Gary Lineker has confirmed the current season of Match Of The Day will be his last at the helm.
Speculation has been rife for the past few weeks that Gary – who has been the highest-earning member of the BBC’s on-air team for the last seven consecutive years, despite a previous pay cut – was planning to part ways with the long-running football show.
On Tuesday morning, he finally announced that he will step down from Match Of The Day when the current football season is over.
However, his relationship with BBC Sport will continue, as he carries on fronting coverage of the MOTD Top Ten podcast and coverage of the 2026 World Cup.
“I’m delighted to continue my long association with BBC Sport and would like to thank all those who made this happen,” he enthused.
The former England striker first began presenting Match Of The Day in 1999, where he’s regularly joined by experts including Alan Shearer and Alex Scott.
He’s been at the centre of countless memorable Match Of The Day moments in the past 25 years, including in 2016, when he presented the show in his underwear after losing a bet about his former team Leicester City winning the Premier League.
Last year, Gary found himself at the centre of a media storm when social media posts criticising the former Conservative government’s policy on migration were found to be in breach of the BBC’s guidelines around impartiality.
As a result, it was decided by the corporation’s leadership team that Gary would not present that week’s edition of Match Of The Day, which led to several of his BBC Sport colleagues pulling out of their own presenting duties in solidarity.
Following the widespread backlash against the BBC’s decision, Gary was reinstated days later, after which director general Tim Davie announced there would be an independent review of the broadcaster’s social media guidelines as a result of the controversy.