Let's Make a Deal began its eighteenth season with Wayne Brady on Monday, September 21, 2026, and CBS marked the occasion by adding a new game to the show's rotation. It is called Cash Course.

What CBS Has Said

The network's own description, from its September 10 announcement of the fall daytime schedule, is short and worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. Cash Course is:

a ball-rolling obstacle course where Traders line up green and gold balls on a custom-designed course for a guaranteed chance to win big cash, with the opportunity to take home a grand prize of $10,000.

Three things follow from that wording. The trader does something active — lining the balls up — rather than simply watching a drop, which suggests a placement decision rather than pure luck. What CBS calls guaranteed is the chance to win big cash, not a payout. And $10,000 is the ceiling, which places Cash Course among the show's larger single-game prizes without approaching its car-level deals.

What CBS Has Not Said

Quite a lot, and it is worth being clear about it. The network has not published the number of balls, what distinguishes a green ball from a gold one, how the course is laid out, what the lower cash tiers pay, or whether the game can be traded away like a standard deal. The release does name three obstacles, though: the spinning duck, the stone toad and the octopus.

This is a game that will explain itself over a few playings rather than from a press release, which is normal for the format.

Where It Fits

Physical, prop-driven games have been part of Let's Make a Deal since Monty Hall's era, and the Brady version has leaned into them. A rolling-ball course also gives the audience something to watch that a card reveal does not: a slow outcome, with time to react, which is the same reason Plinko has outlived most of its contemporaries on the show across the hall.

A Milestone Season

CBS also confirmed that Season 18 will include Wayne Brady's 3,000th episode as host, commemorated with a special episode the network says will air in January 2027. Brady took over the revived CBS version in 2009, which makes this his seventeenth year in the job.

How to Watch

Let's Make a Deal airs weekday mornings on CBS, with the exact time varying by market (check local listings). Episodes stream next day on Paramount+. Our how to watch guide has the details, and the how to play page covers the show's other games, including Cash Course.

Sources (checked October 2026): CBS press release via Paramount Press Express; TheWrap, Brady’s CBS revival

The illustration above is our own artwork. CBS has not released images of the Cash Course set, and the apparatus shown is not a depiction of it.

Corrected October 4, 2026: CBS's release does name three of the obstacles, and what it guarantees is a chance at cash, not a payout; an earlier version said otherwise. An unsupported line about the show's staging budget was removed.