Beware the ‘boss babes’: MAFS expert John Aiken reveals 2026 season will be dominated by toxic brides with potty mouths: ‘The language is horrific’

Married At First Sight 2026 is set to be dominated by a powerful and confrontational group of brides. 

‘The self–proclaimed boss babes that come together, they are incredibly dominant in the experiment,’ relationship expert John Aiken told Daily Mail on Tuesday. 

‘They call both men and women out – and sometimes the language is incredibly confronting and at times very hurtful.

‘In the past we’ve had one or two women that might be rivals, but we’ve never had this sort of group of boss babes just coming in and really dominating.’

The dominance was so intense, John said, that it fundamentally changed how the men behaved – flipping the usual MAFS villain narrative on its head.

‘It’s different this year,’ he explained.

‘While we put very strong-willed men with the women, what we found is that they were quite shocked at times about how this group of women would react, how they would speak to certain people,’ he continued. 

John insists the explosive group dynamic was not manufactured during casting.

‘To be honest, we didn’t know that this would happen,’ he said. 

‘What we wanted was some strong women on the show, empowered and vocal, but we didn’t realise this would happen.

‘It kind of came together organically. They met at the hens night and it really went from there.’

As with every season, Aiken said it took weeks for the true personalities to emerge.

‘So often in the experiment, you start out and you think you know who they are and what they’re like in relationships. But it’s not really until week two or three when you start to see who they really are,’ he said. 

‘So it came as a huge surprise and a shock.’

Dinner parties ‘never this hostile’

While John would not repeat specific insults on record, he did not mince words about what unfolds at the dinner parties.

‘I don’t know what’s going to make it to air,’ he said. 

‘But I just remember thinking at the dinner parties, I don’t think they’ve ever been this hostile. So that’s what you’ve got to buckle up for,’ he added. 

‘It’s a Married At First Sight first that we’ve not experienced before.’

Asked directly about when honesty crosses into cruelty, John said it would become one of the season’s most confronting talking points.

‘When is it okay to use vile language? And when is it not? When does honesty actually become offensive? These are conversations people are going to have while watching this season.’

First-ever bisexual bride 

John also revealed one of the boldest casting decisions in the show’s history – matching the experiment’s first openly bisexual bride, Julia Vogl.

‘She said to us, “I don’t mind if it’s a man or a woman that you match me with. Just surprise me,”‘ he said. ‘That was something we’d never done before.’

‘Once they were matched, just seeing how it all unfolded was quite fascinating.’

Behind the scenes drama 

John said his famously blunt confrontations are never pre-planned.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to say or do when I’m sitting there on the couch,’ he said. ‘I’m just playing whatever is in front of me.

‘If I see a pattern that is really concerning, I will certainly jump on it and go hard, particularly if I know contempt is present. Contempt is very toxic in a relationship.

‘If I see sarcasm or someone belittling someone, I feel compelled to go directly at that. Other times I’ll let a behaviour carry on, then once we’ve seen it, I’ll bring it up.

‘But make no mistake, my role is to get them to sit up, to listen, to check themselves, and hold a mirror up to that toxic behaviour.’

Responding to criticism that the experts engineer disasters, John was emphatic.

‘Relationships are hard and a lot of the time they don’t work out in the real world,’ he said. ‘When we match them, we want them to get over the line.

Without naming names, John confirmed viewers should watch the boss babe relationships closely.

‘There are couples within the boss babes that are really polarising,’ he said.

‘They’re trying to have an intimate relationship with their partner while also being involved in this toxic group.

‘So everyone’s relationship is under fire. Those are the ones to look out for.’

After all these seasons, John said the biggest lesson remains simple – and painfully relevant to 2026.

‘Language is very powerful,’ he said. 

Daily Mail exclusively revealed that MAFS 2026 has been engineered to become the most explosive season in the show’s history, with insiders confirming producers deliberately created a rotating roster of villains rather than relying on a single troublemaker.

‘No one is the villain because everyone is the villain at some point,’ one insider said. ‘It changes every week. It is emotional whiplash.’

Sources inside production say the women have emerged as some of the most volatile brides the franchise has ever cast, with tantrums, screaming matches, walk outs and off–camera sabotage becoming so extreme that producers were forced to screen a private montage of the participants’ worst behaviour in an attempt to rein them in.

‘They were stunned seeing themselves like that,’ one crew member said. ‘But the chaos still continued.’

Several brides are said to have entered the experiment with influencer strategies and pre-planned media game plans.

‘They were talking about brand deals on the honeymoon,’ one insider revealed. ‘This is the most calculated group we have ever seen.’

The grooms are described as equally unpredictable, creating what producers have called a constant pressure cooker of emotional tension.

‘You do not get a moment to breathe,’ a producer admitted. ‘People flip from sweetheart to nightmare in under an hour.’

Production has also been rocked by a runaway bride who vanished for 14 hours mid–filming, prompting frantic searches before she resurfaced late that night threatening to quit the show.

Another couple was axed entirely after unverified TikTok accusations surfaced, blindsiding them after they had already completed their wedding and honeymoon.

All of this has unfolded under the strictest rulebook the franchise has ever enforced, including weekly drug tests, curfews and zero–tolerance policies around criminal histories.

Even so, insiders insist this remains the most volatile cast ever assembled.

‘We basically ran a daycare for adults who refuse to behave,’ one crew member joked.

Producers are already comparing the scale of chaos to the franchise’s most infamous eras, including the Cyrell Paule and Martha Kalifatidis feud and the Domenica Calarco and Olivia Frazer saga.

‘It feels like seasons six and nine combined,’ one source said. ‘But now it’s happening across the entire cast all at once. No one is safe.’

Married At First Sight returns to Channel Nine on Monday February 2 at 7.30pm.