How to Get on Survivor
Every one of the 21 castaways on Season 51 is a first-timer, which means every one of them started where you would: an application and a video. First-time players have won 40 of the first 50 seasons. Here is how the process works.
Where to apply
Applications go through CBS's official casting site: an online form plus a video. Casting is rolling. When the show was casting Season 49, CBS said an application could be considered "for that season or any subsequent season" (via Newsweek). Check the site for the current rules before you film anything.
CBS Survivor castingThe video
Casting director Jesse Tannenbaum has said a quick TikTok-style clip is pointless, because it is too short to show who you are. What casting wants, in his words:
"We want to get to know who you are, we want to hear about your life."
Quoted in Newsweek, September 2024.
Who is eligible
- Age: 18 or older, and older in a few states. CBS's published rules set 19 in Alabama, Nebraska and Wyoming, and 21 in Mississippi and Washington, D.C. (CBS News, 2019).
- Citizenship: United States or Canadian citizens, as of the Season 49 casting call (Newsweek, 2024). Earlier rules were US-only.
- Health and background: "excellent physical and mental health", and applicants authorize a background check.
- Not eligible: employees of CBS and the production companies, and their immediate families and households.
What contestants are paid
The winner gets $1 million. That is the only figure CBS has made official. Everyone else is paid on a sliding scale by how far they get, and the numbers come from what former players have said in interviews rather than from CBS. Screen Rant collects those accounts; for example, Corinne Kaplan has put her pay at about $45,000 for seventh place in Gabon. Treat any full pay table you see online as reported, not confirmed.
Not going to Fiji this year?
Play along instead. Draft this season's first-timers into a fantasy tribe with friends, or pick five on your own.