Who is Tom Llamas, the new anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News’?

Tom Llamas, who is replacing Lester Holt as anchor of “NBC Nightly News” on June 2, 2025, has a journalism career going back about twenty years.

Llamas began his broadcasting career in 2000 with the NBC News Specials Unit and later worked at MSNBC, focusing primarily on political coverage. He then moved to NBC’s WTVJ in Miami and subsequently to WNBC in New York as a general assignment reporter and anchor.

He then jumped to ABC News in 2014 where he served as a correspondent. About a year later, he was named Sunday anchor of “ABC World News Tonight,” before eventually taking over the Saturday edition in 2017.

In 2021, he returned to NBC, this time as senior national correspondent and anchor of “Top Story with Tom Llamas” on NBC News Now, the network’s free news streamer.

In 2025, he was named as Holt’s replacement on “Nightly News,” with Holt signing off May 30, 2025.

Born on July 2, 1979, in Miami, Florida, Llamas is the son of Cuban immigrants who fled the island as political refugees. He attended Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami before enrolling at Loyola University in New Orleans, where he graduated in 2001 with bachelor’s degrees in broadcast journalism and drama and speech.

Although Llamas, who turns 46 in July 2025, is not the youngest person to be named primary weekday anchor of a U.S. national broadcast — that title belongs to the late Peter Jennings, who began anchoring at ABC in 1965 when he was in his mid-twenties. David Muir, the current anchor of “WNT,” was also younger than Llamas when he took over the broadcast, having been 40 at the time.

Llamas is also becoming the managing editor of “Nightly,” which is a bit of an unusual move. Historically, anchors with that title have either been more experienced or did not gain the title until later in their tenure. In fact, Holt didn’t gain the title until 2021, when he was 56, having anchored the broadcast since 2015.

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In addition to “Nightly,” Llamas is continuing to anchor “Top Story,” which underscores the important role that streaming has in the current TV landscape. 

“Top Story” airs at 7 p.m. eastern, which is almost immediately following when “Nightly” goes off the air.