Coronation Street icon Dev Alahan will be leaving the Cobbles in upcoming scenes, as he travels to India to be with his family and help support them

Coronation Street icon Dev Alahan is set to leave the Cobbles after getting some worrying news.

Dev has been on the Cobbles for over two decades. Played by Jimmi Harkishin, Dev has been at the centre of some huge storylines on the ITV soap – but he will pack his bags and head to India in upcoming scenes. In new scenes, Dev will find out that his aunt Gita has had a fall and will head to India to be with his family. He will leave behind his partner Bernie – played by Jane Hazlegrove – and his children Aadi and Asha.

When he tells Bernie about the news, she tells him she wants to go with him – but will she? Aadi, meanwhile, has been given charge of the kebab shop and the corner shop, but when will Dev come back? A Coronation Street spokesperson has confirmed Dev will return to our screens in the spring.

The new storyline comes amid plans for episodes of the ITV soap to be slashed. Coronation Street will air for the rest of this year on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for an hour. However, from 2026, it will air half an hour episodes daily.

Dev has been supporting Bernie

This will mean that Coronation Street will air half an hour less every week, with Emmerdale suffering the same fate. The hour long episode of Emmerdale on a Thursday will be made into just half an hour from January next year.

Speaking about the news, Kevin Lygo, ITV’s Managing Director of Media and Entertainment, said: “This new commissioning pattern will mean five hours of soaps a week, rather than the current six. We are conscious this will have an impact for the people who work on the soaps team. We will support our colleagues in ITV Studios as they work through these changes, and will do what we can to mitigate the impact on our people. These changes are motivated by doing what we believe is best for the continuing success of these important programmes in the long term. They also create headroom in the overall programme budget for investment in programming that can help ITV grow reach in a very very competitive market.”

Dev has been at the centre of some big storylines over the year, but most recently, he has been supporting his partner Bernie as she deals with the devastating loss of her son Paul. Paul died from motor neurone disease in sad episodes which aired last year.

Elsewhere, Aadi and Amy’s romance seems to be blossoming as he supports her through the hard times. Aadi and Amy have shared multiple scenes, but will they end up making it work? Meanwhile, Asha has been working as a student paramedic and was on hand to help when Mason Radcliffe was tragically stabbed by his brothers earlier this year.