A Short History Of Dragons Den UK
Dragons' Den first aired on BBC Two on 4 January 2005, presented by Evan Davis, with a premise borrowed almost entirely from a Japanese format: entrepreneurs pitch to a panel of wealthy investors for a stake in their company, live, with real money on the table. Two decades later it is still running, has moved channels, changed panels more than once, and outlasted almost every other British business format that tried to copy it.
This is a short history of how it got from a niche Sunday night slot on BBC Two to primetime BBC One, where the format actually came from before it ever reached Britain, and how the panel around the table has changed while the show itself kept its shape.
Born in Japan, not Britain
Dragons' Den is a British adaptation of a Japanese show called Mane no Tora, usually translated as Money Tigers or Tigers of Money, which had launched a few years earlier in Japan for Nippon TV and was later distributed internationally. That is how a Tokyo studio concept ended up reworked for a BBC audience in 2005.
It is worth remembering when people assume Shark Tank came first: the American version did not launch until 2009, four years after Dragons' Den. The UK show was one of the earliest international adaptations of the Japanese original, not a copy of the American one, even though Shark Tank is now the better known name outside Britain.
From BBC Two obscurity to BBC One primetime
Series 1 was short by modern standards, just six episodes, airing from 4 January to 8 March 2005 on BBC Two, with a second series following later the same year. For most of its history the show stayed on BBC Two, building a loyal but relatively modest audience as a Sunday night fixture.
The move that changed its profile came with Series 18, which switched the show to BBC One, its first episode airing on 1 April 2021 in a new Thursday night slot. That shift took Dragons' Den from a solid BBC Two performer to a mainstream primetime programme, and its audience and cultural footprint grew with it.
A panel that keeps turning over
Peter Jones is the only Dragon who has been in the chair since that first episode in January 2005. Every other original panellist, including Duncan Bannatyne, Theo Paphitis and Rachel Elnaugh, has since left the show and been replaced, which means the 'original five' has not existed as a group for many years.
The more recent arrivals mark out the show's eras almost as clearly as the series numbers do. Deborah Meaden joined in 2006 replacing Rachel Elnaugh, Touker Suleyman arrived in 2015, Sara Davies became the youngest Dragon at the time when she joined in 2019, and Steven Bartlett broke that record again in 2021, joining at 28 as the youngest Dragon in the show's history.
Twenty years and counting
By 2026 the show had reached Series 23, a run that makes Dragons' Den one of the longest running unscripted business formats on British television, let alone one that is still airing in a primetime BBC One slot two decades after its BBC Two debut.
Part of why it has lasted is the churn itself. A format that never changed its panel would have gone stale years ago, and 2026 delivered another reminder of that, with Touker Suleyman announcing in June that he was stepping down after a decade in the Den, the latest in a long line of panel changes that have kept the show feeling current rather than fixed in 2005.