Jimmy Kimmel to Deliver Britain’s Annual ‘Alternative Christmas Message’

Jimmy Kimmel will share a “personal message” with the U.K. on Christmas Day. British broadcaster Channel 4 has tapped Kimmel to deliver their annual “The Alternative Christmas Message.”

During the address, set to air at 5:45 p.m. GMT, Kimmel will reflect on his tumultuous year, which included Jimmy Kimmel Live being indefinitely suspended by network ABC after Kimmel was targeted by the Trump administration. “From a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year,” Kimmel will say in his speech, according to a press release.

Kimmel’s address follows in the tradition of other topical presenters delivering “The Alternative Christmas Message,” including the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; whistle-blower Edward Snowden; and Afghan war veteran Major Andrew Stockton.

Channel 4 began airing “The Alternative Christmas Message” in 1993 and it has since served as an alternative to the British monarch’s annual televised address to the nation. The intention is to “bring viewers a thought-provoking and often very personal reflection that is pertinent to the events of the past year.” A press release notes that this year’s message “comes at the end of a year when U.S. politics has featured heavily in news and current affairs programming across Channel 4 and other U.K. broadcasters.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live aired its final episode of 2025 last week. During his monologue, Kimmel shared his gratitude with viewers for supporting him through such a “hard year.” “This has been a strange year. It’s been a hard year,” Kimmel acknowledged. “We’ve had some lows, we’ve had some highs. For me, maybe more than any year in my life.”

The host began to tear up as he continued, “But on behalf of all of us—I’m crying already, I’m sorry. On behalf of all of us at the show, I just want to say that we appreciate your support, your enthusiasm. And not just for watching. This year you literally pulled us out of a hole, and we cannot thank you enough, personally, professionally.”
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Kimmel also noted, “I also think it’s important that we as Americans let our friends in other countries who watch the show on YouTube, on Instagram, Hulu, wherever, know that a lot of us are not okay with what is happening. There is still much more good in this country than bad and we hope that you will bear with us during this extended psychotic episode that we’re in the middle of.”
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Jimmy Kimmel Live will return in 2026. Earlier this month, Kimmel renewed his deal to host the show until May 2027. The deal was reportedly finalized over the summer, before ABC’s September suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live, following a monologue Kimmel delivered in the wake of Charlie Kirk‘s murder.

That suspension, which came after heavy pressure from the Trump administration, conservative activists, and network affiliates, was billed as “indefinite.”  It ended up lasting just a few days, after it prompted a ferocious backlash of its own, with consumers apparently canceling their Disney+ subscriptions en masse and many public figures condemning ABC and its parent company, Disney.