Lord Sugar begins his search for a new business partner for 2026 amongst twenty new candidates. ^[11] For their first task, the teams are sent to Hong Kong and tasked with buying a list of nine items. Whichever team spends the least, including any fines for missing or incorrect items will win. Both teams suffer from severe disorganisation and struggle to identify the correct items. The men's team emerge victorious due to purchasing one more item than the women's team and not being as late back. Following scrutiny over the women’s team’s disastrous performance, Lord Sugar decides to ask both the project manager and the sub-team leader to bring two of their colleagues each back into the boardroom, and he proceeded to fire one person from each sub-team. Nikki Jetha becomes the first to be fired for her lack of strategy and poor leadership of the team as a whole, while Georgina Newton is also dismissed for her unsuitable personality.

The teams are summoned to the Paddington Bear Experience, where they are tasked with creating a children's story and an accompanying audiobook. They are to pitch the stories to retailers, with the winners being whoever shifts more copies. Following the double firing the previous week, the women's team are asked to select a member of the men's team to join them. They choose Levi Hague, who is ultimately absent from the final boardroom due to illness. The men's team create a story about an astronaut looking for somewhere to go to the toilet, while the women's team, reinforced by a transfer from the men's team, opt for a story about a zebra on his first day of school. Both stories have some problems, with the men's story lacking illustrations on two pages and thought to have too much toilet humour, while the women's story contains visual elements not acknowledged in the narrative. In the end, retailers order more copies of the women's story, leaving the men facing questions about their flawed product. Of the final four, Marcus Donkoh is dismissed for his poor leadership, attempting to back a flawed story, and failing to bring back the sub-team members responsible for the said story into the boardroom.

The teams are summoned to the historic Café Royal Grill where they are tasked with making a profit on either a recipe of chicken or eggs. Levi Hague was absent from this task due to illness. Alpha is given 25 kilograms of chicken and produce chicken and mushroom pie to sell to the public, but struggles stem from some unclear instructions and partial indecision from the project manager and raised questions about the chicken and courgette canapé flavor. Eclipse is given 25 kilograms of eggs and make carbonara to sell to the public and egg skewers to sell as a canapé corporate order but struggles include dietary restrictions across the recipe team, an inability to calculate the cost of ingredients, poor negotiation skills (negotiating an immediate lower price), struggles in the kitchen and tardiness of the sub-team in service for the corporate side. Despite a larger refund, Alpha emerge victorious after it's revealed they achieved a higher profit than Eclipse, leaving the latter under scrutiny. Of the final three, Lord Sugar fires Tanmay Hingorani for the negotiation that doomed the team.

The candidates are summoned to the Crossness Pumping Station to design a brand of bottled water, as well as create a TV advertisement and a social media campaign for their product, to which they will pitch to a social media panel, which includes rapper and bottled water entrepreneur Big Zuu. Team Eclipse's campaign caters towards the fitness edge and are praised for their advert, but face criticism of the branding of their product resembling a dairy drink, as well as a disastrous TikTok live stream to promote their product. Alpha focus on promoting their product to commuters, but issues include an unclear vision from the project manager, poor branding of the product, issues in pitching the product and an uninteresting advert, despite their TikTok live stream being deemed more interesting. Ultimately, Lord Sugar decides that Eclipse's campaign is better, leaving Alpha to answer for their failure. Of the final three, Roxanne Hamedi is ejected from the process for creating the team's poor branding.

Lord Sugar visits the candidates' house personally to deliver the next challenge: to turn petals into profits by selling flowers to the public and corporate clients, in a special twist on the very first ever task on the first series of the Apprentice. Team Eclipse pitch to a fragrance manufacturer, and despite their client being a little disappointed with the quality of their floral display, the team manage to salvage a price close to the originally-agreed one by throwing in some bouquets. Eclipse also sell out of flowers while selling to the public. Alpha pitch to a West End theatre, who are roundly unsatisfied with their The Devil Wears Prada themed floral wall and only give them half the agreed-upon price, while the team's failure to prepare enough bouquets sees them fail to sell all the flowers that they ordered. The teams also sell their bouquets to the public in a shopping centre. Eclipse managed to score a landslide win, leading to Alpha facing scrutiny for the troubles they had caused. Of the final 3, Vanessa Tetteh-Squire is fired for her poor leadership of the team, and for bringing a teammate back into the boardroom without a good reason.

The candidates travel to Egypt to provide corporate away days.

The candidates are challenged to create a virtual reality game with a fitness theme.