Comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart is returning to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show as a part-time host to cover the 2024 U.S. election cycle, Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios announced Wednesday.
Stewart will host episodes on Mondays and will executive produce the long-running news-comedy show through 2025. A rotating lineup of members of The Daily Show News Team will host the show the rest of the week (Tuesday through Thursday).
Stewart was the host of The Daily Show from 1999 to 2015, which was its most popular and award-winning era. That incarnation of the show helped supercharge the careers of correspondents (and sometimes replacement hosts) such as Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Michael Che, and Samantha Bee.
Comedian Trevor Noah took over for Stewart in 2015, but he left the show abruptly in 2022, and Comedy Central has struggled to find a replacement. The Daily Show has since been hosted by a long list of correspondents and celebrity guests, including Hasan Minhaj, Leslie Jones, Wanda Sykes, Sarah Silverman, Kal Penn, Al Franken, and John Leguizamo.
In recent years, Stewart has served as host of the TV series and podcast The Problem with Jon Stewart. The TV show, which streamed on Apple TV Plus, was canceled after two seasons, reportedly over coverage of artificial intelligence and China.
“Jon Stewart is the voice of our generation, and we are honored to have him return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show to help us all make sense of the insanity and division roiling the country as we enter the election season,” said Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios, in a news release announcing Stewart’s return. “In our age of staggering hypocrisy and performative politics, Jon is the perfect person to puncture the empty rhetoric and provide much-needed clarity with his brilliant wit.”
Stewart’s return to The Daily Show starts on Feb. 12, the day after Super Bowl LVIII. New episodes will air nightly on Comedy Central, and premiere on Paramount Plus the following day.
