After more than four decades of chasing wars and grilling world leaders, one of CNN’s most famous faces is walking away.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, told colleagues Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, that she is leaving the network after 43 years.
“After many months of thought and a few sleepless nights, I have decided to separate from CNN, my partner of 43 fantastic years!” Amanpour, 68, wrote in a memo to staffers. She is based in CNN’s London bureau. She joined the company in 1983 as an entry-level news desk assistant on the international assignment desk in Atlanta, three years after the network launched.
Weekly in January, Gone by June
The exit arrives in stages. Her daily CNN International show and her PBS program, “Amanpour & Company,” both end at the close of 2026, with the PBS show wrapping at the end of December 2026. In January 2027 the CNN International program drops to once a week, running until May 2027. She leaves CNN at the end of June 2027.
She had already eased off. In January 2025, she cut the eponymous nightly interview program she has hosted on CNN International since 2009 down to a few days a week.
Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman and editor in chief, delivered the news to the newsroom in his own memo. He wrote that the two of them had been talking about her decision for some months, and that while he is sorry to lose her, he accepts that she has picked the right moment, personally and professionally. Thompson said the network would take time to celebrate her before she goes.
Her Exit Lands Right After the Takeover
Her announcement landed less than two weeks after Paramount Skydance closed its acquisition of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, putting CNN and CBS News under the same corporate umbrella, now called Skydance. Thompson remains in charge of the news network under the new owners, reporting directly to Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz. Ellison has promised editorial independence.
Amanpour has been outspoken about the network’s coverage of Donald Trump. In 2023 she publicly criticized CNN’s town hall with Trump, who was then campaigning for a return to the White House — the first CNN anchor to object publicly — and said she had shared her views with then-CEO Chris Licht. In the same note to staffers, she wrote: “Remember: always be truthful, not neutral.”
From Mogadishu to Gadhafi’s Final Interview
Amanpour became an international correspondent in 1990, and the Persian Gulf War was her first major assignment. Her reporting since has taken in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bosnian War, Rwanda, Afghanistan, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. She was photographed covering the U.S.-led peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu in 1992. Her work has brought multiple Emmy, Peabody and George Polk awards.
The interview list is its own résumé: Moammar Gadhafi’s final interview, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, former President Bill Clinton, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the Iranian presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani.
She did leave once before. Amanpour exited CNN in 2010 to anchor ABC News’ Sunday show “This Week,” then returned to CNN International in 2012 under an arrangement that also allowed her to keep working with ABC News. She hosts “The Amanpour Hour” on CNN’s U.S. network, and “Amanpour & Company” launched on PBS in 2018.
She is not going silent in the meantime. Amanpour will keep reporting and traveling the world for CNN through June 2027, and she plans to continue her podcast “The Ex Files,” a Global production she makes with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin. She addressed the decision on her show Monday, Oct. 19.
In his memo, Thompson went back to her first weeks in the Atlanta newsroom, when one of her bosses told her she did not have what it took to become a foreign correspondent — or to hold any on-air role at all. “Boy, did she prove him wrong!” Thompson wrote.
