Survivor Greece season 11

Survivor Greece
Season 11
Presented by	Giorgos Lianos
No. of days	174
No. of castaways	36
Winner	Daniel Nurka
Runners-up	Fanis Boletsis Katerina Dalaka
Location	La Romana, Dominican Republic
No. of episodes	116
Release
Original network	Skai TV
Original release	January 7 (2024-01-07) – June 26, 2024 (2024-06-26)
Additional information
Filming dates	January 4 (2024-01-04) – June 26, 2024 (2024-06-26)
Season chronology
← Previous Season 10 Next → Season 12

The eleventh season^[1] of the popular reality show Survivor Greece, premiered on January 7, 2024 on Skai TV^[2] in Greece and (via simulcast) Sigma TV in Cyprus. Giorgos Lianos returned as host for his sixth consecutive season. Broadly following the format established by earlier seasons, a team of civilians named the Machites ("Fighters") and a team of celebrities named the Diasimoi ("Famous") are invited to compete against one another for several months in a series of physical challenges on a deserted island at the exotic La Romana in the Dominican Republic. The competitors are only permitted to bring a very minimal amount of clothing and basic food supplies.

For the first time in the programme's history, the producers decided to alter the elimination process such that competitors would be eliminated by athletic challenges instead of by viewer votes.^[3]

The game began with twenty competitors divided equally into two teams of ten: the civilian Machites, colour-coded in blue, and the celebrity Diasimoi, in red. Three of the ten initial Diasimoi members – Alexis, Asimina, and Katerina – were competitors in earlier Survivor seasons.

At the beginning of week 3, four additional competitors joined, with each team gaining two: Daniel Nurka and Zoi Asoumanaki joined the Diasimoi, and Aira Adomaityte and Sotiris Lamai joined the Machites.^[4]

A total of six new competitors joined the competition in week 6. In episode 21, each team gained three new players: past season contestants James Kafetzis and Stavroula Chrysaeidi both joined the Machites along with new contestant Kostas Vougioukalakis, while Elena Amanatidou and Thodoris Tourkogeorgos went to the Diasimoi.^[5] When Kostas fell ill and was taken to hospital after competing in only one match, he was removed from the competition in episode 22 and replaced by Giorgos Gioulekas.

Four new contestants joined at the start of week 8 (episode 29). Evgenia Borla, Anastasia Tserou, and Nikos Rikounakis all went to the Diasimoi, while Christoforos Taxidis joined the Machites, meaning that at that point in the game, there were 11 Diasimoi and 12 Machites.

Two new male contestants entered at the beginning of week 9 (episode 33): Giorgos Papacharalampous joined the Diasimoi and Pantelis Giannakakis joined the Machites.

At the start of week 10 (episode 38), the two teams were shuffled and had their "Diasimoi" and "Machites" names dropped in favour of exclusively referring to both teams by the colours with which they were coded. Giorgos Gioulekas, Fanis, Giannis, Christoforos, Ioanna, and Aira were moved from the Machites to the new version of the Red Team, while Giorgos Papacharalampous, Savvas, Daniel, Thodoris, and Evgenia moved from the Diasimoi to the new Blue Team. The other players stayed at their original teams.

A second reshuffle happened at the start of week 11 (episode 43), whereby Fanis and Anastasia from the Red Team were switched with Giorgos Papacharalampous and Dora from the Blue Team.

¹ In episode 29, the second task was a footvolley match between pairs of contestants (both Diasimoi and Machites) and a team consisting of Acun Ilıcalı (owner of Survivor Greece production company Acun Medya) and Brazilian football legend Ronaldinho.

At the ends of three out of four episodes, whatever team lost the episode's immunity match must vote to nominate one of their teammates to compete in that week's elimination challenge. These elimination challenges were newly introduced for this season, replacing the viewer votes that had previously determined who would be eliminated from the competition each week.

In the third vote of each week, once the team votes have been cast and a third nominee chosen, the gender group majority of those three nominees determines the gender of all competitors who will compete in the elimination challenge, since all competitors entering the elimination challenge must be of the same gender to avoid unreasonable gendered physiological inequality between the challengers. If all three nominees are of the same gender, no further team voting is required. Otherwise, the nominee who does not belong to the gender of the other two is automatically removed from the challenge, and a second vote for that episode (and final one for that week) is cast to nominate an appropriately gendered challenger to replace them.

Once three team-voted nominees of the same gender group have been determined, one "MVP" competitor – chosen based on their performance statistics for the week – nominates a fourth and final challenger from their opposing team (who must also belong to the previously determined gender group). The MVP also selects the specific task that will form the basis of the elimination challenge.

