Ahead of the season 51 premiere of Saturday Night Live on Oct. 4, Lorne Michaels confirmed in an interview that a few familiar faces will not return to the cast this fall — and those exits are starting to be announced one by one.
When asked by Puck in an interview published Aug. 22 if he planned to “shake things up” for the 2025-26 season, the SNL creator and producer replied, “Yes,” adding that he was feeling the “pressure to reinvent this season” after mostly keeping the cast intact from season 49 into the show’s landmark 50th year.
“I wanted people coming back and being part of [the 50th season],” Michaels told Puck. “So when Kate [McKinnon] hosted, Kristen [Wiig] and Maya [Rudolph] came back for it. And that meant there couldn’t be those kind of disruptions or anything that was going to take the focus off [the 50th season].”
The 2024-25 season 50 cast included 17 people in total: 14 full-time cast members and three featured players. The longest-running cast members on Saturday Night Live are led by Kenan Thompson, who started on the show in 2003 and holds the record for the longest-tenured SNL castmate of all time. Other vets in the mix: Weekend Update co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che, who both joined the cast in 2014; Mikey Day (2016); Ego Nwodim (2018); and Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang (both 2019). So far, the longest-running cast member announced to exit is Heidi Gardner, who joined the show in 2017 and has spent eight seasons on the cast.
So who won’t be back when the sketch comedy show returns to Studio 8H in October? And who is joining the cast this season? Below, find the full list of cast members exiting and joining Saturday Night Live ahead of season 51.
