The woman who talked her way into Muammar Gaddafi’s final interview and reported from Mogadishu, Rwanda and Ukraine is closing out a 43-year run at the network that once told her she would never make it on air.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, told colleagues in a memo on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, that she is leaving the network after 43 years. Amanpour, 68, is based in CNN’s London bureau. The network was three years old when she signed on in 1983, hired in Atlanta as an entry-level news desk assistant on the international assignment desk.
“After many months of thought and a few sleepless nights, I have decided to separate from CNN, my partner of 43 fantastic years!” she wrote in her memo to staffers.
In the same note, she left colleagues a line of advice: “Remember: always be truthful, not neutral.” She addressed the decision on her show Monday, Oct. 19.
Weekly in January, Gone by June
Amanpour is leaving in stages rather than all at once. Her daily CNN International show ends at the close of 2026, as does her PBS program “Amanpour & Company,” which wraps at the end of December 2026.
Her CNN International program drops to once a week in January 2027 and runs weekly until May 2027. She leaves CNN at the end of June 2027, and she plans to keep reporting and traveling the world for the network until then. She also intends to continue her podcast “The Ex Files,” a Global production she makes with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin.
The slowdown began earlier. In January 2025, her nightly eponymous interview program — which she had hosted on CNN International since 2009 — was cut back to a few days a week.
Doctors first diagnosed her in 2021 with a rare form of ovarian cancer, and she had surgery and chemotherapy. She said in October 2025 that the cancer had returned. Her departure announcement made no mention of her health.
“Boy, Did She Prove Him Wrong”
Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman and editor-in-chief, broke the news to the newsroom in his own memo. He said he had been talking with her about the decision for some months, that he was sorry to lose her and that he accepted she had picked the right moment, both personally and professionally. The network will take time to celebrate her before she goes, he wrote.
Thompson recalled her first weeks in the Atlanta newsroom. A boss back then judged her unfit for a foreign correspondent’s job, and unfit for any on-air work whatsoever. “Boy, did she prove him wrong!” Thompson wrote.
Her Exit Lands Right After the Takeover
Paramount Skydance had closed its acquisition of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, less than two weeks before the announcement, a deal that placed CNN and CBS News under the same corporate umbrella, now called Skydance. The new owners have kept Thompson in charge of the news network, and he reports directly to Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz. Ellison has promised editorial independence.
David and Larry Ellison gave approximately $45 million to a pro-Trump political nonprofit during Donald Trump’s 2024 election efforts. Amanpour’s announcement made no mention of David Ellison or the Skydance takeover.
Network colleagues were described as “caught off guard by the sudden news that one of CNN’s vanguards was hanging it up” and “more than willing to fill in the blanks.”
Her exit follows by one month CNN on-air contributor Kara Swisher’s declaration that she was done with the network. Swisher pointed to the approval of the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger led by David and Larry Ellison. “I think they are terrible media owners,” she said of the Ellisons. Her contract runs through the end of the year.
The Anchor Who Called Out the Town Hall
The network’s coverage of Donald Trump has drawn blunt public comment from Amanpour before. CNN’s town hall with Trump, held in 2023 while he campaigned for a return to the White House, drew her open criticism. She was the first CNN anchor to object publicly, and she said she had shared her views with then-CEO Chris Licht.
From Mogadishu to Gaddafi’s Final Interview
Amanpour has worked as an international correspondent since 1990, starting with the Persian Gulf War. Her assignments since then have taken in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bosnian War, Rwanda and Afghanistan, along with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas war in Gaza. Photographers captured her covering the U.S.-led peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu in 1992.
She has won multiple Emmy, Peabody and George Polk awards. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi gave her his final interview; Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, former President Bill Clinton, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Iranian presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani also sat with her.
This is not her first exit. She left CNN in 2010 for ABC News’ Sunday show “This Week.” A deal that let her work with ABC News brought her back to CNN International in 2012. She currently hosts “The Amanpour Hour” on CNN’s U.S. network, and “Amanpour & Company” launched on PBS in 2018.