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A lineage no rival matches.
The first season to stock the entire field with Big Brother veterans — a cross-franchise concept the format had never run at full scale.
Big Brother crossover, Hoorn start.
A historic franchise crossover. Thirteen teams of two, each built around at least one former US Big Brother houseguest, left Hoorn, the Netherlands, the birthplace of the Big Brother format, into a 7,500-mile route through the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Greece, Italy, and France before a final leg to New York City. The toolkit returns the Express Pass, Hazard, and a pre-starting-line task, and adds a U-Turn penalty for a non-elimination survivor, the season's one genuinely new mechanic.
The #37 slot.
Slot #37 of 38 in the Amazing Race Editor's Canon. Season 38 earns its slot on a cross-franchise argument neither neighbor can match — a field built entirely from Big Brother veterans, paired with the first new U-Turn wrinkle since Season 33. That format-historical hook outranks Season 37's twist-saturation premise directly below it, which layers concept onto the standard format rather than reshaping it. It still sits behind Season 36's tighter, self-contained structural set one slot up, where a charter route and a stripped-down non-elimination rule make the more disciplined case. The canon places it thirty-seventh because concrete format lineage beats a busier premise, even short of a season with its own structural argument.
4 moments, no spoilers.
- Casting · the crossover field
Watch for how living-room alliance instincts hold up outside the house — Big Brother strategy is built on reading people in one room, not sprinting through unfamiliar cities under a countdown clock.
- Format · the pre-starting-line task
The route opens with the returning pre-starting-line task, a wrinkle that sorts team order before the first mat drop — worth watching for who it favors before the race proper begins.
- Format · the new U-Turn penalty
The season doubles down on U-Turn twists: alongside the survivor penalty, a Double U-Turn Vote debuts here too, a private ballot with a public reveal mid-route that adds a second layer of strategy to the format's oldest wrinkle.
- Route · the European arc
Hoorn through the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Greece, Italy, and France before a final leg back to a New York City finish.