As Home and Away ends for another year in Australia, we take a look at all the spoilers for 2026 in Summer Bay.
Tonight’s Home and Away ended in dramatic style, as our favourites were left fighting for their lives after the party train heading to Off the Rails festival derailed.
The name should’ve given it away, really.
It’s believed that one character won’t make it, after actress Maddison Brown confirmed to TV Week that “we know someone dies, but we don’t know who.”
With another season of the Summer Bay soap nearly over, we take a look at everything we know about the year ahead.
When does Home and Away return?
Home and Away returns to Seven in Australia on Monday 19th January 2026.
Who dies when Home and Away returns?
While the accident left plenty of Summer Bay’s residents unconscious, all of the current Home and Away cast are believed to still be filming, meaning we’re not due any major exits in the first few months of 2026, and certainly not in the Season Return.
The final moments of the season saw Mackenzie (Emily Weir), Abigail (Hailey Pinto), Justin (James Stewart) and Remi (Adam Rowland) all left unconscious – but all four are believed to have been filming since the finale episodes were recorded.
We do know that someone doesn’t survive the crash, as Maddison Brown previously revealed in an interview with TV Week that “we know someone dies, but we don’t know who.”
With all of the regular cast known to survive, could the victim be Eddie?
Stephen Madsen, who plays recent arrival Eddie Shepherd, hasn’t been spotted filming at Palm Beach in recent months.
He’s also listed as a guest character in the show’s closing credits, making it unlikely that we’ll see a Jo and Eddie wedding in 2026 after today’s surprise proposal, and suggesting that he could be the character who dies when the show returns.
However, it would certainly be a cruel twist of fate for the Langhams, with the family having already lost matriarch Kristina (Fiona Noonan) some two years ago, before Lacey (Sophea Pennington) lost boyfriend Theo (Matt Evans) at the start of October.
Would producers really be close enough to kill off a third Langham partner so soon?
Or does Eddie survive, and simply leave town after Jo decides she doesn’t want to reconcile their relationship?
It wouldn’t be unexpected for the deceased to end up being the train driver, a random guest on their way to the Off the Rails festival.
Perhaps flirtatious guest character Isaac (Jordan Dulieu) – who featured unusually heavily in the train scenes?
We’ll have to wait until January to find out.
The rescue operation gets underway
A promo for the 2026 return episode, which aired directly after the dramatic finale, showed David (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) and Cash (Nicholas Cartwright) jump into action to help rescue their friends and loved ones from inside the train.
Back in Summer Bay, the residents are beginning to hear the news, as we see Tane (Ethan Browne) barge past Leah (Ada Nicodemou) before he rushes to the site of the crash.
There, the relatives of those inside are told it’s too dangerous to help out.
Levi (Tristan Gorey) and Tane both insist that they needs to get in and help, but Cash and the rescue team refuse.
Tane appears to disobey the order to remain outside, as we see Levi shouting his name into a megaphone in the direction of the tunnel.
Inside the tunnel, we hear someone shout that the roof is going to collapse, before we see the police rescue team appearing to place a sheet over a body on a stretcher.
New character Holden Dwyer
Tonight’s final episodes introduced new character Holden Dwyer, played by Lach Millar.
In the episode, Holden and another newcomer, Isaac, joined the Summer Bay lot as they partied before their trip to the festival.
Isaac introduced himself to Mackenzie and explained that he and best friend Holden were heading to the festival to see Isaac’s cousin perform.
Isaac tried and failed to make a move on Mackenzie as they enjoyed the station party, but Mac revelled in the opportunity to turn him down.
Soon after, as the train journey began, Holden and Lacey crossed paths for the first time as they both went for the last mimosa, and later bumped into each other again – literally.
Could romance be on the cards for Holden and Lacey next year?
A video taken by CelebTime during the Home and Away Tour on Tuesday 19th August saw Lach Millar and Sophea Pennington filming a scene on the beach, suggesting that their characters will be getting to know each other further in 2026.
Lach, then going under the name Lachie Millar, previously starred as recurring guest character Richie Amblin in Neighbours between 2019 and 2023.
He was first rumoured to be joining the show in late July, when the cast headed to Cowra, NSW, to film the Season Finale.
Tristan Gorey added a post to Instagram showed Lach alongside a number of the show’s existing cast members, including fellow newcomer Stephen Madsen.
Brax and Ricky return as Home and Away heads west
Earlier this year, the show revealed that Darryl “Brax” Braxton (Stephen Peacocke) and Erica “Ricky” Sharpe (Bonnie Sveen) would return to Home and Away for a brief stint early in 2026.
The news came a month after Seven announced that the show would be heading to Western Australia for the first time, to film a blockbuster week of episodes.
Filming locations in the western state were set to include Perth and its rugged coastline, as well as the state’s expansive red outback.
At the time, producers promised that the special episodes would see “an ambitious, high-stakes storyline”, filmed in the “stunning natural beauty” of Australia’s westernmost state.
Shortly after, the show released a series of photos of the pair, who left Summer Bay for the final time in 2016, wearing ‘akubra’ or outback hats, surrounded by the iconic red dirt of the Aussie outback.
In one of the promotional pictures for the pair’s return, Bonnie Sveen is seen holding a film slate which shows that the pair were filming episode 8688, part of production block 1736.
Exact air dates depend on when Home and Away returns to screens in 2026, as well as the number of episodes Channel 7 airs per week, which varies between four and six episodes across the year.
However, we anticipate Brax and Ricky’s special episodes to air on Australian screens sometime between mid-March and mid-April.
Tonight’s 2026 promo, which aired after the finale, gave us a first look at their scenes. We see Brax riding through a cattle ranch on a dirt bike, before greeting Ricky with a “missed me?”
“Ah, you wish,” she replies with a smile.
Then, the pair look relaxed at the beach, as Ricky dries off after a surf, before scenes of the father and son fixing up the dirt bike.
The pair are living the relaxed life in Queensland, as we see Brax driving a boat, while Ricky points out a kangaroo on the shore to Casey.
However, as the pace of the shots increases and the music builds, a truck pulls up next to a car, as we see Ricky with a concerned look on her face.
Once a River Boy, always a River Boy,” Ricky says to her partner. Are the pair really living a peaceful life, or is there more River Boy drama to come in 2026?
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