“Saturday Night Live” will open its 2026 calendar with Finn Wolfhard hosting the Jan. 17 episode, with A$AP Rocky set to perform as musical guest. The booking was revealed on air during the show’s Dec. 20 Christmas episode, then echoed in a post from the program’s official account shortly after.
The Jan. 17 slot marks Wolfhard’s first time hosting the long-running sketch series. He has already brushed up against the show’s mythology on screen: he appeared as an NBC page in Jason Reitman’s film “Saturday Night,” which dramatizes the tense lead-up to the 1975 premiere. When asked in a past interview what he’d want to do in Studio 8H, Wolfhard pointed to a specific throwback, calling the “Underground Rock Festival” bit “an excuse to basically name a bunch of random bands” and adding, “I think that sketch would be really funny to bring back.”
NBC’s timing lines up with Wolfhard’s busiest stretch of publicity in years. Netflix has set “Stranger Things” Season 5 in a three-part rollout, with the final episode arriving globally at 5 p.m. PT on Dec. 31. The streamer has also promoted a feature-length finale: 2 hours and 5 minutes, paired with limited fan screenings in theaters in the U.S. and Canada starting the same evening.
“SNL” returns from its winter hiatus on Jan. 17, then faces another interruption weeks later as NBC shifts into coverage of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, scheduled to run Feb. 6-22. The show heads into that restart with a reshaped cast after high-profile exits and new featured players introduced earlier in Season 51.
