National Geographic has dropped the trailer for Chilean Mine Rescue: Race Against Time, a three-part series about the 2010 San José mine collapse that trapped 33 men nearly half a mile beneath the Atacama Desert for 69 days. All three episodes screen back-to-back from 20:30 CAT on Monday 28 September 2026, on National Geographic (DStv 181 and StarTimes 220) across Africa, with South African viewers also able to stream the series on Disney+.

What sets this retelling apart is the material. The series includes cell phone footage the miners shot themselves while underground, plus interviews with survivors, their families and the rescue teams. Several participants are speaking publicly for the first time outside Chilean media. Jeff Kofman, ABC's international correspondent and the first international journalist on site, also appears.

For anyone fuzzy on the details: the mine collapsed on 5 August 2010, and for 17 days the men were presumed dead. When drillers finally made contact, the operation shifted into an engineering race involving Chilean specialists and experts from around the world. On 13 October 2010, the rescue capsule brought the first miner to the surface, and an estimated one billion people tuned in to watch the men come up one by one — one of the biggest live TV audiences ever recorded.

The series comes from Blast Films, the Emmy-winning production company behind the Race Against Time franchise. Previous entries include Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, which took the Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Historical Documentary, and Tsunami: Race Against Time, which won the Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. Chloe Campbell and James Parris direct.

So why flag it on a travel site? Because the Atacama is one of Chile's genuine bucket-list regions, and this series is likely to send viewers down a rabbit hole about the desert, the mining towns around Copiapó and the communities shaped by the disaster. If the story hooks you, the landscapes that frame it — salt flats, high-altitude lagoons, the clearest stargazing skies on the planet — are very much visitable, and a stop in the region pairs naturally with a northern Chile itinerary. The series itself promises a fuller picture of what the miners and their families went through, told with footage that has never been seen before.

Mark the date if the story matters to you: Monday 28 September 2026, with the full series in one sitting. Details come via Getaway South Africa.