The Challenge (originally known as Road Rules: All Stars, followed by Real World/Road Rules Challenge) is a reality competition show on MTV that is a spin-off of two of the network's reality shows, The Real World and Road Rules. Premiering in 1998, it originally featured alumni from these two shows. Casting for The Challenge has slowly expanded to include contestants who debuted on The Challenge itself, alumni from other MTV franchises including Are You the One?, Ex on the Beach (Brazil, UK and US), Geordie Shore, siblings and friends, and from other non-MTV shows and competitions. The contestants compete against one another in various extreme challenges to avoid elimination. The winners of the final challenge win the competition and typically share a large cash prize.^[1][2] The Challenge is currently hosted by T. J. Lavin.

The series premiered on June 1, 1998. The show was originally titled Road Rules: All Stars, and had notable Real World alumni participated in a Road Rules style road-trip. It was renamed Real World/Road Rules Challenge for the 2nd season, then later abridged to simply The Challenge by the show's 19th season. Since the fourth season, each season has supplied the show with a unique subtitle, such as Rivals. Each season consists of a format and theme from which the subtitle is derived.

The show's most recent season, Battle for a New Champion, premiered on October 25, 2023.^[3]

The Challenge casts are season-specific as the cast varies from season to season. The casts are made up of contestants originating from one of The Challenge's related TV programs and, in a few seasons, previously unknown contestants. The cast usually contains both "veterans" (or vets) and "rookies". Veterans are thought of as players that have won at least one Challenge season or have appeared on several seasons of the show; Rookies refer to newer players. Many recent alumni come from various reality shows including Survivor, The Amazing Race, Are You the One?, Big Brother, Ex on the Beach and Love Island.

A season's typical multitude of cast members are usually divided up into separate teams or pairs according to a certain criterion, which varies from season to season. The criteria that teams have been arranged by over the show's history have ranged from gender, the contestants' original show, heroic or villainous status, rivals, countries, family members and ex-romantic partners of contestants. Each of the opposing teams compete in numerous missions in order to win prizes and advance in the overall game. The format of the competition varies by season. In elimination rounds, contestants or teams compete against one another to determine which one is eliminated from the season. Each season has its own, distinctive elimination round, distinguished from those of other seasons in title, design, and general atmosphere. Determining which two teams or two cast members are sent into the episode's elimination round frequently leads to drama and "dirty" gameplay; this is due to the show's contestants being in charge of who is thrown into elimination rounds. Like, that of The Real World, sporadically throughout the course of each episode, various contestants are seen privately expressing themselves through reality TV confessionals about the events taking place on the show.

Some seasons, however, have used entirely different formats from the typical ones: The Island is one Challenge in particular that adopted many features atypical to Real World/Road Rules Challenge, instead taking concepts like that of another reality television game show Survivor; as another example, the first season (Road Rules: All Stars) ironically, only included contestants from The Real World and consisted of a much smaller cast before the show was completely restructured in its second season. Except for season one, a monetary prize has always been the award for winning the final mission.

The series initially used no hosts but instead a former cast member who had been kicked off his or her season, providing assignments as "Mr." or "Ms. Big" (David "Puck" Rainey, David Edwards, and Gladys Sanabria served this role). After one season without anyone in this role, the series began using hosts: Eric Nies and Mark Long co-hosted a season, and Jonny Moseley and Dave Mirra hosted various seasons before T. J. Lavin became the show's regular host by the 11th season.^[4]

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Over time, a playful rivalry developed between the cast of Road Rules and The Real World, with the former occasionally attempting to prank the latter while it was in production.^[5] During the filming of The Real World: Boston and Road Rules: Islands, the two casts met while the Real World cast was vacationing in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Producers set up a face-off where both teams would compete for a cash prize. The challenge brought in high ratings and this set ideas in motion to produce yet another spin-off series.^[6] After another face-off called AquaGames, hosted by Kit Hoover and Mark Long, between The Real World: Seattle and Road Rules: Down Under in 1998, the Challenge series was born in 1998 with Road Rules: All Stars, and featured cast members from five seasons of The Real World.

After All Stars, producers decided to include former cast members of Road Rules in the series as well. In the next season, two six-member teams were sent around the world in a competition to see which show could best the other in head-to-head competition. The series followed the format for three years and brought in hugely successful ratings.

Following the hugely successful boom of reality television in the new millennium, from shows like Survivor, producers decided to add new elements to the series. 2002's Battle of the Seasons was the first season to depart from the previous six-member structure and brought in a large group of former cast members to compete in one location. The show added in eliminations that added an additional layer of scheming and manipulation. Earlier season incorporated voting off by majority, but eventually that changed to sudden-death elimination competitions between cast members up for elimination.^[5][7] With this season MTV also added a fantasy challenge game to their website. Players "draft" cast members, a la fantasy baseball and cast members are given points for performing certain tasks, such as cursing or "hooking up."

After transitioning to the "vote-off" format, the series alternated between 'Battle' seasons. These included two seasons of Battle of the Sexes, as well as themed Challenges such as the Gauntlet and Inferno seasons. Both the Gauntlet and Inferno seasons contained "showdown" matches between members of the two opposing teams. The cast member who lost the showdown would be sent home. The Gauntlet seasons featured an intra-cast dynamic as teams were forced to vote off cast members within their own groups into the showdown, while the Inferno seasons featured an inter-cast dynamic as teams were forced to vote off cast members from the other group into the showdown.

Contestants are various reality television cast members from different television shows. Originally the cast consisted of The Real World and Road Rules alumni, and cast who debuted directly on The Challenge, but eventually MTV expanded it to other alumni from other reality shows.^[8][9][10]