Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show is set for Thursday, May 21, and Jimmy Kimmel is making room for it. Kimmel said he will not air a new episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that night, a gesture he said is meant to avoid distracting viewers from Colbert’s farewell.
New episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! are still scheduled for May 18, May 19 and May 20 on ABC, but Kimmel will step aside on May 21 as Colbert signs off. The move echoes Kimmel’s choice in 2015, when he also stayed off the air opposite David Letterman’s final Late Show.
The decision gives Colbert’s last week on CBS extra weight. Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver are all scheduled to appear on The Late Show on May 11, and Letterman is set to return on May 14, adding another layer to a farewell run already packed with familiar late-night faces. Colbert took over the show from Letterman in 2015.
That end date landed after CBS canceled The Late Show in July, citing financial pressures. The network’s decision closed the book on a franchise that has become one of television’s most durable late-night fixtures, even as its final stretch has turned into a kind of industry reunion.
Kimmel has made the reason plain. He said he has too much respect for Letterman to do anything that would pull attention away from his final show, adding that he would probably be crying all day anyway, which would make it hard to work. He also told Colbert, “It’s not right,” after saying he had never been happier to lose the Emmy when the two crossed paths more than two weeks ago.
Colbert, for his part, has treated the end of his run less like a shutdown than a sendoff. He told Kimmel, “To know you well is to admire you deeply,” and said that after more than 20 years of knowing each other, the two had only really become close in recent years. He added that the more he got to know Kimmel, the more he admired him “as a leader,” before noting, “here's something I didn't know, is that you're funny!”
The timing also carries a familiar kind of late-night symbolism. Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers and Oliver joined forces in 2023 on the Strike Force Five podcast while their shows were shut down during the writers strike, and Kimmel and Colbert traded guest spots in September, with Kimmel appearing on The Late Show and Colbert visiting Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The May 11 lineup and the May 14 Letterman appearance now make Colbert’s final week look less like a single goodbye than a full-cast curtain call.
For viewers asking when is Stephen Colbert's last show, the answer is already fixed: Thursday, May 21. Kimmel has made his own decision just as clear. He is leaving the night open.
