Nine chief executive Hugh Marks has hinted that Love Island Australia will return for a third season in 2021.

The future of the show, which first aired down under in 2018, has been called into question after failing to get an official renewal before the coronavirus pandemic made it impractical for this year anyway.

Speaking to investors on Friday, however, Marks revealed that the show would be "back" in 2021 after the pandemic has passed.

"We had neither the Australian Love Island nor any of the offshore versions [which] have all been postponed due to COVID," he said, according to TV Tonight.

"So we were always going to get some audience loss through that period against next year. Now we could have gone and overspent and bought a whole bunch of programs to to fill in that loss.

"But we took the view that we're better off focusing on long term profitability, long term consistency. So those are shows that will be back as we go into calendar year '21."

The first season of Love Island Australia was given a run on ITV2 in the UK earlier this summer and was a ratings hit, averaging around a million viewers for the channel.