What time is Dancing with the Stars? The Oct. 20 episode of Season 35 is Dedication Night, and the show is moving into a live hour built around the 10 remaining couples. Kym Johnson is back as a guest judge, while the season’s cast keeps shifting after last week’s Super Bowl Night.
Dedication Night asks the remaining couples to turn personal history into performance. The 10 pairs will deliver heartfelt dances honoring influential people and places that shaped their lives, which gives the episode a different kind of pressure than a routine score chase.
Kym Johnson returns
Kym Johnson’s return adds a familiar judging voice to a night that already has a tighter field than earlier in Season 35. With 10 couples still in play, every score lands with more weight because fewer performances remain to absorb a weak week or an uneven reaction.
The show’s earlier time details matter for viewers who are tracking how the season unfolds from one live episode to the next. This installment follows last week’s Super Bowl Night, when Harry Shum Jr. and Jenna Johnson received their scores and Carrie Ann Inaba criticized Shum’s illegal lift in the performance.
Val Chmerkovskiy sits out
Val Chmerkovskiy’s role changes this week after he apologized for a since-deleted social media post that read, "You almost saw Fresh Prince enter the ballroom last night," and Studios made him sit out the show. That leaves Jenna Dewan paired with Alan Bersten for Dedication Night, while Chmerkovskiy’s absence is the most direct production change on the floor.
The pairing map for the episode is set around the same live structure: Tatyana Ali with Jan Ravnik, Tyler Cameron with Sharna Burgess, Ezra Frech with Daniella Karagach, Amber Glenn with Pasha Pashkov, Maura Higgins with Mark Ballas, Jackson Olson with Emma Slater, Harry Shum Jr. with Jenna Johnson, and Julia Stiles with Ezra Sosa. For viewers, the main practical question is straightforward: if they want the dedication themes and the guest judge in real time, this is the week to watch live rather than catch up later.
