ABC is responding to claims Jimmy Kimmel is preparing to end his late night show after 25 seasons.
“This information is inaccurate,” an ABC Entertainment spokesperson told Us on Tuesday, September 8. “Any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative.”
Earlier in the day, Page Six reported that the 25th season of Jimmy Kimmel Live! — which premiered on ABC on Tuesday night — will “wrap with Kimmel’s final episode” airing in May 2027, while a source later told TMZ that “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 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.”
The late night show, which debuted in 2003 and stands as ABC’s longest-running current talk show, attracted significant media attention in September 2025 when it was abruptly pulled from broadcast following Kimmel’s comments regarding the death of Charlie Kirk. (Kirk, a right-wing political activist, was fatally shot at Utah Valley University at the age of 31 earlier that month.)
During the episode in question, the host accused conservatives of reaching “new lows” by trying to claim that Tyler Robinson, who is accused of murdering Kirk, 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.”
ABC and the Walt Disney Company, which owns the network, suspended the show “indefinitely.” However, it was back on the air less than one week later.
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.”
