‘The Daily Show’ Has Huge Ratings Swing: How it Compares With Kimmel, Gutfeld & More

The Daily Show is experiencing a ratings surge, with February delivering the late-night show’s biggest total audience in over five years.

According to LateNighter, citing Nielsen Live+7 ratings data, the Comedy Central favorite averaged 1.23 million viewers in February. This was up a massive 33 percent from February 2025 and also tripled the audience from a little over two years ago.

The show also posted a significant audience share among total viewers, averaging 3.44. This is The Daily Show‘s highest monthly share in its 30-year history outside of Jon Stewart‘s final episodes in August 2015.

Stewart returned to The Daily Show in February 2024 to host Monday night episodes. The rest of the week is anchored by a rotating lineup of correspondents, including Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, and Josh Johnson.

The formula has proven a success, particularly in the key Adults 18-49 demographic, which has continued to grow in recent months. In February, the Daily Show averaged 302,000 demo viewers, up around 64 percent from February 2025. This was higher than all its late-night rivals, including ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, CBS’ The Late Show, NBC’s The Tonight Show, and Fox News’ Gutfeld!

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Following former host Trevor Noah‘s departure in December 2022, The Daily Show struggled to finds it groove as it introduced a string of guest anchors. The show’s transition was also affected by the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which kept it off the air for much of the year.

With Stewart’s return in 2024, the show has slowly settled into a rhythm, and that is reflected in the ratings. Throughout 2025, the show averaged around 900,000 to 1 million viewers per month, and, so far in 2026, those numbers have risen, evidenced by February’s 1.23 million average.

These latest numbers put The Daily Show back in line with its 2010s numbers. The long-running show averaged around 1.27 million viewers per month back in 2018.

In addition, The Daily Show continues to draw numbers to its YouTube channel, which has over 13.7M subscribers. Stewart’s Monday monologues frequently top six million views per week on the video platform, while Lydic’s monologues regularly amass between 1 and 2 million per week.