Jimmy Kimmel is staying with Disney a little longer.
The late-night host has signed a one-year extension to stay on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” through May 2027, a person familiar with the deal told Business Insider on Monday.
The renewed contract comes just months after Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air following backlash over his comments about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a controversy that sidelined him for nearly a week and drew widespread concerns over the First Amendment.
In the episode following Kirk’s death in September, among other quips, Kimmel commented on how the president quickly pivoted from talking to reporters about Kirk’s death to discussing the construction of the White House’s new ballroom.
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody he called a friend,” Kimmel said on his show. “This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
Brendan Carr, the FCC commissioner, publicly condemned Kimmel’s comments and warned that affiliate broadcast licenses could be subject to review. Sinclair and Nexstar, which own local TV stations, said that they would preempt Kimmel’s show. ABC announced that it would suspend Kimmel’s show nationwide “indefinitely.”
Kimmel was reinstated within a week upon an uproar of support from the entertainment industry. Nexstar and Sinclair ended their boycott of the show soon after.
Kimmel himself has also frequently hinted that he may be leaving his late-night show behind. In 2024, he told the Los Angeles Times in an interview that his current deal with Disney may be his “final contract.”
“I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now,” Kimmel told the LA Times. “Each time I think that, and then it turns out to not be the case.”
Under the new deal, Kimmel’s show, which has been on air since 2003, may shape up to be one of the longest-running late-night shows. Kimmel’s show has now been running longer than “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
