Kelly Clarkson has sung her final Kellyoke and encouraged her audience to have a great day (and “if it’s not, change it!”) one last time. After seven seasons, the series finale of The Kelly Clarkson Show aired on the 2026 TV schedule on August 31, with a celebration of the host and her music. It was a bittersweet day — as she said multiple times during the hourlong celebration — and her executive producer weighed in on what it was that made Clarkson so special.
Monday’s episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show saw the American Idol champion cover “Golden” from Kpop Demon Hunters and take requests from special audience members for their favorite songs from the singer’s catalog. As important as music was to the Emmy-winning talk show, though, EP Alex Duda said it’s Kelly Clarkson herself who will be missed for how she brought people together. Duda told People:
She was a connector. We learned that very early on. The way she connected to people — that’s why we knew we wanted a format where people sat on the couch next to each other, the celebrity next to the human-interest guest, because when you do that, extraordinary moments can happen that you won’t see anywhere else.
Audiences fell in love with Kelly Clarkson’s relatability over the years, whether she was bonding with Zendaya over being late, freaking out during her Nicolas Cage interview or speaking candidly with Khloé Kardashian about breakups.
The Kelly Clarkson Show and its host went through some tough times, though, forcing constant pivots. COVID hit about six months after its premiere episode, Kelly Clarkson separated from her husband Brandon Blackstock, and production moved from Los Angeles to New York. Through it all, Alex Duda said they just wanted to inject a bit of happiness into the viewers’ day:
I hope we made things a little bright. Especially in the pandemic, we felt that things were so dark that if we can control this one hour and make the sun shine, then we’ve accomplished something. And how do you do that? Like I said, music was our touch point all the time.
The music was front and center in the talk show’s series finale, as Kelly Clarkson sang her hits “Since U Been Gone,” “Stronger” and what she called her third version of “Piece By Piece,” which she’d previously rewritten to shade her ex-husband.
Kelly Clarkson may have been a great host, but she seems like a great mom, too, and she had 12-year-old River and 10-year-old Remington join her on stage for the show’s final moments after explaining that they were both the reason she started the show and ultimately why she was stepping away from it.
The singer will certainly be missed on daytime TV, but Kelly Clarkson’s fans can still catch her as a coach on The Voice. The singing competition’s 30th season returns at 8 p.m. ET Monday, September 21, airing on NBC and streaming the next day with a Peacock subscription.
