Bowen Yang & Colin Jost on Saturday Night LiveNBCAfter a few surprise exits among the cast, Saturday Night Live has announced the final lineup for its 51st season.
Among the returning players are some fan favorites viewers will be thrilled to see coming back, including Michael Che, Colin Jost, Bowen Yang, Sarah Sherman, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, Ego Nwodim, James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes, and, of course, Kenan Thompson, Jane Wickline and Ashley Padilla will also be returning as featured players.
Ben Marshall (of Please Do Not Destroy) is being bumped to a main cast member, while newcomers Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, Tommy Brennan, and Veronika Slowikowska will be joining the show.
To celebrate the upcoming new season, here's a list of all the out LGBTQ+ cast members for season 51 of SNL.
1. Bowen Yang
Bowen Yang arrives at the Las Culturistas Culture Awards at The Orpheum Theatre on July 17, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Emma McIntyre/WireImage
Yang joined SNL as a writer back in 2018, but was bumped up to featured player just a season later. Despite carving out a solid career for himself in movies and TV since then, Yang has remained an integral part of SNL, bringing us iconic sketches like the Sara Lee social media disaster with Harry Styles.
...and that's it.
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Fer Gregory/Shutterstock
To be fair, not everyone on the SNL cast has labeled themselves, so there certainly could be other LGBTQ+ players among the remaining 17. But all-in-all, it's a pretty bleak look for the show—albeit not necessarily one that's too surprising.
There have actually only been nine out LGBTQ+ cast members in SNL history. Maybe we just got a little too accustomed to there actually being more than one present at a time during the early 2020s. And maybe it's just a little more disheartening than usual when we're living through a time where LGBTQ+ acceptance is dipping, making visibility more important than ever. Yet we've also been seeing a decrease in on-screen representation.
Hopefully SNL will have plenty of queer hosts and musical guests on during the new season, but we look forward to the day when we can finally at least say there have been 10 LGBTQ+ cast members on the show during its 50+ years on the air.
