Bigg Boss 2 Telugu

Bigg Boss Telugu Season 2: winner, top 5, contestants and every elimination

Kaushal Manda won Bigg Boss Telugu 2 in 2018, the longest season the Telugu show has run and the only one Nani presented. He outlasted 17 contestants over 112 days on Star Maa, through 15 evictions and one medical exit, and beat Geetha Madhuri to the trophy on 30 September 2018. Bigg Boss 10 Telugu voting has the current poll and results.

18
contestants: 112
days: 2
wild cards: 5
finalists

By Rahul Bala Published 05 Sept 2026 Updated 05 Sept 2026

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 winner

Winner

Kaushal Manda

Known for

Film and serial actor

Entered

Launch night to the finale, all 112 days

Prize

₹50 lakh in cash

Venkatesh Daggubati handed over the trophy and the cheque on finale night. Kaushal said on stage that the money would go to the treatment of women with cancer. His own mother had died of it.

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 host

Nani

Host of Bigg Boss Telugu 2

Tenure: Bigg Boss Telugu 2 was his only season as host, and his television debut
Before him: Jr NTR fronted Season 1; Nagarjuna has hosted every season since

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 logo

Season 2's on-air mark set the show's eye against a burst of blue and violet with the numeral beside it, rather than inside it the way later seasons did. It ran under that mark on Star Maa for all 112 days of 2018.

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 finalists: the top 5

Five housemates were still inside on finale night, 30 September 2018. They went out one at a time on air: Samrat Reddy first, then Deepti Nallamothu, then Tanish, leaving Kaushal Manda and Geetha Madhuri for the last announcement.

Kaushal Manda Winner, took the trophy and ₹50 lakh from Venkatesh
Geetha Madhuri 1st runner-up
Tanish 2nd runner-up
Deepti Nallamothu 3rd runner-up
Samrat Reddy 4th runner-up

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 elimination list, by day

Each bar is one housemate's run, from the day they walked in to the day they walked out, on the season's own 112-day clock. Counted in days inside the house, not broadcast dates or week numbers. The two bars that start late are the wild cards; the notches are the two housemates who left and came back. Nobody left in week seven, which is why fourteen days pass between the day-42 and day-56 rows.

Sanjana Anne Evicted Day 7
Kireeti Damaraju Evicted Day 21
Bhanu Sree Evicted Day 35
Tejaswi Madivada Evicted Day 42
Nandini Rai Evicted Day 56
Babu Gogineni Evicted Day 63
Deepthi Sunaina Evicted Day 70
Pooja Ramachandran Evicted Day 77
Ganesh Evicted on the Saturday, first of a weekend double eviction Day 83
Nutan Naidu Evicted Day 84
Syamala Evicted Day 91
Amit Tiwari Evicted Day 98
Roll Rida Evicted, the last eviction before the finale Day 105
Samrat Reddy 4th runner-up Day 112
Deepti Nallamothu 3rd runner-up Day 112
Tanish 2nd runner-up Day 112
Geetha Madhuri 1st runner-up Day 112
Kaushal Manda Winner Day 112

Winner Reached the finale Evicted Left and came back

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 contestants: all 18

Finishing order, furthest first; only the top five have confirmed places, and the rest are ordered by how long each lasted in the house. Wild cards carry the day they walked in; everyone else came in on launch night.

Kaushal Manda

Film and serial actor

Reached the finale, day 112
Winner Wikipedia @kaushalmanda
Geetha Madhuri

Playback singer, Telugu film music

Reached the finale, day 112
1st runner-up Wikipedia @singergeethamadhuri
Tanish

Film actor, Nachavule and Ride

Reached the finale, day 112
2nd runner-up Wikipedia @tanishalladi
Deepti Nallamothu

News anchor, TV9 Telugu

Reached the finale, day 112
3rd runner-up @deeptinallamothu
Samrat Reddy

Actor, model and cricketer

Reached the finale, day 112
4th runner-up @samratreddy
Roll Rida

Rapper and lyricist, Telugu hip-hop

Left on day 105
Evicted Wikipedia @rollrida
Amit Tiwari

Film actor, usually cast as the villain

Left on day 98
Evicted Wikipedia @amitkumar_tiwari
Syamala

Television anchor and actress

Left on day 91
Evicted @syamalaofficial
Nutan Naidu

Social activist and motivational speaker from Visakhapatnam

Left on day 84
Evicted
Ganesh

Radio jockey from Vijayawada

Left on day 83
Evicted @ibiggbossganesh
Pooja Ramachandran

Film actress, model and video jockey

Left on day 77

Wild card, day 44
Evicted Wikipedia @pooja_ramachandran
Deepthi Sunaina

Social media personality and actress, known for her dubsmash videos

Left on day 70
Evicted @deepthi_sunaina
Babu Gogineni

Humanist and rationalist, former head of the International Humanist and Ethical Union

Left on day 63
Evicted Wikipedia (తెలుగు) @babu_gogineni123
Nandini Rai

Film actress and model, Miss Andhra Pradesh 2010

Left on day 56

Wild card, day 7
Evicted Wikipedia @nandini.rai
Tejaswi Madivada

Film actress, Ice Cream and Seethamma Vaakitlo Sirimalle Chettu

Left on day 42
Evicted Wikipedia @tejaswimadivada
Bhanu Sree

Film actress, Kumari 21F and Katamarayudu

Left on day 35
Evicted @iam_bhanusri
Kireeti Damaraju

Film actor, Uyyala Jampala and Mental Madhilo

Left on day 21
Evicted Wikipedia @kireetid
Sanjana Anne

Model, Miss Hyderabad and a Miss India participant

Left on day 7
Evicted @sanjanaanne_official

How Bigg Boss Telugu 2 voting, nominations and evictions worked

Season 2 set the weekly shape the Telugu show still runs: nominate on Monday, vote through the week, hear the result from the host at the weekend. It also let the house overrule the public vote, and one housemate went out that way.

