Kimmel Goes Dark for Colbert’s Final Late Show

Jimmy Kimmel is stepping aside for his friend’s final bow. Jimmy Kimmel Live! will go dark on Thursday, May 21 — the night The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs its last episode on CBS — with ABC opting to run a repeat in its place. The decision, first reported by LateNighter, is being made “out of deference to Colbert’s sendoff.”

New episodes of Kimmel’s show will air as scheduled Monday through Wednesday, May 18–20. But Thursday night belongs to Colbert.

It’s a gesture Kimmel has made exactly once before. On May 20, 2015, he pulled a new episode the night David Letterman signed off from the same CBS franchise. “I have too much respect for Dave to do anything that would distract viewers from watching his final show,” Kimmel said at the time. That instinct — to get out of the way when history is being made — is apparently still his instinct now.

A Friendship Forged Under Fire

Kimmel and Colbert have been competitors at 11:35 p.m. for years, but their relationship runs much deeper than ratings. When CBS announced the cancellation last July, Kimmel didn’t stay quiet. He took to Instagram Stories to post: “Love you Stephen. F— you and all your Sheldons CBS.” He also put up a billboard in Los Angeles encouraging Emmy voters to back Colbert for Outstanding Talk Series — a category The Late Show went on to win. At the ceremony, Colbert thanked CBS for “giving us the privilege to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we’re no longer doing the show.”

The two also go back to the early COVID days, when they worked together during the pandemic, and to the summer of 2023, when the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes brought late night to a standstill. Kimmel, Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver launched the Strike Force Five podcast during that period, donating proceeds to support their out-of-work employees. Now, all five are reuniting on the May 11 episode of The Late Show for one last reprise before the curtain comes down.

David Letterman — the man who built the franchise Colbert is now closing — will also stop by for the May 14 episode. Letterman, 79, hosted Late Night on NBC from 1982 to 1993 before moving to CBS, where he launched The Late Show in 1993. Colbert took the desk in September 2015 and has been there for 11 seasons since.

Jimmy Fallon, for his part, has already been paying tribute. Back in March, he serenaded Colbert with a surprise rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” — a moment that landed exactly as intended.

The Cancellation That Shocked Late Night

CBS announced it was ending The Late Show franchise entirely in July 2025, calling it “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and stating it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” The timing, though, raised eyebrows everywhere. The announcement came just days after Colbert called Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement of Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview a “big fat bribe” — a settlement that many legal experts had already dismissed as frivolous. It also landed as Paramount was working to finalize its $8 billion merger with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, which the FCC ultimately approved in August 2025.

Numerous media figures criticized the cancellation as a capitulation to political pressure. Paramount pushed back firmly, reiterating the financial rationale. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a franchise that launched in 1993 ends on May 21.

What replaces it isn’t exactly a comfort. Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, currently airing at 12:35 a.m., will move into the 11:35 slot — a show Allen leases airtime for rather than one CBS produces, and one that’s been widely criticized as sanitized and cheaply produced.

As for Colbert, 61, he hasn’t announced what’s next — but he’s not exactly sitting still. The lifelong Lord of the Rings devotee is developing a new film in the franchise alongside his son and Warner Bros. Nearly three decades of political satire, and his next chapter involves Middle-earth. Honestly, that tracks.

NBC’s Tonight Show had not announced any plans to pull its May 21 episode as of press time — meaning Fallon will be on the air while Colbert takes his final bow. But Kimmel won’t be. Some gestures speak for themselves.