Sir Tom: ITV fired me from The Voice after 13 seasons

Sir Tom Jones has said that ITV fired him as a full-time coach on The Voice UK after nine years and 13 seasons on the panel. The Welsh singer posted the statement on Instagram and social media on 8 September 2026, making plain that the decision was not his and that he did not want to leave a programme he loves. Jones, who is 86, wrote that he had been offered a much-reduced role — occasional appearances and no involvement from the start. He cited the initial reason given to him as “a financial difficulty with insurance”, while noting that later reports described a desire to “refresh” the show with a new coaching line-up that left no chair for him. “To be clear, I did not want to leave The Voice as I love the show and really appreciate the audience. ITV made this decision — obviously a while ago, and I was told just recently… So the only thing I know right now is that there’s never a good time to fire an 86-year-old who’s still pretty good at his job,” he said. A Voice UK spokesperson confirmed Jones would no longer be a full-time coach on series 15 but said discussions continued about possible involvement. There has been no indication that he has accepted the reduced role. The announcement came ahead of the new series; the coaching line-up includes Cheryl, Aitch, will.i.am and Kelly Rowland. Olly Murs publicly supported Jones. The voice that carried the career Sir Thomas Jones Woodward built that career on a full-throated, robust baritone and a run of top 10 hits that began in the mid-1960s. His debut album, Along Came Jones, appeared in 1965, the same year as It’s Not Unusual and further singles that took him onto major television stages. A-Tom-ic Jones and From the Heart followed in 1966. He has toured regularly ever since, including a long run of appearances in Las Vegas from 1967 to 2011 that established him as much a live performer as a recording artist. The catalogue has not stood still in later decades. Hide & Seek (The Lost Collection) arrived in 2020; Surrounded By Time and Surrounded By Time (The Hourglass Edition) followed in 2021, with a further release in 2023. The through-line is the same instrument that first carried him into the charts, and British audiences have heard it week after week across 13 seasons of The Voice UK — his advice from the chair, performances with contestants and the authority of a singer who has been at the work for six decades. What the decision changes For a generation of viewers, Jones was one of the fixed points of the British version of the format. Removing him as a full-time coach alters the panel that audiences have come to expect, and the new line-up underlines the scale of the refresh. Whether occasional appearances still take shape is not settled; the spokesperson’s wording leaves the door open without confirming any date or format. Jones has framed the choice as ITV’s alone, taken some time before he was told, and has left no doubt that the full-time chair was the role he wanted to keep. He has not signalled acceptance of the reduced offer. What remains public is the statement he chose to make, the confirmation that series 15 will proceed without him as a permanent coach, and a career that still rests on the voice he has never stopped using — on record, on stage and, until this decision, on the programme he says he did not want to leave.