Gary Lineker to step down as Match of the Day presenter

Gary Lineker is to step down as the presenter of Match of the Day at the end of the season.

He is believed to have signed an 18-month contract with the BBC that will cover the next Fifa World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico, but will step back from the broadcaster’s football highlights programme at the end of the 2024-25 season. BBC News said that an announcement would be made on Tuesday, after the Sun first reported the story.

The former England striker, 63, took over in the chair from Des Lynam in 1999, and has been a presence on football fans’ screens on Saturday nights for 25 years.

He joked about leaving the BBC during an episode of Match of the Day in October, during a time of intense speculation about his future. Lineker introduced the show saying: “Hello. Seven games on the way and it’s my final show … before the international break.”

He was nominated for a National Television award for his work on Match of the Day in 2017. Lineker is one of the corporation’s best-known presenters and its highest-paid star among those whose salaries are declared, earning £1.35m a year.

He was taken off air by the BBC in March 2023 after writing on X that the language used by the government to launch a policy on small boat crossings was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. But Lineker was reinstated after some of his colleagues pulled out of shows in solidarity. He has been the corporation’s highest paid on-air star for seven consecutive years, with a salary in 2023-24 of £1.35m.

Speaking at the Hay festival in Powys in May, he suggested the real problem had been a critical front page headline from the Daily Mail, which was a “distortion” of his original comment.

“The one thing I do regret is that it was a fallout between me and the BBC and it should have been a fallout between the BBC and the Daily Mail,” he said.

“I think it is a great shame what happened, because it pretty much pitched me against the BBC, and I love the BBC. I don’t think we shout our corner enough, we get a little too defensive, particularly with worrying about what’s in the Daily Mail. They’ve got a raison d’etre and they wanted a story on the BBC. I think the BBC needs to not worry as much about the Daily Mail and worry about what the people who love the BBC care about.”

He spoke about his future on Match of the Day in an interview with BBC Breakfast in August. Lineker said it had been a privilege to present the show for the past 25 years and that he did not know how long he had left on it.

“It depends how long they want me, I suppose,” he said. “I love doing it at the moment. I’ve still got another year left, at least. So we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

He has also recently found success with Goalhanger Podcasts, the company he founded in 2019, releasing podcasts such as The Rest is Politics, The Rest is Entertainment, The Rest is History and The Rest is Football, which he co-hosts with Match of the Day colleagues Alan Shearer and Micah Richards.

Lineker is England’s leading World Cup goalscorer, and was the top scorer in the English game’s top flight in three seasons, for three different clubs.