Jimmy Kimmel celebrated 4,000 episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! hours after a report claimed the late night show was ending after 25 seasons.
“It’s a lot of shows. According to the White House, it’s too many shows,” Kimmel, 58, joked during his Tuesday, September 8, monologue. “This show premiered after the Super Bowl in January 2003. There are those who said we would never last this long. There are even those who used the regulatory might of the FCC to unconstitutionally try to make sure we didn’t last this long.”
The comedian continued, “But we did it the hard way, Brendan, and we’re still here!”
Kimmel was referring to FCC chair Brendan Carr, who previously pressured ABC to take action against the host over comments he made about the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Although his show was temporarily suspended on September 17, 2025, Kimmel was able to return to the airwaves less than a week later.
During Tuesday’s opening monologue, Kimmel took aim at President Donald Trump and addressed some of his biggest headlines from the summer.
“Donald Trump and I have one thing in common: We both accomplished nothing all summer long,” he said. “It’s really hard to believe how much stupidity they manage to pump out day after day after day. I go away for one summer, he does enough crazy stuff to fill a whole ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ parody song.”
Kimmel’s latest show came hours after a report surfaced claiming the 25th season of Jimmy Kimmel Live! — which premiered on ABC Tuesday night — will “wrap with Kimmel’s final episode” airing in May 2027. The network later squashed the rumor.
“This information is inaccurate,” an ABC Entertainment spokesperson told Us on Tuesday. “Any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative.”
Earlier this summer, 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. “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.”
The co-head writer and executive producer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! added, “But as his wife, I really would like him to be able to not do the show anymore so he could relax.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs on ABC weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET.
