Stephen Colbert Returns to Late Night as Jimmy Kimmel's Guest After The Late Show Exit

Stephen Colbert is heading back to late night, just not to his old desk. He’ll appear as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday, September 15th, marking his first late-night TV appearance since he wrapped his run as host of The Late Show. The timing is doing a lot of heavy lifting here: the episode airs the night after the 2026 Emmys, where both Colbert and Kimmel are nominated for Outstanding Talk Series.

Rather than running a standard awards-season rivalry, the two hosts have spent the past few weeks openly rooting for each other. Kimmel took out a billboard declaring he was“voting for Stephen,”and Colbert responded by posting on Instagram, urging viewers to throw their support behind Kimmel. Kimmel’s only public comment on the booking so far:“Maybe I’ll let him sit here, I don’t know.”

The appearance also raises the question every Colbert fan has been asking since he left The Late Show: what comes next? This guest spot doesn’t answer that, but it does put him back in the late-night spotlight on one of the biggest weeks of the TV calendar. So we have to ask: are you Team Colbert or Team Kimmel when the Emmy goes home with one of them?