The trailer is out for Chilean Mine Rescue: Race Against Time, National Geographic's three-part retelling of the 2010 San José mine disaster, and it premieres on Monday 28 September 2026 with all three episodes airing back-to-back from 20:30 CAT on National Geographic (DStv 181 and StarTimes 220). South African viewers can also stream it on Disney+.

The story it covers remains one of the most gripping of the century. On 5 August 2010, a collapse at the San José copper-gold mine in Chile's Atacama Desert left 33 miners trapped nearly half a mile underground. For 17 days nobody knew if they were alive. When contact was finally made, Chilean engineers joined forces with drillers and specialists from around the world to reach them, and the men spent 69 days below before the first rescue capsule surfaced on 13 October 2010. Roughly a billion people watched it happen live — one of the biggest TV audiences ever recorded.

What sets this series apart is the material it has access to. It includes cell phone footage the miners shot themselves while trapped, plus interviews with survivors, their families and the rescuers. Several participants speak publicly for the first time outside Chilean media, and the line-up includes Jeff Kofman, ABC's international correspondent and the first international journalist on site. Produced by Emmy-winning Blast Films, the series traces the collapse, the improvised society the miners built underground, the engineering race to reach them, and the aftermath.

It's also the newest entry in Nat Geo's Emmy-winning Race Against Time franchise, following Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time (which won the Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Historical Documentary) and Tsunami: Race Against Time (Emmy winner for Outstanding Historical Documentary). Chloe Campbell and James Parris direct.

For travellers, it's a reason to look again at a region many people simply drive through. The Atacama — the driest non-polar desert on Earth — has become one of South America's most rewarding destinations, with San Pedro de Atacama as its base for salt flats, geysers and some of the world's clearest stargazing. The San José mine near Copiapó, site of the disaster, is a sobering piece of that landscape, and the series will give context to anyone heading north through Chile's mining country. Expect the show to spark fresh interest in Atacama trips when it lands on Disney+.