• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 6, 2026

It’s the annual tradition that has become a yearly custom (as Jon Stewart once said about something) -- Jimmy Kimmel delivering a monologue at the Disney Upfront excoriating his company, the ad sales process and even the ad industry attendees.

But what will it be like this year? Will the combative ABC late-night star add President Trump to his list of targets?

Incredible as it may seem, Kimmel, 58, gets a ratings boost and an ego boost from his nightly anti-Trump diatribes on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The more upset Trump gets, the more Kimmel rips him in his monologues, even in the face of Trump’s threats to investigate Disney for its DEI practices and then delay or deny renewals of the company’s broadcast licenses.

Last fall, Trump’s ire, coupled with pressure from conservative TV station groups, led to Disney suspending Kimmel for a week.

More recently, Kimmel joked about First Lady Melania Trump looking forward to widowhood. 

The joke backfired because of the assassination attempt aimed at Trump two days later at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

In the days after the assassination attempt, Kimmel’s joke became controversial because Kimmel was treating the possible death of a President -- especially one he apparently detests -- in a lighthearted way.

Speculation during the run of this controversy, which ran its course for a couple of days last week, was rampant that Disney would dump Kimmel, claiming the show could no longer be financially sustained. 

Paramount and CBS positioned the discontinuation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” the same way.

In any case, Kimmel is still with us. His current contract with Disney was supposed to expire this month, but last December, he won an extension to May 2027.

And now, here comes the Disney Upfront, scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon at its now customary venue, the northern end of New York’s sprawling Jacob Javits Convention Center.

There is no reason to expect Disney to deny Kimmel his annual opportunity to strut upon the Upfront stage for a monologue that generally runs for about 15 minutes.

By all appearances, Disney’s Upfront audiences seem to love this annual tradition and look forward to it.

It does make the Disney Upfront stand out among the Upfronts, which start Monday with NBCU in the morning, Fox in the afternoon and Amazon in the evening.

In addition to Disney on Tuesday, Televisa/Univision will have its Upfront late Tuesday morning, and Telemundo is hosting an Upfront event on Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday, it’s Warner Bros. Discovery -- soon to merge with Paramount Skydance -- in the morning and Netflix in the afternoon.

Kimmel’s annual monologue at the Disney Upfront is written in the style of a roast, much like his monologue two days before the Trump assassination attempt that got him in hot water.

At the Upfront, Kimmel’s jokes are aimed squarely at the world of television and advertising. They can be pretty savage. 

But every time a TV blogger has suggested that perhaps Kimmel’s Upfront monologues blasting his own company’s Upfront claims are inappropriate at the outset of the spring ad sales season, comments from readers indicate that they like the monologues just fine.

Will Kimmel use his Upfront monologue as a platform for attacking Trump?

Or will he stick strictly to the annual subject at hand -- advertising sales? 

Even more interesting: Will Trump dig up a video of this year’s monologue and rail about that too?