Stephen Colbert arrives for the Saturday Night Live 50: The Anniversary Special at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, U.S., February 16, 2025. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
(New York, New York) – Stephen Colbert has announced that the final episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will air on May 21, bringing an end to one of television’s longest-running late-night franchises.
Colbert, who has hosted the program since 2015, revealed the date during a taping of Late Night With Seth Meyers, where he appeared as a guest. The episode is scheduled to air Tuesday night.
CBS confirmed last July that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would conclude in May, ending more than three decades of Late Show history that began in 1993 under original host David Letterman. At the time of the announcement, no final air date had been set.
“I’m not being replaced – this is all just going away,” Colbert told his audience in July, emphasizing that the cancellation marked the end of The Late Show franchise on CBS.
The decision came weeks after CBS’s parent company, Paramount, reached a $16 million settlement with Donald Trump over allegations of deceptive editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Around the same time, Paramount was seeking federal approval for an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media. Colbert publicly criticized the settlement, calling it a “big fat bribe” shortly before the cancellation was announced.
CBS has maintained that the move was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and said it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
The announcement sparked backlash from viewers, entertainers, and politicians. Senator Bernie Sanders questioned the timing, writing on X that Colbert was fired shortly after criticizing the deal. Trump, meanwhile, celebrated the news on Truth Social, saying he “absolutely love[d]” that Colbert was leaving the air.
In the months since the cancellation was revealed, Colbert has continued to criticize the Trump administration. Reflecting last week on the president’s second term, Colbert said Trump had “monopolized our attention every second of every minute of every hour of every day,” adding that “some new Trump horror” was constantly dominating headlines.
“The last year has been exhausting,” Colbert said. “And not just for us.”
