The third season of the American music competition television show The X Factor premiered on Fox on September 11, 2013, and ended on December 19, 2013.

New for this season is the removal of the boot camp and judges' houses rounds of the competition which have been replaced with a new middle section, more reminiscent of the live shows.

[10] Eventually, Cowell confirmed via his Twitter account that the full judging panel would be announced on May 20, 2013, with auditions beginning the next day.

[11] On that same day, Fox confirmed that Destiny's Child member and judge on the 2011 series of the UK show (who previously replaced Dannii Minogue), Kelly Rowland, and Mexican singer and former La Voz... México judge Paulina Rubio had been hired to replace Reid and Spears.

[12] In addition to having online auditions, it was announced at the conclusion of season 2 that auditions for season 3 would be held throughout the country in Charleston, South Carolina; Denver, Colorado; Long Island, New York; Los Angeles, California and New Orleans, Louisiana.

After the Deliberation and Reveal Stages, but before the start of the four-chair challenge, the judges found out their categories and they are as follows: Rowland has the Overs, Rubio has the Boys, Lovato has the Girls and Cowell has the groups.

For this season of The X Factor, Cowell confirmed that the boot camp and judges' houses sections of the competition, which traditionally followed the audition rounds, had been dropped and replaced with a brand new stage called "The Four-Chair challenge", which took place at the Shrine Auditorium and was filmed over 2 days in September 2013.

Speaking on the change, he said "It [boot camp and Judges' houses] was the one element of the show I wasn't happy with, and it looked too similar to what everybody else is doing."

He went on to describe the new "middle section" as "really dramatic, very tough on us and the contestants, and very high pressure", and compared the new round as similar to the live shows.

[16] Groups Restless Road, Sweet Suspense, and Forever in Your Mind all consist of contestants who originally auditioned as soloists.

[28] Paulina Rubio,[29] Mary J. Blige, Lea Michele,[30] Leona Lewis, Pitbull and One Direction performed on the finale.

[citation needed] Carlos Guevara, the act that received the fewest votes from the public re-vote in week 2, was eliminated at the start of the November 13 episode.

[59] The semi-final did not feature a final showdown and instead the act with the fewest public votes, Restless Road, was automatically eliminated.