Politics

The Kennedy Center is giving Bill Maher the Mark Twain Prize

The annual award that recognizes merit in humor is going to the satirist and talk show host who has been critical of President Trump and political correctness.

Bill Maher arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles. Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

By Ben Sisario and Marc Tracy, New York Times Service

March 26, 2026 | 4:46 PM

3 minutes to read

Bill Maher, the comedian and longtime political talk show host, will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Thursday, following aggressive denials from the White House that Maher had been chosen for the honor.

The prize will be awarded June 28, at a gala ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, shortly before the venue is set to be closed for a two-year renovation. Netflix also has a deal to stream the ceremony, though a date has not been announced.

With a caustic wit, Maher, 70, has been a fixture of the talk-show world on television for more than 30 years. His show “Politically Incorrect” started on Comedy Central in 1993 and then ran on ABC from 1997 to 2002. The next year, he began “Real Time With Bill Maher” on HBO, where it remains.

His show usually features a panel of high-profile guests debating political and social topics in informal terms, with Maher offering biting commentary throughout. He has been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, though he has just as often ridiculed the left — first mocking the “politically correct” discourse of the ’90s, and now “woke” culture.

“Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win,” Maher said in a statement. “I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”

Maher’s decision to be honored at an event at the Kennedy Center comes as a number of other artists and organizations have pulled out of performances there in recent months in response to the moves Trump has made to seize control of the venue. Among the most prominent names to withdraw are the Washington National Opera, the Martha Graham Dance Company and the composer Philip Glass.

The Kennedy Center has been a consistent source of controversy in Trump’s second term. The institution has been recast as the Trump-Kennedy Center and is to soon be remade under a renovation project that will force its closing — all actions that are being challenged in the courts.

After an article in The Atlantic magazine last week reported that Maher had been offered the award, the White House strongly denied that he would be the recipient. “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in response to the article.

In response to a request for comment Thursday, an administration official said: “This was false reporting at the time of The Atlantic’s reporting, but the situation changed after further conversations took place between the Trump-Kennedy Center and event organizers over the past week.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, responded Thursday: “The Atlantic reported first and accurately that Bill Maher was going to receive the Mark Twain Prize. The White House’s obfuscation strategy here is not effective.”

Maher has had a tangled relationship with the president. Though he has criticized Trump, Maher made a highly publicized visit to the White House last year, and later praised the president on his show, calling Trump “gracious and measured,” adding that Trump offered him hats and showed “a willingness to listen, accept me as a possible friend.”

Those comments drew sharp rebukes from some comedians and others. Larry David wrote an opinion article in The New York Times, with the headline “My Dinner With Adolf,” about a meeting with a gracious Adolf Hitler in 1939, which was widely interpreted as an oblique attack on Maher.

In recent months, Trump has pilloried Maher on social media. In one post from February, the president dismissed him as a “jerk” and a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT.”

The Kennedy Center on Thursday did not address questions about how the recipient of the Mark Twain honor is chosen. In past years, executives at the center have described a process involving Kennedy Center leadership and members of its board in consultation with producers of the show. Netflix has broadcast the show since 2024.

Maher has received 42 Emmy nominations throughout his career, most for his talk show and a few comedy specials. His only win, in 2014, was as an executive producer of “Vice” on HBO.

Previous winners of the Mark Twain award include David Letterman, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Jon Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg and Bob Newhart. Last year, the award went to Conan O’Brien, and the ceremony included many comedians mocking Trump and his administration.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.