Hoda Kotb Announces She’s Leaving ‘Today’ Show After 26 Years To Spend More Time With Her Kids

Hoda Kotb announced that she will leave the Today show early next year after 26 years at NBC News.

“I just turned 60, and it was such a monumental moment for me – when I turned 60 years old – because I started thinking about that decade, like, ‘what does that decade mean, what does it hold, and what’s it going to have for me,'”she added. “I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60 and to try something new.”

“And I think I realized that this was so crazy, but – remember our 60th birthday that we had,” Kotb told her co-hosts. “It was so – I can see it, and I remembered standing outside looking at this beautiful bunch of people with all these gorgeous signs, and I thought, like, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me.'”

“And I thought, ‘It can’t get better,’ and I decided that this – this is the right time for me to – to kind of move on. And then I thought about – obviously, I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a – a bigger piece of my – of my time pie that I have,” she said of her daughters, Haley and Hope. “I feel like we only have a finite amount of time.”

“And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world because I just – just today, I was looking at my phone, and all of you guys are holding my kids, and I was like, ‘oh my gosh,'” Kotb stated. “I kept looking at them, all the pictures. But anyway, I’m not – I’m going to be here through the first of the year and stay in the NBC family, but it’s kind of a big deal for me, so, sorry, I’ve been practicing so I wouldn’t cry, but, anyway, I did,” she shared.

Kotb also shared a letter on Thursday to the Today staff regarding her decision to step down.

“I’ve been weighing this decision for quite a while – Am I truly ready,” she said in the letter. “But, my sixtieth birthday celebration on [Rockefeller] Plaza felt like a shift. Like a massive, joyful YES, you are! I saw it all so clearly: my broadcast career has been beyond meaningful, a new decade of my life lies ahead, and now my daughters and my mom need and deserve a bigger slice of my time pie. I will miss you all desperately, but I’m ready and excited.”

“Because I’ll be working through the beginning of 2025, there’s plenty of time to talk about what’s ahead for all of us,” she mentioned. “But one thing I know for sure right now is this: everything’s going to be just fine. The Peacock’s feathers are never ruffled… no matter who comes or goes. Today and its amazing people — all of you — never waver. You always weather change with grace and guts.”

“Happily and gratefully, I plan to remain a part of the NBC family, the longest work relationship I’ve been lucky enough to hold close to my heart,” she declared. “I’ll be around. How could I not? Family is family, and you all will always be a part of mine.”

On March 6, 2023, Kotb revealed that she was absent from the Today show for two weeks because Hope had been “in the ICU for a few days, and then in the hospital for a little more than a week.”

In February, the author shared her affection for singer Kelly Rowland to mend any rift between them after the singer walked out as a guest-host on Today with Hoda & Jenna after a behind-the-scenes disagreement over her dressing room.