The X Factor bootcamp six chair challenge| MarkMeets News | | MarkMeets | Entertainment, Music, Movie, TV & London Film Premiere News

The X Factor is well and truly underway and tonight is the first of a 3 night special. As we head back into the Arena auditions at bootcamp… we meet the cruel six chair challenge.

What are the judges’ categories?

This year Cheryl has the Girls, Mel B the boys and Simon the Overs, leaving Louis with – as always – the Groups.

They got their categories before bootcamp and will be in sole charge of deciding who makes judges’ houses with them.

How does it work?

Performances will take place at Wembley Arena, with six chairs on the stage representing the spots at judges’ houses.

The acts in each category will perform once, one after the other, for all the judges and a live audience. All the judges will comment but it’ll be the mentor of that category who alone decides whether to give them a seat or to send them home.

However, even those given seats aren’t necessarily safe. The mentors can chose to swap those in a seat out for another act if they feel others performed better.

Only once all the acts in the category have performed are the six in the seats finalised, with those lucky acts sitting down through to the next round.

What happens next?

Each category will now go their separate ways with their mentor for judges’ houses.

Simon is flying his Overs out to America, Louis is taking the Groups to Bermuda, the Girls are going to France with Cheryl and Mel B is taking the Boys to Mexico.

There the six in each category will be whittled down even further to give the finalists for the live shows.