Broadcaster Gary Lineker is to step down as host of flagship football programme Match of the Day at the end of this season, BBC News understands.
It is expected to be announced officially on Tuesday by the BBC.
The Sun, who first reported the story, also said the presenter would leave the BBC after leading coverage of the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico.
The BBC press office declined to comment.
The Premier League season ends in May 2025.
The news comes after Lineker entered negotiations with the BBC over a new contract in October.
Lineker told Esquire magazine in August, in an interview published this month, that he accepts he will “have to slow down at some point”.
The broadcaster has hosted the BBC’s flagship football show Match of the Day since 1999.
The 63-year-old is one of the corporation’s best-known presenters and its highest-paid star, of those whose salaries are declared, earning more than £1.3m a year.
Lineker has also presented coverage of major tournaments like World Cups and European Championships for the BBC, as well as BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremonies.
He has worked for other sports networks during his time at the BBC, including US network NBC and BT Sport (now TNT Sport), and branched out into podcasts.
However, the former footballer has also been involved in controversy at the corporation because of his social media activity.
He was briefly suspended by BBC bosses last year after an outcry over a post about the UK’s asylum policy.
Before becoming a TV presenter, Lineker had a hugely successful career as a striker for England as well as Leicester, Everton, Tottenham Hotspur and Barcelona.
However, he is one of six Kenyan athletes, including world record holder Patrick Makau and world champion Abel Kirui, who are on a provisional list competing for the three places on the team at the London Games. Kenyan selectors will name their final three for the Olympics at the end of April.
“The selection is challenging, but I think if I can finish in the top three here I will qualify,” said Mutai, who won last year with a time of two hours, four minutes and 39 seconds.
“For me this will definitely be a tougher competition than last year because the field is so strong.
“Everyone has run a good time so I will have to perform at my best.”
Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede is the only non-Kenyan to have won the men’s title in the last eight years and the 2010 winner leads this year’s challenge to them.
Ejegayehu Dibaba, the oldest of three Ethiopian sisters who have all made their mark on the track, steps up to the marathon for only the second time in London this Sunday.
Dibaba, 30, has been overshadowed by Tirunesh, a double Olympic champion in Beijing, while a second sister Genzebe emerged this year to win the world indoor 1,500 title in Istanbul.
Last year Ejegayehu, in her first race beyond 10kms, clocked two hours, 22 minutes and nine seconds while finishing second in the Chicago marathon, the third fastest debut ever.
Five women are competing for three places in the Kenyan women’s Olympic team, including defending champion Mary Keitany.
“I will have to work extra hard on Sunday because I know it will be my last chance to impress the selectors,” she said.
Germany’s two-time champion Irina Mikitenko said the London race often contained stronger fields than the world or European championships which made it an ideal test for this year’s London Olympics.
“Just as in a championship, you have to be self-reliant,” she said. “Something completely unexpected can happen and you have to radically change your plans during the race. But I like that kind of challenge.”
Uranus’s strange magnetic field may be much less weird than astronomers first thought, which means its largest moons could be much more active, and even perhaps have global oceans.
Our only direct measurements of Uranus’s magnetic field come from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by the planet in 1986. The spacecraft’s readings suggested that the magnetic field was lopsided – meaning it wasn’t aligned with the planet’s rotation – as well as being unusually rich in extremely energetic electrons and devoid of the plasma that is common in the magnetic fields of other gas giants like Jupiter. Astronomers at the time thought the results so bizarre that they invoked complex physics to try to explain the readings – or simply dismissed them as evidence that Voyager 2’s instruments had gone haywire.
Now, Jamie Jasinski at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and his colleagues have reanalysed the Voyager 2 data and found that it was skewed by a rare burst of solar wind that squashed Uranus’s magnetic field just before the spacecraft arrived, disturbing the readings. This means everything we thought we knew about Uranus’s magnetic field might be wrong, says Jasinski. “This kind of almost resets everything,” he says.
Jasinski and his team found that the solar wind compressed Uranus’s magnetic field to a size that it would typically only adopt 4 per cent of the time – but that scientists have, for the past 40 years, assumed was its normal state. The squashed magnetic field explains the previous strange results, such as its lack of plasma and highly energetic electrons, says Jasinski.
If there is, in fact, plasma in Uranus’s magnetic field – and Voyager 2 just happened to miss it – then it might not all come from the planet itself. Some might come from Uranus’s moons, the largest of which are called Titania and Oberon. Until now, we have assumed these moons were inert, but the new study leaves open the possibility that they are geologically active after all. This would fit with recent calculations indicating the moons might have hidden oceans. “The solar wind could have essentially eradicated all the evidence of active moons just before the flyby happened,” says Jasinski.
Final whistle: Gary Lineker hosted Match of the Day for 25 years
Gary Lineker, who will leave Match of the Day at the end of this season, BBC News understands, has been the steady hand who guided millions of fans through football’s agonies and ecstasies.
As host of the flagship show for 25 years, he is also one of the corporation’s highest-profile presenters, earning £1.3 million last year.
His one-line pay-offs at the end of each show, summing up both the fans’ mood and the match, may have looked seamless.
But they were the result of years of honing his craft and presenting skills.
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Gary Lineker celebrated qualifying for Euro 92 after the match between Poland and England in 1991
As a former footballer of considerable pedigree – including England captain and striker, with 48 goals in 80 appearances – he famously never received a red or yellow card during his career.
His ability to keep his cool on the pitch stood him in good stead for a career in live broadcasting when he retired as a player in 1994.
