Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods have left WWE. Both men were moved to the Alumni section of WWE.com today, Saturday May 2, 2026, confirming their exits from the active roster.
Fightful Select and Cory Hays of Bodyslam.net first reported the news, with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp confirming that the departures were mutual decisions to part ways.
WWE has not publicly commented. Neither Kingston nor Woods has addressed the news publicly as of this writing.
The shock of the announcement is not just that two of WWE’s most beloved performers are gone.
It is the timing. In October 2025, seven months ago, Kofi Kingston reportedly signed a five-year contract extension with WWE that was expected to keep him with the company until 2030.
Xavier Woods signed a new multi-year extension at the same time, after negotiations that went down to the wire.
Both men had just re-committed to the company. Why that changed, and why it changed so quickly, has not been explained by any party.
How Kofi Kingston Became An Icon
Kofi Nahaje Sarkodie-Mensah was born in Ghana and raised in the United States. He signed with WWE in 2006 and made his main roster debut on ECW in January 2008 as an energetic, high-flying Jamaican character who immediately connected with audiences.
Over the next two decades, he became one of the most decorated, most beloved and most genuinely irreplaceable performers in the company’s history.
The championships tell part of the story. Four Intercontinental Championship reigns. Three United States Championship reigns. Sixteen tag team championship reigns across various titles.
He is WWE’s 30th Triple Crown Champion and 20th overall Grand Slam Champion. But the championships only capture the quantity of what he accomplished.
The defining moment of his career, and one of the defining moments of WWE television in the past decade, requires its own explanation.
Going into WrestleMania 35 in April 2019, Kofi Kingston was not scheduled to be in the main event.
He had spent years as an upper-midcard performer, beloved, reliable, consistently entertaining, but never in the conversation for the WWE Championship.
Then, a combination of circumstances and fan demand created what became known as KofiMania.
Through a series of matches in which Kingston kept coming tantalizingly close to earning a title shot before being denied, then earning it decisively, then walking into MetLife Stadium in New Jersey against reigning WWE Champion Daniel Bryan, Kingston experienced something that rarely happens in professional wrestling, a moment that felt genuinely unscripted in its emotional weight.
The crowd was completely invested. When he won the WWE Championship, the moment produced a reaction that veterans of the business described as among the loudest they had ever heard live.
He was the first and only African-born world champion in WWE history. That designation is not an asterisk to his championship.
It is part of what made the moment resonate beyond wrestling, a man from Ghana, who had spent eleven years working toward the top of his profession, winning the most prestigious title in the industry.
What Xavier Woods Built Alongside Him
Austin Watson, Xavier Woods, signed with WWE in 2010 after a stint in TNA as Consequences Creed.
He debuted on the main roster in 2013 and spent his first year in a run that was, by general consensus, not working. The character was not connecting. The booking was aimless. It was not going well.
Then came The New Day.
The trio of Kingston, Woods and Big E formed in 2014 as a gospel-inspired heel act designed to be booed.
Fans booed them at first. Then, over months of commitment to their characters and genuine chemistry between three performers who actually liked each other, something changed.
The boos turned to cheers. The act that was supposed to be despised became one of the most popular acts in the company.
Their friendship, which was real, translated on screen in ways that genuine friendship almost never does in professional wrestling, where kayfabe historically required keeping private relationships private.
They held the record for the longest tag team championship reign in WWE history.
They pioneered a specific kind of character work that made space for humor, joy and sincerity in a product that had often valued edge and aggression above those things. The cereal boxes. The trombones. The positivity.
The constant willingness to be ridiculous while also being genuinely excellent in the ring when the match required it.
Beyond the ring, Woods created UpUpDownDown, WWE’s dedicated gaming YouTube channel, and built it into one of the more significant pieces of WWE digital content, bringing gaming culture into the wrestling space and giving wrestlers a platform to show dimensions of their personalities that matches alone could not convey.
Big E And The Injury That Changed Everything
The original New Day was three people. On March 11, 2022, on an episode of SmackDown, Ettore Ewen, Big E, took a belly-to-belly suplex from Ridge Holland on the floor outside the ring.
The landing broke his neck. He was carried out on a stretcher. He has not competed in a WWE ring since.
Big E has remained with WWE in other capacities and has been present at events. But the in-ring trio that defined the New Day’s best years ended that night in Columbia, South Carolina.
Kingston and Woods continued as a tag team, adapting and evolving the act, adding new members at various points, continuing to work at a high level. But the trio was gone.
On February 16, 2026, Kingston announced during a Raw commercial break segment that Woods had been quietly battling a shoulder injury for three months and was being forced by the medical team to take time off.
Woods’ last television appearance was January 26, 2026. His last in-ring action was a dark match at the Royal Rumble. He was not cleared to return when today’s news broke.
Kingston’s final televised appearance was the April 17 episode of SmackDown, where he teamed with Grayson Waller, who had been brought in as the third member of a newer New Day lineup, in a losing effort against WWE Tag Team Champions Damian Priest and R-Truth.
The Contract Extension
In October 2025, WWE fans received what felt like good news. Fightful Select reported that Xavier Woods had signed a new multi-year deal, ending negotiations that had gone down to the wire with his original contract expiring in September 2025.
Days later, the same outlet reported that Kingston had quietly signed a five-year extension that was expected to keep him with the company until 2030.
Kingston would be approaching 49 years old when that 2030 contract expired.
The extensions read at the time as WWE committing to two performers it clearly valued and wanted to retain through the next phase of their careers.
Seven months later, both men are in the Alumni section of WWE.com.
What changed is not publicly known. WWE has not commented. Kingston and Woods have not commented.
The circumstances described, mutual decisions to part ways, suggest an arrangement rather than a termination, but the details of what produced that arrangement are not available.
What Comes Next
Both Kingston and Woods are widely considered future WWE Hall of Famers.
The New Day’s run, from 2014 through 2026, produced moments that will be discussed for as long as professional wrestling is discussed. The WrestleMania 35 moment.
The record tag title reign. The cereal. The positivity. KofiMania. The trombone. The genuinely unprecedented thing they built out of an act that was supposed to fail.
Also departing WWE on the same day. JC Mateo and Tonga Loa. Their exits, along with the April 24 wave of more than 20 releases following WrestleMania 42, represent a significant reshaping of the WWE roster in the weeks after the company’s biggest annual event.
Non-compete clauses, if any, have not been disclosed. Next steps have not been announced.
Big E, retired from in-ring competition since his broken neck in 2022, remains with WWE in other capacities and was not part of today’s departures.
The New Day has left the building. What happens next is a question neither Kingston nor Woods has yet answered.