Finally, the four challengers compete in the elimination challenge set by the MVP. They initially compete in pairs, with each pair's winner securing their ongoing participation in the competition. The losing challengers of each pair then compete against each other to determine the overall loser of the challenge, who is then eliminated from the competition.

There was a format change in week 9 necessitated by the addition of a fifth weekly episode from that point onward. Since there would henceforth be four rather than three episodes of matches with an elimination vote at the end, the MVP would no longer nominate the fourth elimination challenge player. The MVP would, however, continue to be recognised and choose the task used for the elimination challenge. Additionally, if any vote were to result in a tie, the MVP would be given the final decision on which of the tied players to nominate for the elimination challenge.^[9]

¹ The original nominee was rescued from the elimination challenge due to a mismatch with the other two nominees' gender group after the third vote determined a gender majority, so a fourth vote had to be cast to determine a substitute nominee from the majority gender group (see above explanation of elimination challenge process).

² Fanis was unwell during episode 3, so did not compete and was not present in person for the vote. A vote was still cast on his behalf in the initial poll, but his absence meant that this proxy voting could not be repeated when it became necessary to run an additional vote due to Andriana's nomination removing Rob James from the elimination challenge for that week by creating a female majority (along with Dora).^[10][11]

³ New players joining midway through the competition are granted immunity in their first week. In week 3, the new joiners were Daniel, Zoi, Aira, and Sotiris. In week 6, they were James, Stavroula, Kostas, Elena, Thodoris, and Giorgos.

⁴ Aggelos was absent from episodes 11 to 16 due to the sudden onset of a health condition reportedly caused by exposure to toxic coral.^[12] Having still not fully recovered by episode 17 two weeks later, he opted to withdraw from the competition.^[13]

⁵ Christos voluntarily withdrew from the competition in episode 12 after expressing intense frustration with the conduct of Diasimoi members (and veteran Survivor competitors) Alexis and Asimina.^[14]

⁶ In episode 17, the entire team of nine Machites initially protest voted for Zoi from the Diasimoi due to a conflict over her conduct, each showing their votes to the camera and explaining their reasoning one by one. Since the voting team cannot nominate a member of the opposing team for elimination, a second vote was cast to nominate one of the Machites (Rob James, meaning that he had been nominated for elimination in all five weeks of the competition to date).^[15]

⁷ Stamatis did not compete in episode 18 due to injury, granting him immunity from elimination until medical advice deemed his injury sufficiently recovered for him to re-enter the competition. In addition to this, Marilina successfully convinced all of the women to vote for the same man (Giannis) in order to ensure that the women would stay out of the challenge, which was guaranteed to work as long as all of the women complied since there were five women and only four men. This was justified as a strategy to eliminate Rob James, but was heavily criticised by both teams.^[16] Consequently, the only remaining competitor from the Machites able to participate in the week 5 elimination challenge was Fanis,^[17] which could only be avoided if both remaining elimination nominees came from the Diasimoi in episode 19. The Machites lost the episode 19 immunity match, so Fanis had to join the elimination challenge by default (therefore there was no vote), which also meant that the Diasimoi MVP – Katerina – had nobody left to nominate from the Machites, so the elimination challenge went ahead with only three challengers.

⁸ Kostas only competed in one match in his first episode (episode 21) before being removed from the remainder of the episode's matches and, following on-site medical advice, taken to hospital. In episode 22, he was permanently removed from the competition and replaced by Giorgos.

⁹ Olga was suffering from a neck injury in episode 27 and was subsequently permanently removed from the competition on medical grounds in episode 28.^[18]

¹⁰ No-one revealed their own votes except for Maria and Daniel, and presenter Giorgos stopped revealing votes after six votes for Maria had been pulled out (there were only another four votes left of the total eleven, which could not create a majority for anyone else).

¹¹ Asimina was injured in week 8 so did not compete and was immune from the votes. With Elena and Maria already nominated, the only remaining female Diasimoi member was Katerina, so no vote was required. Katerina was defaulted into the elimination challenge in the same episode she was nominated as MVP for week 8.

¹² Pantelis did not return in episode 38, having left voluntarily after suffering from injuries since almost immediately after joining the game.^[6] Notably, in episode 34, the Diasimoi repeatedly nominated him for a total of five consecutive matches, knowing that he had sustained a shoulder injury.^[19]

Official ratings are taken from AGB Hellas.^[20]