Following a high-profile spat with President Donald Trump and a smaller-scale repeat incident, ABC has decided on the future of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The show’s host and namesake, Jimmy Kimmel, has officially extended his contract with the network through the 2026-2027 season. That means Jimmy Kimmel Live! fans will be getting at least one more year of the late-night show.
The reported renewal, which broke via Bloomberg, comes after an eventful few months for Kimmel and the series. In September, ABC suspended Kimmel and took the show off the air following comments made about the discourse surrounding the identity and ideology of Charlie Kirk’s assassin that received attention from President Donald Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
The suspension was lifted after backlash and boycotts from viewers, and Kimmel returned to record viewership numbers. Kimmel and his fans assumed the worst when Kimmel was taken off the air. After all, it came soon after his friend and ratings rival, Stephen Colbert, received news that The Late Show would end in May, an announcement that came after his network, CBS, settled a lawsuit with the President involving an edited 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, who was running against Trump in the election at the time. Trump was quick to celebrate Colbert’s cancellation on social media.
In November, Trump once again took to social media to criticize Kimmel following his return. This time, he chastised the comedian as having “NO TALENT” and “VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS” after Kimmel delivered material about the situation in Washington surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Jimmy Kimmel’s Future on ABC Has Been Decided
Following his suspension and return, Kimmel appeared as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There, he shared how he learned about his suspension.
“It was about 3:00. We tape our show at 4:30. I’m in my office, typing away as I usually do. I get a phone call, it’s ABC. They say they want to talk to me,” he said. “This is unusual. As far as I knew, they didn’t even know I was doing a show previous to this, so I have like five people who work in my office with me, so the only private place to go is the bathroom.”
He continued, “So I go into the bathroom. And I’m on the phone with the ABC executives and they say, ‘Listen, we wanna take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air tonight,”
Ultimately, the suspension only lasted a few days, and Kimmel received an outpouring of support from peers and fans. “It was like a DUI in L.A., three days in jail where I couldn’t say anything,” he joked. “I just had to sit quiet and make a lot of phone calls and take a lot of phone calls. You [Colbert] were very kind to call me. … I did hear from literally everyone I have ever met.”
Some people may be surprised by ABC’s decision to renew Kimmel’s contract. With one network seemingly getting out of the late-night game, the easiest and most obvious thing for ABC to do following all of this controversy would have been to let Kimmel’s contract expire in May so that he could say his goodbyes around the same time that Colbert would be saying his. That said, it’s a short-term extension, being only one year longer, which means Kimmel and ABC will be back in negotiations before too long, with a chance to extend further or end their relationship one year hence.