The writers of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert finally have their Emmy.
Colbert’s writing staff won Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series Saturday night, taking the category for the first time and ending Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’s ten-year winning streak.
The victory comes after The Late Show was nominated seven consecutive times from 2017 through 2023 without winning. The show missed the category entirely in both 2024 and 2025 before returning to the ballot this year.
It also caps a public push by Colbert’s writers themselves following the show’s finale.
In June, the show’s writers’ room released a homemade Emmy FYC video that they said they made because CBS was not mounting a writing-specific campaign “for us.” A source familiar with the network’s campaign later told LateNighter that CBS was campaigning for The Late Show more broadly, asking voters to consider it “in all categories.”
The writers ultimately landed one of just three available nominations, alongside Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the heavily favored Last Week Tonight.
And tonight did what no other variety writing staff had managed in a decade: beat John Oliver.
Oliver’s show had won Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series every year since 2016, part of an even longer stretch in which the category has been dominated by Daily Show alumni. Since 2008, every trophy has gone to The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, or Last Week Tonight.
The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Last Week Tonight are all nominated for Outstanding Variety Series at the main Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony on September 14, along with The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live—with a less than remote chance that more than one of them could win.
A separate broadcast featuring taped highlights from Saturday and Sunday night’s pre-Emmy presentations is set to air next Saturday, September 12, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on FXX and will be available to stream the next day on Hulu.
