The volume of musical guests on late-night television is set to decrease again in 2026 after it emerged that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is reducing its number of performance slots.
Deadline has confirmed that JKL! will cut the number of musical performances each week to around two. We hear this is not a hard number and the show has not always had a musical slot on each episode, but the plan is to reduce it.
This week, however, will see three musical artists performing: folk artist Molly Tuttle is on the show tonight, Debbie Gibson is sitting in with The Cletones on Wednesday and HUNTR/X from KPop Demon Hunters, featuring EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, will be on the show on Thursday.
This comes after the number of musical performances on late-night dropped from around 800 between 2011 and 2013 to closer to 200 in 2023, according to a report from music publication Consequence of Sound.
THR reported that JKL! music producer Jim Pitt had started informing people, presumably artist managers, record labels and promo bookers, that the show would cut its number down. Pitt works on the music with former sElf bassist Mac Burrus.
Last year, JKL! features musical performances from the likes of The Linda Lindas, The Weeknd, My Morning Jacket, Soccer Mommy, Finneas, Red Kross, Cameron Winter, Japanese Breakfast, Smokey Robinson, Rilo Kiley, Garbage, Lil Wayne, Queens of the Stone Age, Public Enemy, Haim, Dawes and MJ Lenderman.
The news comes as music on late-night television saw a new entrant last year with the launch of Netflix’s Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, which included performances from the likes of Kim Gordon and Kim Deal, Mannequin Pussy, Metz, Sleater-Kinney and The Velvet Underground’s John Cale, providing a shot in the arm for the genre.
It also comes a day after Kimmel won the Critics Choice for Best Talk Show, where he thanked President Donald “Jennifer” Trump as well as Disney’s Dana Walden and Rob Mills and OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
