So You Think You Can Dance

The show features a format where dancers trained in a variety of dance genres enter open auditions held in several major U.S. cities to showcase their talents and move forward through successive additional rounds of auditions to test their ability to adapt to different styles. At the end of this process, a small number of contestants are chosen. These contestants move on to the competition's main phase, where they perform solo, duet, and group dance numbers on live television, attempting to master a diverse selection of dance styles, including classical, contemporary, ballroom, hip-hop, street, club, jazz and musical theatre styles, among others. They compete for the votes of the broadcast viewing audience which, combined with the input of a panel of judges, determines which dancers advance to the next stage from week to week, until a winner is crowned as "America's favorite dancer".

So You Think You Can Dance has won seven Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Choreography and a total of nine Primetime Emmy Awards altogether. Licensed variations of the show, produced for broadcast markets in other nations, began airing in August 2005 and dozens of localized adaptations of the show have been produced since, airing in 41 countries to date. The sixteenth season premiered June 3, 2019. On February 20, 2020, the show was renewed for a seventeenth season, that was set to air in summer 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the season was indefinitely postponed on June 18, 2020, and eventually premiered on May 18, 2022. In December 2023, it was revealed that an eighteenth season would start filming in Atlanta from December 4, 2023, to January 29, 2024. The eighteenth season would premiere on March 4, 2024. Lythgoe departed from the show in January 2024, following a sex abuse lawsuit from one of the show's judges Paula Abdul. JoJo Siwa would join the judging panel to replace Lythgoe. In May 2026, the series was canceled after eighteen seasons.