Nominations

Housemates nominated each other at the start of each week, out loud, in front of everyone, with a reason attached. One week they had to break an egg over each nominee's head as they said it. Those names went to the public vote, and until the finale a nomination was the only way out of the house. Ganesh drew 30 nominations over the season, and Kaushal Manda faced the public vote in 10 separate weeks. Who nominated whom in Season 2 has every round.

House Captain, immunity and the power to save

A weekly captaincy task decided who ran the house, and captains were usually safe from that week's nomination. Bigg Boss also handed out one-off powers that could pull a name off the list after the vote had closed. In week four Kaushal Manda and Tejaswi Madivada each won the right to save one nominee, used it on the two women nominated alongside Syamala, and sent her out. No other eviction that season was decided inside the house.

The public vote

Nominees went to a public vote through Hotstar, the app now called JioHotstar, with missed-call numbers reported as a second route. The housemate with the fewest votes left at the weekend episode. No vote totals were ever published, then or since, which is why the Kaushal Army argument was never settled. The how to vote guide covers the method step by step, and official voting versus a fan poll explains why the percentages that circulated each week were trend estimates rather than the count that decided an eviction.

Evictions, walkouts and coming back

Fifteen exits came from the vote. The sixteenth did not: Nutan Naidu dislocated his shoulder in a captaincy task on day 68 and was taken to hospital. Viewers then voted two housemates back in, Syamala and Nutan Naidu on the same night in early August, and Nutan came back a second time once his shoulder healed. One weekend ran a double eviction across two nights, Ganesh on the Saturday and Nutan Naidu on the Sunday. Week seven ran none at all.

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 at a glance

Winner: Kaushal Manda
Runner-up: Geetha Madhuri
Host: Nani
Premiere: 10 June 2018
Grand finale: 30 September 2018
Length: 112 days, a week longer than the show's usual 105
Total entrants: 18
Launch night: 16 (13 celebrities, three commoners)
Wild cards: Two, on days 7 and 44
Re-entries: Two, both voted back in on day 53
Channel: Star Maa
Streaming: Hotstar, now JioHotstar
Winner's prize: ₹50 lakh in cash

Entry order: launch night, two wild cards and two returns

Launch night, 10 June 2018: Sixteen housemates: thirteen from film, television and radio, and three through public auditions, which no Telugu season had run before. They were Geetha Madhuri, Amit Tiwari, Deepti Nallamothu, Tanish, Babu Gogineni, Bhanu Sree, Roll Rida, Syamala, Kireeti Damaraju, Deepthi Sunaina, Kaushal Manda, Tejaswi Madivada, Samrat Reddy, Ganesh, Sanjana Anne, Nutan Naidu.
Days 7 and 44: Two wild cards, five weeks apart. Nandini Rai was cast for launch night, had an accident days before it and walked in a week late. Pooja Ramachandran let herself in at four in the morning on day 44 and hid under a blanket until the house found her.
Day 53: Syamala and Nutan Naidu, both already evicted, came back on a public vote among six former housemates. Nutan climbed out of a box in the storeroom; Syamala walked in the same night. He left and returned once more, on days 68 and 75, so he played the season in three separate stints, one more than anyone else in the house.

What defined Bigg Boss Telugu 2

The Kaushal Army, and the season the vote became the story

Kaushal Manda's supporters organised themselves under a name, the Kaushal Army, and by late in the run they were the loudest thing about the season. The News Minute reported organised voting at scale and abuse aimed at other housemates; Star India answered that its systems were hard to rig and were watched by independent auditors. Nothing was proved, Kaushal won, and he publicly asked his own fans to stop making duplicate accounts. Eight years on it is still one of the two answers people give to which Bigg Boss season is worst in Telugu.

Nani hosted it, and only it

Season 1 was Jr NTR's, and every season from the third on has been Nagarjuna's. Season 2 is the one in the middle, and it was Nani's television debut. Viewers accused him of favouring some housemates over others through the back half of the run, and in September he answered on air that he treated every one of them the same. The Bigg Boss Telugu winners list has who presented each of the others.

The first season with commoners in the house

Three of the sixteen who walked in on launch night came through public auditions rather than an agent: a radio jockey from Vijayawada, a model from the same city and a social activist from Visakhapatnam. Ganesh lasted twelve weeks and outlasted seven of the fifteen housemates who came from film, television or radio. Every Telugu season since has kept the split, and Agnipariksha now exists to pick the commoners.

112 days, and nobody has run that long since

The season ran a week longer than planned and finished on day 112 rather than the usual 105, still the longest the Telugu show has run. Season 1 lasted 70 days, Season 3 lasted 105, and Seasons 4 through 9 have all landed exactly on 105. The Season 9 record is the most recent completed season, and which BB season has the highest TRP in Telugu compares how the seasons rated.

Bigg Boss Telugu 2 voting and the Season 10 vote

Season 2's vote ran through the Hotstar app, which is now JioHotstar, and the same app carries the vote today. The latest Bigg Boss Telugu voting results are on our homepage, and Season 10 is confirmed for Sunday 6 September 2026 (announced by Star Maa). The how to vote guide covers the method in detail. The Season 4 record picks the story up two years later, and the Bigg Boss Telugu winners list has every champion and every cheque.