Stephen Colbert will close out eleven seasons of “The Late Show” next week with a guest lineup that reads like a roll call of his closest allies — Jon Stewart, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen and David Byrne — as the CBS franchise prepares to go dark permanently on May 21.
The final week’s schedule runs four nights. Monday, May 18 revisits the show’s archive in what Colbert has promised is “not a clip show.” Tuesday brings Stewart, Colbert’s former boss and mentor at “The Daily Show,” alongside filmmaker Steven Spielberg and a performance from Byrne. Wednesday features Colbert turning the tables and taking “The Colbert Questionert” himself, with Springsteen performing. The series finale airs Thursday.
Stewart sharpened the political dimension of the show’s cancellation the moment CBS announced it last July, arguing that the answer to why the show was ending lay not in any smoking gun or financial spreadsheet, but in what he called the “fear and pre-compliance gripping all of America’s institutions.” Stewart’s appearance in the final week carries that subtext explicitly into the goodbye.
CBS announced the cancellation in July 2025, just three days after Colbert called a $16 million settlement that Paramount paid to resolve President Trump’s lawsuit against “60 Minutes” a “big fat bribe.” Senator Elizabeth Warren publicly questioned the timing, saying America deserved to know if the cancellation was politically motivated. CBS insisted the decision was purely financial, citing the show’s reported losses.
Colbert, for his part, said the arrangement he struck with his bosses last summer included the freedom to keep jabbing — at the network, at its new owners’ relationship with the president, and at reports that the show was losing $40 million annually. He called the number inflated. He kept swinging anyway.
After the finale, Colbert plans to co-write a “Lord of the Rings” film with his son. CBS will replace the 11:35 p.m. slot with “Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen,” a time-buy arrangement that effectively ends the network’s investment in late-night programming. David Letterman, who built the franchise Colbert inherited in 2015, recently called CBS “lying weasels” over the cancellation. The Ed Sullivan Theater goes dark Thursday night.
