Jeopardy Masters! 2025: release date, contestants & what we know

Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! Masters (Image credit: Disney/Eric McCandless/Getty Images)

Jeopardy! Masters is back, and this time it is bigger than ever. Jeopardy! Masters 2025 marks the third annual edition of this tournament that pits some of the best Jeopardy! contestants of all time against one another as they compete for a $500,000 grand prize and the title of Jeopardy! Master. This year’s tournament, for the first time, will feature nine contestants vying for that honor.

Jeopardy! Masters premiered in 2023 as part of the classic game show’s push for more special prime time events. In addition to Jeopardy! Masters, that has included Celebrity Jeopardy! season 3, which is currently airing on ABC.

You can find out everything you need to know about the Jeopardy! Masters 2025 tournament directly below, from who’s in it to when the competition gets underway.

Jeopardy! Masters 2025 release date

The Jeopardy! Masters 2025 tournament kicks off on Wednesday, April 30, at 9 pm ET/PT on ABC. Each episode will be available to stream on-demand on Hulu the Thursday after the ABC broadcast.

Jeopardy! Masters is going to be sharing Wednesday nights on ABC with Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, which will see the return of Pat Sajak as host for the final time.

In order to watch Jeopardy! Masters 2025 live, you need to have access to your local ABC station through a traditional pay-TV provider, a TV antenna or a live TV streaming service offering ABC (i.e. Fubo, Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV in select markets and YouTube TV). To watch the game show on-demand, you’ll need a subscription to Hulu.

Jeopardy! Masters 2025 contestants

Victoria Groce on Jeopardy! Masters (Image credit: Disney/Eric McCandless)

The best of the best Jeopardy! players are invited to compete on Jeopardy! Masters each year. This year’s field is bigger than ever as the tournament is expanding from six contestants to nine.

Headlining the lineup of Jeopardy! Masters 2025 contestants is Victoria Groce, the reigning champion from Jeopardy! Masters 2024, but the full lineup features a slew of acclaimed recent players and Jeopardy! legends:

Matt Amodio, 2025 Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament champion
Roger Craig, 2025 Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament finalist
Victoria Groce, reigning Jeopardy! Masters champion
Adriana Harmeyer, 2025 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions finalist
Isaac Hirsch, 2025 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions finalist
Yogesh Raut, Jeopardy! Masters 2024 runner-up
Brad Rutter, Jeopardy!’s all-time winnings record holder
Neilesh Vinjamuri, 2025 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner
Juveria Zaheer, 2025 Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament finalist

Matt Amodio is the only contestant to have played in all three Jeopardy! Masters tournaments to date.

It was previously announced that James Holzhauer, as a Jeopardy! Masters 2024 finalist, would receive an automatic bid to this year’s tournament. But for whatever reason, he is forgoing this year’s tournament. As recently as March 19 the expectation was that Holzhauer would be competing in the tournament, as he detailed how he was preparing.

Jeopardy! Masters 2025 host

Ken Jennings will once again oversee the Jeopardy! Masters tournament as host.

Widely considered the greatest Jeopardy! contestant of all-time, Jennings was one of the guest hosts who took over temporary hosting duties shortly following the passing of Alex Trebek in 2020. He was then initially named the co-host of Jeopardy! alongside Mayim Bialik in 2022. However, Jennings took over as the sole host of Jeopardy! in 2023, which included hosting its primetime tournaments like Celebrity Jeopardy! and Jeopardy! Masters.

Jeopardy! Masters 2025 format

The Jeopardy! Masters tournament has a bit of a different format than other Jeopardy! tournaments.

The individual games themselves are the same as in your normal Jeopardy! episode, but instead of each game’s winner advancing and the losers being eliminated, the opening round of Jeopardy! Masters is more of a round robin tournament.

Each hour-long episode will feature two traditional games of Jeopardy!, with three of the nine contestants playing each other in each game. The winner of each game will earn three points, second place earns one point and third place earns no points. Players will amass points as they square off in just about every potential matchup from the field; those with the highest points at the end of this initial round will move on.

There are tiebreakers in the event that players end up with the same number of points. The first is the number of games won, the second is correct responses, the third tiebreaker is total in-game points (excluding Final Jeopardy and Daily Doubles) and the fourth tiebreaker is total in-game points (just excluding Final Jeopardy).

The final for Jeopardy! Masters will feature the top three players competing in two games, where whoever amasses the most points across the two games will be the Jeopardy! Masters 2025 champion.