Love Island is looking for LGBTQ+ applications for this year’s series

Summer is just on the horizon and with it, our thirst for easy-watching reality dating shows – Love Island is set to make its long-awaited return to our TV screens later this year. While most of us will be looking at (yet another) camping holiday to the local windswept beach, at least we can gossip about beautiful, swimsuit-clad contestants swanning about in a hot climate.

Announced as part of ITV2’s spring scheduling line-up, the show is expected to make a comeback in time for its usual June debut, with this year’s series bringing one major change – producers have finally announced they’ll be accepting applications from LGBTQ+ daters.

Teaming up with Tinder to recruit singletons for the upcoming series, show bosses have shaken up the application process with ads promoting the show appearing to all users of the app. Encouraging interested candidates to apply by swiping right on the Love Island profile, some LGBTQ+ users were confused as to why they were being targeted by the application when they weren’t eligible to apply. However, a spokesperson for ITV has since tried to clear things up saying, “our only stipulation for applicants on Love Island is that they are over 18, single and looking for love.”

Fans of the show have long been calling for the series to be more inclusive and the announcement has mostly been met with positivity online – though some viewers have voiced concerns over how the logistics might work given that the premise is for all contestants to be coupled up. No potential islanders have been revealed as of yet but with applications open until the end of April, there’s still time for you to shoot your shot, so to speak.

Feature image via @amberrosegill