Stephen Colbert took the stage one last time at the Ed Sullivan Theater on Thursday, May 21, 2026, to close out The Late Show franchise that debuted in 1993. The marquee was lit up for the final broadcast and the crowd gave the 62-year-old host a standing ovation as fans gathered outside in support.
Colbert, who took over as host in September 2015, presided over a farewell week of surprise guests and callbacks: David Byrne joined him earlier in the week for a performance of "Burning Down the House," Bruce Springsteen made a cameo the night before the finale, Tom Hanks gifted Colbert a typewriter in the days leading up to the last show, and Jon Stewart arrived with two massage chairs and arranged a surprise serenade from Andra Day. Colbert had been joined last week by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver, and both Kimmel and Fallon planned to air reruns on Thursday.
The network itself announced the end of The Late Show last July, saying CBS would retire the franchise at the end of the season. The statement called the decision "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night," ending a program that had been on the air for more than 30 years and had survived multiple hosts and eras — David Letterman alone ran the show for 22 years before Colbert.
Onstage during the week, Letterman mixed razzmatazz with brass: he reminded the audience that he had helped rebuild the theater and joked about how that effort dovetailed with Colbert's run, and he stressed that while a program can be taken away, a performer's voice cannot. Colbert and Letterman even hurled pieces of furniture from the set off the roof of the theater in a sendoff that felt both celebratory and a little anarchic.
The week’s tone also carried a sharper edge. Jon Stewart praised Colbert for holding himself with grace through the process, and Fallon told him he found the way it ended "odd" and that he was bummed because he had wanted more time alongside Colbert. Those reactions underscored the gap between the onstage camaraderie and the announcement that precipitated the farewell: CBS framed the closure as a balance-sheet choice, while some viewers and critics have suggested other motives.
That contradiction was the week’s tension. The parties onstage offered friendship, gifts and music; the network offered a terse, financial explanation in July. The show that began in 1993 and survived three decades ended not with a slow fade but with a concentrated celebration, a string of big-name appearances and an unresolved question for the industry about what comes next for late-night institutions.
Colbert closed by thanking the colleagues who had been his models and friends, saying he was glad to know and love them, and the theater rose to applaud. The most consequential question left by the final night is not who sang or what gifts were exchanged but whether the network calculus that retired a 33-year franchise will reshape late night the way the hosts reshaped it — and whether viewers will get another iteration that feels the same. For now, Colbert walked offstage with the standing ovation still ringing and a run that will be measured in decades, not just nights.
