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Dani Dyer is officially making her return to Strictly Come Dancing after she was forced to step back from the competition last year.
Before withdrawing from the show in 2025, the Love Island winner was partnered with professional Nikita Kuzmin, who was subsequently paired with another Love Island winner, Amber Davies.
“To say I'm heartbroken is the biggest understatement,” she said in a statement last September.
The 30-year-old had been rehearsing ahead of the first live show when she fell during a rehearsal.
Whilst she had initially thought that she rolled her ankle, it turned out that she fractured it.
“Apparently doing the quickstep on a fracture is not advisable,” she said, explaining that she was advised by doctors to pull out from the competition.
Speaking on the Live and Let Dyers podcast with her father Danny, a month after she left the competition, the reality TV star said partner Nikita was shellshocked when they were told she would have to leave on medical grounds.
“Nikita didn’t speak for two minutes, he was in complete shock. We were all devastated about it. It made it really hard for me because it was pure devastation,” she said.
She revealed that when she was first told the news, she initially dismissed medics’ concerns and “wanted to risk” it.
“I was so sad. I just knew straight away. I heard a noise, and the physio was like 'did you hear a noise?' and I said, 'no I didn't hear a noise!',” she told GK Barry on the Saving Grace podcast in April.
Opening up about how she coped following the news, she said she needed time to grieve the experience she had lost.
“I was so devastated it made it really hard for me, because everyone around me was like pure devastation and that's why I couldn't leave the house because I knew if someone said to me 'Are you okay Dani?' I would just cry.”
