flay's The Line, which premiered Sept. 8: Fabio Viviani's Giostra, with Antonia Lofaso on the other side of an Italian battle. That hour spent a day marked unsettled here because one listing briefly doubled up the premiere night. It is settled now, and settled from both ends: episode 3, Leah Cohen's Pig & Khao, is dated Sept. 22, which is the only slot it can take if Viviani has the 15th. No caveat left on that row.

If you only pick one at 8, pick by format: Ramsay's is a restaurant rescue with a fixed ending, Flay's is a competition where the outcome is live.

Who won MasterChef on Wednesday?

Jake Kelley, the 24-year-old from Alma, Mich., who cooked for Mexico all season. Finale Part 1 on Sept. 9 sent nobody home, so Part 2 had to carry the rest of the entrée round, the whole dessert round and the verdict in one hour.

The trophy, the title and $250,000 went with it. The broadcast named a champion and stopped, without ranking the other two, so anyone calling Muston second or Egede third is filling a blank FOX left empty. The running answer stays on who won MasterChef season 16, updated at the same address rather than moved to a new one.

Is anything on Thursday?

No. Not a single new cooking competition, on any of the networks this desk tracks.

That gap exists because FOX is holding the slot. Hell's Kitchen season 25 takes Thursdays at 8 p.m. starting Sept. 24 — eighteen chefs, all 25 or younger, which the show has done exactly once before. So next Thursday is the last quiet one until January.

Food Network fills Thursday with library programming. Neither Chopped nor Beat Bobby Flay has a new episode dated; the most recent originals ran May 5 and Aug. 18 respectively.

What about the weekend?

Thin until Sunday — and Sunday, which was the one soft row on this page, has hardened.

Friday brings Triple D Nation at 9 p.m. and Saturday has Cook Like an Italian at noon, both Food Network, neither a competition.

Sunday is the row that changed. Halloween Wars season 16 runs as an all-stars season under the banner “Back from the Dead,” premiering Sunday, Sept. 13 at 9 p.m. ET. The Sept. 20 hour that had no listing at all when we first built this grid now has a number and a title: episode 2, “Things That Go Buzz in the Night,” in which Jonathan Bennett sends the teams after insect-infested showpieces and desserts built on coffee, tea and spirits. That row is confirmed.

The premiere before it is the bigger event: two hours, seven Sundays to run, and $30,000 to the winning team, which is more than the baking championship pays its champion. Dates, judges and the full episode list are in our Halloween Wars season 16 guide.

The whole season is dated now, which is the useful part if you are planning October rather than next week:

Every episode title this season is prefixed “Back from the Dead:” on the listings; we have trimmed it here so the rows stay readable. TVmaze carries the season through Oct. 18; the Oct. 25 finale comes from Rotten Tomatoes’ episode list. Next-day streaming on HBO Max.

Netflix has moved as well. The Great British Baking Show opens on Channel 4 in the UK on Tuesday, Sept. 22 with Cake Week, and the American side is no longer blank: TellyVisions puts the Netflix US release on Friday, Sept. 25, weekly from there. Netflix’s own release trackers still describe the schedule as late September and not finalized, so we are carrying Sept. 25 as reported rather than announced. Either way it lands one week past this window.

The change that is not in doubt is the panel. Nigella Lawson replaces Prue Leith alongside Paul Hollywood, with Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding still hosting, and the season adds an Audience Choice Week built from viewer submissions. More of the streaming side is here.

How many new hours is that?

Ten, and all ten are dated — that was not true of this page yesterday. Six are competition hours, now that Sunday counts. The other four are Kitchen Nightmares' two plus Food Network's weekend pair, which are food television without an elimination at the end.

Compare that with the week just gone, which had one competition hour on Wednesday and nothing else dated. The fall ramp starts Monday.

Where does all of this stream?

Two answers, and they do not overlap. Food Network originals go to HBO Max the day after broadcast. FOX shows — MasterChef, Kitchen Nightmares, and Hell's Kitchen from Sept. 24 — go to Hulu the next day.

Which subscription covers the most of next week is worked out in our Food Network streaming guide, and the season-long version of this table lives in the fall schedule.

Quick answers

What cooking shows are on next week? Halloween Baking Championship (Mon), Kitchen Nightmares, Bobby's Triple Threat and The Line (Tue), MasterChef's finale (Wed).

What time is the Halloween Baking Championship premiere? Monday, Sept. 14, 9 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network, running two hours.

Who won the MasterChef finale? Jake Kelley, on Wednesday, Sept. 16. Part 2 aired at 8 p.m. ET on FOX and is on Hulu the next day.

Is Halloween Wars new on Sunday? Yes. Episode 2, “Things That Go Buzz in the Night,” airs Sunday, Sept. 20 at 9 p.m. ET on Food Network, and the premiere is the Sunday before on Sept. 13 — a two-hour all-stars opener.

When does Hell's Kitchen come back? Thursday, Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. ET on FOX — the week after this one.

Sources

• Food Network — Halloween Baking Championship and Halloween Wars premiere dates, judges, prize, streaming
• Food Network — Bobby Flay's The Line premiere date and Tuesday slot
• Variety — The Line release date
• BroadwayWorld — Food Network's episode-by-episode order for The Line
• Variety — Kitchen Nightmares season 10 dates on FOX
• Gold Derby — MasterChef Finale Part 1 recap and where the finalists stand
• TellyVisions — Great British Baking Show season 17 UK and Netflix US dates, new judge
• What’s on Netflix — weekly US rollout, judging panel, Audience Choice Week (release date still described as not finalized)
• Rotten Tomatoes — Halloween Wars season 16 episode titles, dates and the Sept. 20 synopsis
• Listings data via TVmaze — episode numbers, titles and air times for every row above

Elsewhere on this desk — the MasterChef hub and our Part 1 preview, the Hell's Kitchen season 25 guide, the baking championships, the Food Network competitions hub and the equipment we have actually priced in knives and pans seen on air. Our sister sites Reality On Air and Game Show On Air run the same weekly grid for their own corners of the schedule.

By the Kitchen On Air desk · Updated 10:36 p.m. ET, Sept. 17