CBS is axing The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in May 2026, the host told an audience at a taping on Thursday.
The announcement came two days after Colbert spoke out against Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, settling a lawsuit with U.S. President Donald Trump over a 60 Minutes story.
“I am offended,” Colbert said in his monologue on Monday night. “I don’t know if anything — anything — will repair my trust in this company. But, just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”
Colbert said the technical name in legal circles for the deal was “big fat bribe.”
Paramount and CBS executives said in a statement that the cancellation “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Colbert winning his time slot
The most recent ratings from Nielsen show that Colbert is winning his time slot, with about 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes. It also said his late-night show was the only one to gain viewers so far this year.
And this week, The Late Show was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding talk show for the sixth time. It also won a Peabody Award in 2021.
The news of the show being cancelled was also announced in a press release sent from CBS with a link to a clip of Colbert’s announcement on Instagram.
The comedian and TV personality began by telling the audience he was sharing something he learned the night before: “Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May … it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
Colbert’s “bribe” comment referred to the pending sale of Paramount to Skydance Media, a deal that needs Trump administration approval.
Critics of the $16-million US deal that ended Trump’s lawsuit over the newsmagazine’s editing of its interview last fall with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris suggested it was primarily to clear a hurdle to that sale.
Colbert followed Jon Stewart’s attack of the Trump settlement a week earlier. Stewart works for Comedy Central, also owned by Paramount.
Colbert took over The Late Show from David Letterman in 2015, after becoming a big name in comedy and news satire working with Stewart on The Daily Show.
