Gary Lineker is set to leave the BBC, with an announcement expected on Monday.
Speculation is mounting the 64-year-old will step down after he presents his final Match of the Day next weekend.
It is understood that Lineker, listed as the highest-paid BBC presenter, will also no longer present the corporation’s coverage of the World Cup in 2026.
But last week he had to apologize after sharing a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.
Lineker said he very much regretted the references, adding he would never knowingly share anything antisemitic and that he had deleted the post once he had learned about the symbolism of the image.
Last week, BBC Director General Tim Davie said: “The BBC’s reputation is held by everyone, and when someone makes a mistake, it costs us.”
It is understood that BBC bosses considered Lineker’s position untenable.
The former England striker has attracted criticism before for his posts on social media in the past.
He was temporarily suspended from the BBC in March 2023 after an impartiality row over a post in which he said language used to promote a government asylum policy was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.
The BBC’s social media rules were then rewritten to say presenters of flagship programmes outside news and current affairs – including Match of the Day – have “a particular responsibility to respect the BBC’s impartiality, because of their profile on the BBC”.
In November 2024, Lineker announced his departure from Match of the Day, but said he would remain with the BBC to front FA Cup and World Cup coverage.
Last month, Lineker said in an interview that he believed the BBC wanted him to leave Match of the Day as he was negotiating a new contract last year, saying: “Well, perhaps they want me to leave. There was the sense of that.”
The BBC didn’t comment on Lineker’s suggestion at the time but called him a “world-class presenter” and added that Match of the Day “continually evolves for changing viewing habits”.
Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan have been announced as new presenters of the show for the start of the 2025-26 season.
Lineker has not publicly commented on his departure from the BBC.
In his interview last month, Lineker also reflected on his 2023 tweets, saying that he did not regret the comments and adding: “Would I, in hindsight, do it again? No I wouldn’t, because of all the nonsense that came with it.”
Speaking to the BBC’s Amol Rajan, he indicated his next career move “won’t be more telly”, adding: “I think I’ll step back from that now” and “I think I’ll probably focus more on the podcast world”.
Roger Mosey, a former director of BBC Sport and BBC television news, said Lineker could not “both be the BBC’s highest-paid presenter and a social media activist”.
“In my view, if you are the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, you should not be taking the kind of political lead he has been doing,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Many people this morning may be thinking, ‘well, I agree with Gary about Palestine, or I agreed with Gary about the EU’. But imagine if he had been tweeting pro-Leave, or pro-Israel, would you still support that right to speak out?”
He added that it was no longer viable for Lineker to front the World Cup, because if he did, it would have “been through psychodrama of what does Gary think about Trump, what Gary think about the latest international developments”.