Even while he was still at school, he had his sights set on sports journalism, deciding it would be his fall-back if football didn’t work out.
Clearly it did.
Known for his ability to find gaps in the opposition’s defence, and his “poacher’s instinct” , Lineker was the 1986 World Cup Golden Boot winner, and the top goal-scorer in England three times, each with a different club: Leicester City, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur.
But while his sports career was at its peak at the 1986 and 1990 World Cup finals, Lineker spent time with journalists staying at the same hotel as the England team.
“As early as my mid-20s, I knew which direction I wanted to go in when I retired from playing,” he told the BBC in 2014.
“I would watch the newspaper guys write their opening paragraphs and sit with the radio journalists and talk to them about how they did their job.”
His ultimate aim was to end up as the presenter rather than a pundit.
But he admitted his transition into radio and TV “took a lot of work”.
Lineker won the Golden Boot, for leading goal scorer, at Mexico’s 1986 World Cup
Having watched ex-sports stars David Gower presenting the cricket and Sue Barker presenting the tennis, he questioned why it wasn’t the same in football.
“It would give me an advantage over all the others.”
Meanwhile, his popularity as a footballer endured. In 1991, Arthur Smith and Chris England wrote a stage play called An Evening With Gary Lineker, about a couple trying to rekindle their marriage during the 1990 World Cup semi-final.
Starring Caroline Quentin, Clive Owen, Paul Merton and Martin Clunes, it was filmed for TV in 1994 – with Lineker making a cameo appearance.
David Gower, Nick Hancock, Rory McGrath and Gary Lineker on They Think It’s All Over in 2002
He also began building his wider TV career, appearing as a team captain on BBC One’s comedy panel show, They Think It’s All Over, from 1995 to 2003.
As a presenter, he got himself noticed when he stood in for Des Lynam on the Saturday afternoon sports show Grandstand, in 1997.
By the mid-90s, Lineker was also appearing on Match of the Day as a pundit.
This gave him a prime learning spot – right next to its experienced and slick host Lynam.
“Des was very helpful – I used to ask a lot of questions about the little things that he did, and picked up some of his nuances,” the former footballer said.
“He told me to be brave occasionally with closing lines, and not to be afraid to try to be amusing.
“Again, the little pay-offs I sometimes make at the end of the show are something that came from him.”
PA Media
Des Lynam was called “the doyen of sports presenters and a tough act to follow” by Lineker
By 1999, Lineker was hosting the show, and reaching audiences the BBC sometimes struggled to attract and retain.
People would also tune in to see his chemistry with the show’s pundits – including other former footballers such as Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, Micah Richards and Alan Hansen.
Lineker’s questions kept the analysis flowing, while he was always willing to share a joke and opinion of his own.
He also memorably introduced the show in his pants in 2016, having pledged to “do the first MOTD of next season in just my undies” if his former club Leicester won the Premier League, which they did.
Shearer and Wright couldn’t keep straight faces.
Their friendships often shone through. In June this year, Lineker and Shearer sent an emotional message of support to Hansen, after hearing the news that he was seriously ill in hospital.
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Climbing to the top: Lineker tries out a climbing wall
But despite his rapport with his colleagues, off-screen matters were not as straightforward.
As one of the BBC’s highest-paid presenters, regularly topping the list of the staff whose salaries are declared, he faced constant scrutiny.
Lineker did not shy away from speaking out about his own views, particularly on social media, while simultaneously working for a broadcaster committed to impartiality.
In March last year, he posted on X about the government’s asylum policy – resulting in the BBC briefly suspending him.
Shearer, Wright and other BBC sport presenters refused to appear on air, in protest at his absence.
Match of the Day was reduced to a 20-minute edition minus its host, pundits and commentary – and the story made headline news for several days, with politicians and media commentators all weighing in on the issue.
BBC director general Tim Davie subsequently apologised to licence fee payers for the disruption, calling it a “difficult day” for the corporation.
Lineker was reinstated nine days later.
The presenter later said the response to his tweet was “silly – it shouldn’t have been”.
“I love the BBC. I’ve been there for nearly 30 years but people make mistakes, they recognise that and they addressed it and in the end, thankfully, we’re all back to work,” he said.
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Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer have fronted many major football tourments
The headlines and dramas generated by his online views reinforced not only his high celebrity status – but also how keen the BBC was to hang on to him.
The incident prompted a review of BBC social media guidelines. Last September, new rules were published for BBC flagship presenters, saying they should be allowed to express views on issues and policies, but stop short of political campaigning.
Lineker said the recommendations were “all very sensible”.
By February this year, he said he was using X less often, saying the platform had become “increasingly toxic” under its new owner, Elon Musk.
Despite this, he and the BBC have still parted company, and its flagship football show no longer has a host.
Lineker has plenty of outside business interests, including the successful podcast production company he co-founded, called Goalhanger.
It produces shows including The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Entertainment and The Rest Is Politics, which won the Champion prize at this year’s Podcast Awards.
But for the BBC, Lineker’s departure comes hot on the heels of several scandals.
Former Match of the Day and The One Show host Jermaine Jeanas was sacked in August following complaints about workplace conduct.
In September, the BBC apologised to Amanda Abbington and upheld some of her complaints against her 2023 Strictly dance partner Giovanni Pernice, while clearing him of the most serious allegations.
In the same month, Mr Davie said he could not see disgraced ex-news presenter Huw Edwards working at the corporation again.
So the BBC is in need of some good headlines – and Lineker’s departure means it now has to find an exceptional host to fill his shoes, which will not be an easy task.
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