ABC is disputing a report that Jimmy Kimmel Live will end after the season that premieres Tuesday night, with Jimmy Kimmel’s contract running out in May 2027 and not being extended. The report surfaced Tuesday, hours before the host’s first new episode since the summer hiatus.
The reason being floated is the part that reaches beyond the show itself. The sources behind the report point to cost cutting rather than politics as the likely factor, tied to CEO Josh D’Amaro’s push to restructure the company and trim expenses, a push that has already included early-retirement packages for some longtime executives. That framing puts the show’s future in the same budget conversation as the rest of the company, not in the feud with the White House that defined Kimmel’s last year.
ABC Entertainment’s response was direct. “This information is inaccurate,” a spokesperson said, adding that any reports about the show’s future are purely speculative at this point.
A One-Year Deal Instead Of Three
The uncertainty traces back to December 2025, when Disney extended Kimmel for a single year through May 2027 rather than the three-year renewals he had signed in the past. Kimmel announced it himself on Instagram as “another no-talent year” and later explained the shorter term by saying everything was too tumultuous for anything longer. In a Vulture profile published in June, he said ABC had not yet opened talks about what happens after May 2027, and that in previous years those negotiations would already have been underway by that point.
Kimmel has also spent years publicly predicting his own exit. He told the Los Angeles Times in February 2024 that he believed his contract at the time would be his last, then signed again anyway. He has hosted the show since January 2003, and at 58 he is second only to Johnny Carson for the longest tenure hosting a single late-night talk show on a broadcast network.
The Year After The Suspension
The report lands almost exactly a year after ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air in September 2025 over Kimmel’s remarks about the killing of Charlie Kirk, after Nexstar and Sinclair preempted the show and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly criticized the host. The suspension lasted less than a week. Kimmel’s return episode drew 6.26 million viewers in preliminary Nielsen numbers, the most-watched regularly scheduled episode in the show’s history, and Bob Iger later defended the suspension while denying it was politically motivated.
The fallout has not ended. Disney is now suing the FCC over the early review of its ABC station licenses, a fight that traces directly back to the Kimmel episode.
There is also chatter inside the show. Staffers have reportedly been discussing Kimmel pitching other shows and podcasts around town, which fits with his own comments in recent months about eventually stepping away from the desk.
What The Season Ahead Looks Like
The new season opens Tuesday, September 8, after a summer in which Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, Rosie O’Donnell and Jelly Roll took turns behind the desk. O’Donnell was the highest-rated substitute of the group, averaging 2.17 million total viewers across her run.
Whatever ABC decides, the field around Kimmel has thinned. CBS announced in July 2025 that it would retire The Late Show with Stephen Colbert franchise in May 2026, calling that a purely financial decision as well. If the report holds, the 2026-27 season would be the last for Jimmy Kimmel Live, closing a 24-year run that began in January 2003. If ABC’s denial holds, Kimmel will be negotiating another short deal sometime in the coming months, exactly as he has done before.
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