Colbert stacks final Late Show with Fallon, Kimmel, Letterman, Obama

Stephen Colbert is turning the end of The Late Show into a parade of late-night history, with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver set for a May 11 group interview and David Letterman due back on May 14. Barack Obama, Tom Hanks, Pedro Pascal and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are also among the final stretch of guests, giving the CBS show’s farewell the feel of a deliberately staged event rather than a quiet sign-off.

CBS confirmed on July 17, 2025 that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would end in May 2026 and retire the franchise, saying the move was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” The network said the decision was not tied to performance, content or other matters at Paramount. Colbert later made the finale date public during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in January 2026, and the final episode is scheduled for Thursday, May 21, 2026.

The guest list reflects how much late night has become a closed circle of surviving broadcast personalities. Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers and Oliver all worked with Colbert on the Strike Force Five podcast during the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, and their reunion on The Late Show folds a labor-era side project back into the franchise’s final run. CBS is also lining up special segments, including a Kids Pitch bit with Jenny Slate, Liam Neeson, John Oliver, Isa Briones, Taylor Dearden and The Avett Brothers, plus a Broadway performance featuring Annaleigh Ashford, Christopher Jackson, Bernadette Peters, Ben Platt and Patrick Wilson.

Letterman’s appearance carries its own institutional weight. He launched the CBS version of The Late Show in 1993 after moving from NBC, and Colbert took over in September 2015. Letterman has been openly critical of CBS’s handling of the cancellation, later calling the network “lying weasels” and saying the company did not treat Colbert properly.

The politics around the shutdown have also sharpened scrutiny. CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, was pursuing Federal Communications Commission approval for its sale to Skydance at the same time Colbert was frequently mocking Donald Trump on air. The FCC later approved Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition on July 24, 2025 after commitments that included appointing an ombudsman to review complaints of bias and ending DEI programs at Skydance and Paramount.

For all the star power, the closing run also reads like a referendum on broadcast late night itself. Industry coverage has tracked rising production costs and audience migration to digital video and streaming, squeezing a format that once dominated the culture. CBS said Colbert’s show was the most-watched late-night program on U.S. broadcast television when the cancellation was announced, but the network is still ending the franchise’s CBS run that began in 1993.