CBS is canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert announced the news directly to his studio audience during the taping of his July 17 episode. “Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night,” he said. “Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May.” Watch Colbert’s full message below.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season. We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire the Late Show franchise at that time,” reads a statement shared with several media outlets, including The New York Times, and credited to CBS executives. The network further explained the cancellation as “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
The Late Show’s inception came in 1993, when David Letterman was passed over in favor of Jay Leno to succeed Johnny Carson as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. Letterman’s 22-year tenure yielded some of late-night TV’s most enduring musical moments. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2002, longtime friend Warren Zevon gave his final live performance on Letterman, where he played “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.” And, in 2011 and 2014, respectively, TV on the Radio and Future Islands delivered two definitive blog-era relics with their Late Show renditions of “Wolf Like Me” and “Seasons (Waiting on You).”
Colbert assumed the Late Show mantle from Letterman in 2015. Under his tenure, the Ed Sullivan Theater played host to a wide range of pop stars, up-and-coming indie acts, and established legends, among them—in the last two years alone—Model/Actriz, Wednesday, Pavement, Father John Misty, Arooj Aftab, Kacey Musgraves, Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy, Bikini Kill, Jessica Pratt, Billie Eilish, Tyla, Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman, De La Soul, and André 3000. Jon Batiste also served as Colbert’s bandleader until his departure in 2022.
Revisit the 2015 column “Letterman’s Musical Legacy.”
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