The Amazing Race season 39 premiere date and how to watch: all 13 teams start with an Express Pass, a series first

The Amazing Race is back — season 39 launched on CBS September 30 with part two of the premiere airing tonight, October 1, before the show settles into its regular Wednesday 9:30 p.m. slot. Episodes stream on Paramount+ (live with the premium tier, next day on the standard one), which is also where the back catalog lives for anyone doing homework.

The hook this year is deceptively simple. The Express Pass — the skip-a-task golden ticket that teams usually sweat through an early-season challenge to win — is being handed to all 13 teams at the starting line, free, before anyone has run a single leg. Phil Keoghan has never done it in 38 previous seasons. The catch that makes it interesting: passes expire after leg six, so every team is holding a melting asset and deciding, leg by leg, whether this is the emergency worth spending it on. The premiere's episode titles telegraph how that's going — part one is literally called "Sorry Guys, We Used Our Express Pass," and part two features a team whose pass gambit brings, per CBS's own synopsis, nothing but instant regret.

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The route

• Starting line: Jack Poole Plaza in Vancouver — kicking off a race that, for the first time, skips the contiguous United States entirely.
• The itinerary: roughly 25,000 miles across nine countries and five continents over 12 legs.
• The franchise first: a visit to Albania, a country the Race has never touched in 25 years of circling the planet.
• The prize: the standard $1 million, Express Pass receipts not deducted.

The teams worth circling

The 13 duos skew heavily toward relationships with built-in friction: among them, retired USWNT World Cup winner Ali Krieger racing with fellow pro-soccer veteran Joanna Lohman as "Pro Athletes & Moms," and the season's guaranteed tear-jerker — Doug and Dylan Matter, a 73-year-old grandfather and his 19-year-old grandson, a 54-year age gap sprinting through airports together. Keoghan, for his part, has teased the format shake-up delivered exactly what producers wanted, promising

"new twists which gave us the desired results of changing things up."

After tonight's two-night opener, it's Wednesdays from here. Thirteen passes went out; the fun is counting how many come back unused.

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