A Blue Room Called Cuarto Tulum Just Opened on La Casa de los Famosos

Yes, there is a bedroom called Cuarto Tulum on Mexican television right now; six housemates sleep in it every night, and it sits on a soundstage rather than anywhere near the Caribbean.

La Casa de los Famosos México opened its fourth season on Sunday, July 26, with 18 contestants, the largest cast in the show's history. To fit them all, producer Rosa María Noguerón added a third bedroom to the house. The three are named Tulum, Ibiza, and Malibú.

That last detail is why this story lands in a Tulum newspaper. A town that spent the past decade exporting a very specific look, blue water and pale wood and jungle green, now has that look rebuilt as a television set and broadcast into most of the country every night until October. The room comes with a captain and a color code.

Cuarto Tulum is the blue one

Each of the three bedrooms carries a color as well as a name. Ibiza is purple, Malibú is yellow, and Tulum is blue.

Mexican outlets covering the premiere described the Tulum room as the Mexican Caribbean entry in the set, built around blues and greens with decoration meant to evoke the sea and the vegetation around it. Ibiza takes the Mediterranean route, pale and bright. Malibú goes California, with orange, blue, and yellow, palm trees, and surfboards leaning against the wall.

Six housemates share Cuarto Tulum:

• Karina Torres, influencer and captain of the room
• Brianda Deyanara, content creator
• Memo Schutz, sports broadcaster
• Arantza Ruiz, actor and streamer
• Mariana Ochoa, singer and one of the three surprise entries
• Moisés Peñaloza, actor

Karina Torres drew a blue ball and started picking her roommates

Production did not hand out the rooms. Viewers voted through the show's official WhatsApp channel to choose three captains, and the captains got their rooms by luck of the draw, pulling colored balls from a box. Purple sent Aldo Rendón to Ibiza. Yellow sent Fede Vigevani to Malibú. Blue went to Karina Torres.

Each captain then filled the beds. Torres took Brianda Deyanara first, then Memo Schutz, then Arantza Ruiz, then Mariana Ochoa, and finally Moisés Peñaloza.

Ibiza ended up with Ese Pérez, Yanet García, Cynthia Klitbo, Ernesto Laguardia, and Luis Chaparro alongside Rendón. Malibú took Masad Altamimi, Gema Garoa, Ximena Herrera, Flor Vigna, and Yahir under Vigevani.

Roommate selection is not decoration in this format. Alliances in earlier seasons formed along bedroom lines, and the production has said the three-way split was designed to break the old two-team pattern from the first night.

18 housemates, and a house built for fewer

Fifteen contestants were announced before the premiere. Three more walked in during the opening gala, pushing the cast to 18 and past the show's own record.

Noguerón, who produces the series for Televisa with Endemol Shine Boomdog, said the house was renovated to absorb the larger group and to create more places for people to collide. Two bedrooms became three. The dining room, the living area, and the leader's suite were rebuilt around a tropical palette.

The cast mixes television veterans with people whose audiences live entirely on phones. Ernesto Laguardia and Cynthia Klitbo carry decades of Televisa drama behind them. Fede Vigevani, Ese Pérez, and Brianda Deyanara arrive with follower counts instead of credits.

The first nomination landed before anyone had slept

A red phone rang on opening night. Arantza Ruiz answered it, heard Wendy Guevara on the other end, and was told to name the season's first nominee. She chose Aldo Rendón, the Ibiza captain, who went on the block before the cast had finished a full day inside.

Two other twists came out of the same gala. Cynthia Klitbo received immunity for the first week after a decision by Gema Garoa. Fede Vigevani entered as an infiltrator working for production, taking orders from La Jefa and carrying out challenges chosen by the audience, which means he is not competing for the prize at all. His housemates have not been told.

The winner takes four million pesos.

Where to find the live feeds, and what they cost

The season is spread across three Televisa channels and one streaming service.

• Las Estrellas carries the Sunday galas, including the premiere and the eliminations.
• Canal 5 carries the nomination galas and the weekday programs built around daily life in the house.
• ViX streams the house 24 hours a day. The Premium tier adds a multi-window view for watching several cameras at once, plus extra votes.
• The show's official site has been running a free feed from the main camera.

Galilea Montijo hosts the Sunday galas. Odalys Ramírez and Diego de Erice handle the weekday editions. Wendy Guevara and Ricardo Margaleff run the pre- and post-shows on ViX, and Marie Claire Harp covers the digital side.

Readers outside Mexico should check ViX availability in their own country before subscribing. The free tier is geo-restricted and the catalog changes by market.

Half of Mexico is spelling it Tulúm

Anyone here will have caught it already. A good share of the national coverage has written the room as Tulúm, accent on the u, including outlets that cover the show every single day.

The town has never carried an accent. It is Tulum, stress on the last syllable, taken from the Maya word for wall, the name attached to the walled site on the cliff long after the settlement itself had been abandoned. The accent turns up when a name travels faster than the place it belongs to.

Something similar is happening on screen. The room does not reference the ruins, the cenotes, or the town. It references a palette, the one that hotels and restaurants along the beach road have been selling to travelers and photographers since the 2010s. Televisa did not build a set about Tulum. It built a set about what Tulum looks like in other people's heads, which may be the sharpest measure yet of how far the name has carried.

Ten weeks of airtime, ending in early October

The season runs ten weeks, which puts the finale in the first days of October. The weekly rhythm is already fixed: the weekly challenge starts Tuesday, nominations happen Wednesday in the confessional, salvation gets stolen Thursday and Friday, and Sunday brings the positioning round and the elimination gala.

For now, the room is full. Aldo Rendón sleeps in Ibiza, which means Cuarto Tulum goes into the first elimination with all six beds still spoken for. Ten weeks is a long time for a room to stay intact.

Does a bedroom on national television help or distort the way people picture this town? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.