Jeremy Clarkson announces 'The Grand Tour' is returning with three new presenters confirmed
Published on Feb 05, 2026 at 2:19 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Feb 05, 2026 at 3:08 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Mason Jones
The Grand Tour is making a comeback, but obviously this time it’ll be without Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May.
The show will star three fresh faces, ‘borrowed’ from the YouTube world.
We sort of knew that already, but now it’s official with an announcement from Clarkson.
But now there are a million questions fans are asking.
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What this means for The Grand Tour
When the last Grand Tour episode premiered in September 2024, everyone assumed that would be the end of the show, but we were wrong.
Just a few weeks later, Richard Hammond (indirectly) confirmed that Amazon would carry on with the show with new presenters.
A few months after that, we learned that Amazon was going to hire three YouTubers to present the show.
But no official announcement had been made until now.
In February 2026, Jeremy Clarkson himself announced the new presenters with a humorous video shared to Instagram and YouTube.
The new presenters are all YouTubers: Thomas Holland and James Engelsman, both car YouTubers, and Francis Bourgeois, who’s mostly known as the ‘train guy’.
They’ve got huge shoes to fill.
Around 10 years ago, when the partnership between Jeremy Clarkson and the BBC ended (technically they didn’t fire him, they simply didn’t renew his contract), James May and Richard Hammond also stepped away from the show.
Back then, the BBC probably underestimated the importance of the chemistry between those three, and overestimated the format.
They thought Top Gear was huge because of the cars and the budget – but it wasn’t.
It was all about Clarkson, Hammond and May.
After over 20 years, for various reasons (including Clarkson’s hate for EVs), the iconic trio decided to move on.
Hammond is now busy rebuilding classics for his car restoration business, The Smallest Cog, while James May (among other things) runs a YouTube channel that he also uses to test older cars.
Clearly, Amazon wasn’t ready to give up on The Grand Tour just yet, and decided to hire new presenters.
Fans have a million questions now – about the format, the budget, a potential ETA and so on.
This is Amazon’s MO
Amazon often casts semi-unknown actors.
This is Amazon’s MO.
This is how they do things, and it’s clearly working.
Back when streaming giants didn’t exist, you’d need a star to carry the show.
Now, the platform is the star.
When Amazon decided to launch a new series based on the book series Reacher, they hired a relatively unknown actor called Alan Ritchson (above).
Now, Ritchson is an A-lister whose phone is probably buzzing with text messages from directors who want to cast him for their next Hollywood blockbuster.
Holland, Engelsman and Bourgeois are YouTube famous, which is almost never the same as being famous famous.
Thanks to Amazon, that’s likely to change in the future.
After beginning his automotive writing career at DriveTribe, Alessandro has been with Supercar Blondie since the launch of the website in 2022. In fact, he penned the very first article published on supercarblondie.com. He’s covered subjects from cars to aircraft, watches, and luxury yachts - and even crypto. He can largely be found heading up the site’s new-supercar and SBX coverage and being the first to bring our readers the news that they’re hungry for.
