Following last year’s success as hosts, geordie duo Ant and Dec have confirmed that they are hosting the 2016 Brit Awards with Mastercard for a second consecutive year. Also making this the third time that Ant and Dec have hosted the Brits, first doing so in 2001 and then 14 years later in 2015.

The prestigious British music awards ceremony will be taking place on the 24th February 2016 at the O2 in London; broadcast on ITV.

Ant and Dec took to their own website to announce the news:

“We’re really excited to be invited back to host The BRIT Awards 2016. In all honesty we only intended to do it for one year but had such a good time we are thrilled to be doing it again. Both of us are looking forward to what will be an incredible night, and we can’t wait to celebrate the achievements of British music once again.”

The 2015 Brit Awards saw a wide variety of musical performers, from Royal Blood, Ed Sheeran, Paloma Faith, Taylor Swift and even “the greatest rock star on the planet” Kanye West.

However it was pop legend Madonna who managed to steal the show, and perhaps not in the manner she would have liked:

This of course drew world wide attention to the singer and became a defining moment of the 2015 Brits; which is a great shame as other live performances by Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran in particular were phenomenal but got brushed under the carpet due to Madonna’s fall. However I am sure they didn’t mind this, having won a few awards themselves; with Ed Sheeran collecting two separate awards, including Album of the Year. Similarly Taylor Swift won Internation Female Artist of the Year. For a full list of the winners see here.

This years Brit Awards was a certain success, and a record breaking one at that. ITV managed to gain an extra million viewers from the previous year, and there was a record breaking 7.8million tweets about the awards ceremony; not only that but over 24million views were similarly gathered on the official Brit Award YouTube channel, viewing the performances of the night.

In this regard it makes sense to keep Ant and Dec as part of the evening, as Chairman of the Brit Awards Max Lousada said:

“We’re delighted to welcome Ant and Dec back to host the BRITs next year. They played a huge role in the success of this year’s event and we’re all looking forward to another great show in 2016.”

It is still too early to predict who will be up for nominations in 2016, however we can have no doubt that the evening will provide endless entertainment and a memorable night for all.