The woman who landed Muammar Gaddafi’s final interview and reported from Mogadishu to Gaza is closing out the only network career she has ever had.
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, ending more than four decades of chasing wars and grilling world leaders. Amanpour, 68, is based in CNN’s London bureau.
“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 to staffers.
She closed the note with a line that has become something of a personal creed: “Remember: always be truthful, not neutral.”
Weekly in January, Gone by June
Amanpour will not walk out the door quickly. Her PBS program, “Amanpour & Company,” ends at the close of 2026.
In January 2027, her CNN International program drops to once a week, and that weekly run continues until May 2027. She leaves CNN at the end of June 2027, and plans to keep reporting and traveling the world for the network through that month.
She also intends to continue her podcast “The Ex Files,” a global production she makes with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin.
The wind-down follows an earlier one. In January 2025, her eponymous nightly CNN International interview program, which she had hosted on the channel since 2009, was cut back to a few days a week.
“Boy, Did She Prove Him Wrong!”
CNN chairman and editor-in-chief Mark Thompson sent a separate memo to the newsroom. He wrote that he had been talking with her about the decision for some months, that he was sorry to lose her, and that he accepts her choice of the right moment, both personally and professionally.
Thompson said the network would take time to celebrate her before she goes. He also recalled her first weeks in the Atlanta newsroom, when a boss told her she lacked what it took to be a foreign correspondent — or to hold any on-air role at all. “Boy, did she prove him wrong!” Thompson wrote.
The announcement came after Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery. That deal gathered CNN and CBS News beneath a single corporate umbrella, now called Skydance, and Thompson keeps his job running the news network.
The network’s coverage of Donald Trump has drawn pointed comment from Amanpour herself. She publicly criticized CNN’s town hall with Trump in 2023, when he was campaigning for a return to the White House, making her the first CNN anchor to object publicly. She said she had shared her views with then-CEO Chris Licht.
From a Desk Job to the Gulf War
The network was three years old when Amanpour came aboard in 1983, hired as an entry-level news desk assistant on the international assignment desk in Atlanta. She became an international correspondent in 1990, and her first major assignment was the Persian Gulf War.
Her reporting has spanned the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bosnian War, Rwanda and Afghanistan. She also covered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas war in Gaza. A photograph captured her covering the U.S.-led peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu in 1992. Her work has earned multiple Emmy, Peabody and George Polk awards.
Her interview subjects include Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in 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.
This is not her first exit. Amanpour left CNN in 2010 to anchor ABC News’ Sunday show “This Week.” She returned to CNN International in 2012 under an arrangement that let her keep working with ABC News. She hosts “The Amanpour Hour” on CNN’s U.S. network, and “Amanpour & Company” launched on PBS in 2018.