Saturday Night Live may be gearing up for its biggest celebration ever, but doing so will apparently require some PTO.
LateNighter has learned that the show will stop turning out new episodes for a month surrounding its much ballyhooed 50th anniversary special, which is set to air in primetime Sunday, February 16, 2025. The last new SNL episode before the big night will air on January 25. After that, viewers won’t see a regular 90-minute Saturday night episode until March 1.
That’s not to say the show’s fans will be starved of new content that month. In addition to the three-hour anniversary special —which NBC has said will “welcome stars of past and present to 8H”—the show will be feted with a celebratory weekend that’s set to include a live Mark Ronson-produced concert at Radio City Music Hall.
There are also no fewer than five documentaries being produced to mark SNL‘s milestone year. It’s not clear when any of the docs will be released, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see at least one or two surface while the show is dark the month of February.
SNL clearing its calendar in this way is not unprecedented. The show took the same approach for 2015’s 40th anniversary special, taking three weeks off from new regular episodes. SNL40 wound up being NBC’s most-watched primetime entertainment program since the series finale of Friends eleven years earlier.
This time, SNL’s break amounts to four weeks, yet another sign that SNL50 is the show’s biggest undertaking yet.
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