Scott Adams, the controversial creator of the long-running comic strip Dilbert, died on January 13, 2026, after a long battle with cancer. Adams’ ex-wife, Shelley Miles, announced Adams’ death on the “Coffee with Scott Adams” podcast on January 13, saying that the cartoonist had passed right before the podcast went live, before tearfully reading a message from Adams to his fans.

Born in 1957 in New York, Adams, a former engineer, created Dilbert to poke fun at the absurdities of office life in 1989. The comic strip picked up steam throughout the ’90s, and at its peak, appeared in 2,000 newspapers around the world. The comic strip also led to a 1999 animated series, also called Dilbert.

Adams had long been known for his controversial opinions, but a 2023 YouTube livestream in which he said “The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people” led to Dilbert being dropped from almost all the newspapers it was running in, and led his book publishers to cut ties. Adams announced a new, independent version of the strip called Dilbert Reborn that fans could access only through his website.

In May 2025, Adams announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Scott Adams’ statement to fans before his death

The statement Adams left for fans reads, in part:

“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me. I have a few things to say before I go. My body failed before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this, January 1st, 2026. If you wonder about any of my choices from my estate, or anything else, please know I am free of [unintelligible] or any inappropriate influence of any sort, I promise.

“Next, many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit, the risk/reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me. So here I go: I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me not being a believer should be quite quickly resolved if I wake up in Heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry.

“With your permission, I would like to explain my life. For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent, as a way to find meaning. That worked. But marriages don’t always last forever, and mine eventually ended in a highly amicable way. I am grateful for those years, and for the people I came to call my family.”

Adams’ full statement can be heard in the video below.