Bonus ‘Survivor’ Episode Is Now Free to Watch on YouTube

A bonus episode of Survivor is available now on YouTube.

On Sept. 18, the official YouTube channel for the reality series uploaded the “36 Hour Survivor Influencer Experience.”

The nearly 46-minute-long episode sees eight influential Survivor super fans spending 36 hours in Fiji as they battle the elements in the Survivor Influencer Experience. Castaways include Hannah Kosh, Tommy Scibelli, Davis Burleson, Phaith Montoya, Sean Klitzner, Alyssa Amoroso, Karl Jacobs, and Monét X Change as they build shelter, gather food, tackle challenges, and face the Tribal Council.

The episode dropped less than a week before Survivor 49 premiered, so fans were treated to a little bit of Survivor before the new season released. CBS president and Chief Marketing Officer Mike Benson told TheWrap how it came to be, revealing that he realized more people were watching the series across multiple platforms during the pandemic, and there was a wave of younger viewers, as well as influencers and content creators.

“We were talking about, from marketing perspective, how do we continue to grow this audience?” Benson said. “We thought, ‘Well, why don’t we bring them and invite more?’ It kind of happened organically,” he added. “We really looked at this and we thought, let’s give people who are media influencers the opportunity to experience Survivor in the only way we know how they could experience it — by doing it.”

While it’s unknown if another Survivor experience will happen, Benson admitted he’s open to trying other types of experiences in the future and capitalizing on CBS’ wide variety of shows and fandoms. “We want to make sure, if we did create these types of experiences, doing it for a show like NCIS versus maybe The Bold and the Beautiful would be a very different type of experience,” Benson explained. “We want to make sure that whatever we do is not only authentic to the IP that we have, but also to our brand.”

Meanwhile, Survivor continues to pull in audiences. Season 49 is currently airing on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET, and the much-anticipated milestone 50^th season will air during midseason 2026 on CBS. Survivor 50 will be bringing back fan-favorite and even hated players from over the show’s run, and it’s going to be a season that fans won’t want to miss out on.