Saturday Night Live Weekend Uodate co-anchor Colin Jost will be the featured entertainer at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
The event will be held on April 27.
Kelly O’Donnell, president of the WHCA and NBC News senior White House correspondent, said in a statement, “Colin Jost knows how to make Saturday nights funny, and I am thrilled Colin will be live from the nation’s capital as the headline entertainer for this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” Each year’s WHCA president is tasked with picking the entertainer.
The gig, in a room full of journalists, political insiders and typically the president of the United States, is high profile but also endlessly scrutinized. By tradition, the entertainer also follows POTUS on the programming lineup, something that typically places extra pressure to use fresh material.
Last year’s performer was Roy Wood Jr., and Trevor Noah appeared at the dinner in 2022. President Joe Biden attended both times, after Donald Trump boycotted the event during his presidency.
Jost started writing for Saturday Night Live in 2005 and has been co-anchor of Weekend Update since 2014. O’Donnell said that his “sharp insights perfectly meet this remarkable time of divided politics, and a presidential campaign careening toward a rematch. His smart brand of comedy and keen observation will turn up the heat on the national news media and across the political spectrum.”
The dinner is carried on C-SPAN and major cable news networks typically go live with portions of the event, held at the Washington Hilton. Proceeds from the dinner go to WHCA awards and journalism scholarships.
Jost will be the first Weekend Update anchor to headline the dinner since Seth Meyers in 2011. Cecily Strong headlined the event in 2015, but she had left her spot as Weekend Update co-anchor the previous year.
