ABC is responding to claims Jimmy Kimmel is preparing to end his late night show at the end of next season after 24 years on air.
“This information is inaccurate — any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative,” an ABC Entertainment spokesperson told Us on Tuesday, September 8, after Page Six and TMZ reported on the claims the same day.
Page Six reported that the new season of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, set to premiere on ABC on Tuesday, September 15, “would wrap with Kimmel’s final episode” in May 2027, while TMZ stated that a source alleged “there is talk among the staff that Jimmy has been working on pitching other shows and podcasts around town.”
Us has reached out to a representative for Kimmel, 58, for comment.
The fate of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, has been decided after it was pulled off the air. “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the Walt Disney Company said in a statement […]
The reports come less than a month after Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNearney, opened up about her husband’s eventual retirement.
“It definitely appeals to me for the nervous system of the household,” McNearney, 48, said during the August 24 episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast when she was asked about the prospect.
The TV writer and producer, who serves as a co-head writer and executive producer on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, continued at the time, “I feel like Jimmy has a fly rod in one hand and a torch in the other right now. It’s like he deserves to go out there and just be on the river and relax, but I also want him to keep fighting. And I feel this sense of desire to not quit because I think what he’s doing is incredibly important right now. And yes, I know we’re doing it in a vacuum, but I think it’s giving people a feeling of, like, their voice is heard, and I think it’s important.”
She concluded, “But as his wife, I really would like him to be able to not do the show anymore so he could relax.”
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The late night show, which first aired in 2003 and stands as ABC’s longest-running current talk show, attracted significant media attention one year ago after it was abruptly pulled from broadcast following Kimmel’s comments regarding the death of Charlie Kirk. (The late Kirk, a right-wing political activist, was assassinated at Utah Valley University at the age of 31 on September 10, 2025.)
During the September 15 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host accused conservatives of reaching “new lows” by trying to claim that Tyler Robinson, who is accused of Kirk’s murder, was part of a far-left movement.
“The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said at the time. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
At one point, Jimmy Kimmel was done with hosting his ABC late-night talk show and hoped the network would cancel it. “I didn’t know what I was doing, and I would pray that they canceled the show sometimes,” the comedian, 57, revealed on the Wednesday, October 22, edition of Ted Danson’s “Everybody Knows Your Name” […]
ABC and the Walt Disney Company, who own the network, suspended the show “indefinitely,” however the suspension lasted less than one week. In June, former Disney CEO Bob Iger said during an interview with the Financial Times that his former organization “thought [Kimmel’s joke] was in bad taste.”
He told the outlet at the time, “We just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment.”
