Jimmy Kimmel Live! is taking its desk, monologue and reliably unpredictable guest-chair energy back across the country for a five-show Brooklyn run at the end of September. The episodes are scheduled to tape before a live audience at the Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, better known as BAM, from Monday, Sept. 28 through Friday, Oct. 2.
The visit will be the seventh time Jimmy Kimmel has brought the late-night program to Brooklyn. While the show ordinarily records in Hollywood at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre, the BAM dates continue a long-running tradition of occasional New York-area broadcasts that gives the series a different room, a different crowd and an unmistakably borough-specific backdrop.
Guests for the five tapings have not yet been announced. That leaves the central mystery of any traveling late-night week intact: who will step into the Howard Gilman Opera House, and how much of the regular show’s formula will get remixed by the change of scenery?
A familiar late-night stop with a substantial history
Kimmel first staged shows at BAM in 2012. Subsequent Brooklyn trips followed in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022, before another run in 2025. The 2026 dates therefore do not represent a one-off publicity detour; they extend a recurring relationship between the program and the venue.
That history matters because a week away from the usual studio is more than a venue swap. A late-night broadcast operates on rhythm: a host’s timing with an audience, the energy around an entrance, the physical relationship between band, desk, stage and interview chairs, and the practical pace required to record a show in front of a crowd. Bringing that machinery into a theater with its own character makes the episodes feel like an event without changing the basic mission of the series.
For viewers, the Brooklyn episodes should still be recognizably Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The setup remains built around a topical monologue, comedy segments, interviews and musical or other guest appearances. But location weeks can produce a useful bit of organized chaos. The show is still live in spirit, even when its most elaborate moving parts have been packed up, flown east and persuaded to behave in a new building.
The 2025 Brooklyn week included Stephen Colbert
The show’s most recent Brooklyn run came in 2025 and included an appearance by fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert. At that time, Colbert had recently been canceled by ABC, adding an unusual layer of industry context to the crossover.
Colbert has also been publicly rooting for Kimmel during this awards season. Kimmel is nominated for outstanding variety series at the 2026 Emmy Awards. If he wins, it would be his fourth victory in the category. In a late-August Instagram video, Colbert urged Television Academy voters to support Kimmel despite competing against him, framing the situation as an odd voting setup and making a deliberately broad case for his former colleague.
Related coverage includes Jimmy Kimmel Live! Sets Seventh Brooklyn Run for Sept. 28-Oct. 2.
“Kind of a weird voting system this year, but you know, I think we can all agree that Jimmy Kimmel deserves an Emmy,” Colbert said. “I don’t care if you’ve never even seen his show, you know he deserves an Emmy.”
The friendly competitive note is extremely late-night: a category full of peers who share a profession, an audience ecosystem and, apparently, enough confidence to campaign for one another with a wink. Whether Kimmel adds a fourth Emmy remains unresolved, but the nomination arrives as the show moves from a milestone episode toward another major road week.
Television awards and late-night programming remain closely intertwined with the broader culture conversation, as do scripted series and their writers. For another recent look at television honors, see the 2026 Humanitas Prize winners across shows including Shrinking and Paradise.
Back at the desk after a three-month break
The Brooklyn announcement follows Kimmel’s recent return from a three-month hiatus from hosting duties. During that stretch, Rosie O’Donnell, Colman Domingo, Jelly Roll, Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson and Ike Barinholtz each filled in as host.
A revolving lineup of guest hosts is a different proposition from a standard vacation fill-in. Each brings a distinct performance background and a different relationship to the late-night format. O’Donnell is a veteran television host; Domingo’s profile spans acting and stage work; Jelly Roll arrives from music; Haddish and Barinholtz bring comedy experience; and Anderson has years of on-camera hosting and ensemble-TV familiarity. The format remains the format, but its personality changes depending on who is delivering the monologue and guiding the interviews.
Kimmel’s return episode, which aired on a Tuesday, also served as the show’s 4,000th episode. That is the kind of number that makes a nightly program’s endurance tangible. Late-night series are often discussed through viral clips, individual interviews and next-day headlines, yet the four-digit episode count reflects the less glamorous reality: an enormous sequence of monologues, taped pieces, rehearsals, musical bookings, guest scheduling, topical rewrites and audiences arriving ready to laugh at whatever happened five minutes before airtime.
What is known about the September tapings
For those tracking the Brooklyn week, the currently confirmed details are straightforward:
- Program: Jimmy Kimmel Live!
- Location: Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM in Brooklyn
- Taping dates: Monday, Sept. 28 through Friday, Oct. 2
- Number of shows: Five
- Audience: The episodes will be taped in front of a live audience
- Guest lineup: To be revealed later
- Significance: Kimmel’s seventh trip to Brooklyn to tape the show
It is worth separating the confirmed framework from the tempting speculation. No guest names have been provided, and there is no announced slate of sketches, musical acts or special segments. Brooklyn television weeks invite people to imagine every possible celebrity drop-in, but the available information supports only the schedule, venue, audience format and the promise of details still to come.
Why a five-night run stands out
In an era when audiences can encounter a late-night show through a single clip on a phone, a full week of theater tapings highlights the enduring importance of the room itself. The Howard Gilman Opera House audience will not merely be present for a clip; it will be part of five complete productions, reacting in real time as material lands, guests arrive and the usual controlled improvisation of a late-night shoot unfolds.
Brooklyn also gives the series an opportunity to mark its own longevity. This is not Kimmel’s first BAM appearance, nor is it the show’s first time heading east after a long Hollywood stretch. Instead, it is a return to a setting that has become part of the program’s larger history, now arriving shortly after episode 4,000 and alongside another Emmy nomination.
For the moment, the lineup is the unanswered question. What is settled is that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will spend the final days of September and the first days of October away from its standard home, taping five episodes in Brooklyn and adding another chapter to a venue tradition that began in 2012. In late-night terms, that is a well-established side quest: same host, new stage, five chances for the borough to supply the laugh track.
