THE VOICE Announces Live Cross Battles Stage

THE VOICE is making a major change to its competition format—and it’ll kick off with the Monday, April 15 episode.

The “Live Cross Battles” stage of the competition—which replaces the “Knockouts,” which has been a fixture on the series since season 7—will find the season 16 coaches (Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, John Legend, and Kelly Clarkson) going head-to-head with each other, selecting one artist/group from their team to compete against a contestant from another team. America will vote on the winner of each round to move forward to the Top 24 live show.

Per NBC, “the new Live Cross Battles round will begin with 32 artists remaining in the competition. Over the course of two weeks, eight pairs of 16 artists will perform each Monday. THE VOICE will unveil a brand new Cross Battles set design, in which the artists will be seated by team on dramatically lit benches around each side of the stage. In every Cross Battle, two coaches will go head-to-head in a ‘live school yard pick,’ each selecting one artist from their team to go up against another team’s artist. Each artist will perform an individual song, and their fate is in America’s hands to decide the winner.” The results will be announced during the weekly Tuesday episodes.

However, there is a twist: Per NBC, “for the first time ever, each coach will also have the opportunity to save or steal eliminated artists live in the moment. The coaches will have one save and one steal to use over the course of the Cross Battles, and they will only have ten seconds to decide if they want to push their button to save or steal an artist.”

This also means that the teams could wind up incredibly uneven going into the live shows for the first time ever.

Check out the promo touting the new round of competition.

THE VOICE, Mondays, 8/7c, NBC

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