Long-standing host of the Ten Network’s The Project Carrie Bickmore has announced she will leave the popular show at the end of the year.

An ever-present since the news and current affairs show was launched as The 7.30 Project in 2009 on the Ten Network, an emotional Bickmore said she was reluctant to leave but conceded ‘‘I know it’s time. I know it’s right’’.

Fighting back tears, the 2015 Gold Logie winner said she would finish hosting the show at the end of the year.

“It’s been the hardest decision of my professional life, but it’s time for a new challenge and my next chapter,” Bickmore, 41, said on Tuesday evening’s show.

“I am going to miss my best mates on the desk, the job itself which is so incredibly fulfilling, and our wonderful viewers so much.

“The show has become a second home to me and I couldn’t be more thankful to everyone involved in it. I started the show when [son] Ollie was one and he is now 15, which is crazy.

“I look forward to more family dinners and watching the show with my PJs on and a wine in hand.

‘‘… But for now I will enjoy every show I have left until the end of the year. I just want to say thank you. It has been an incredible privilege.”

.@BickmoreCarrie has been on The Project desk since the day we first launched in 2009 and tonight, Carrie has revealed that she will be leaving the show. Here is the moment she made the the announcement.#TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/a7RkxGl6KH

— The Project (@theprojecttv) October 11, 2022

Bickmore started on the network as the newsreader with Rove McManus on Rove Live, and was recognised with the Best New Talent Logie Award in 2010.

She is the only original host left on the show, with Charlie Pickering and Dave Hughes having moved on previously.

Bickmore was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2019 for her services to broadcasting and to brain cancer awareness.

Her first husband, Greg Lange, died from the illness in December 2010.

She launched Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Foundation – symbolic of him wanting to cover up his scars with a beanie – in 2015. As of September it has raised more than $18 million for brain cancer research.

She has since had two daughters, Evie and Adelaide, with partner Chris Walker.

Paramount chief content officer Beverley McGarvey said Bickmore’s ‘‘genuine warmth, empathy, passion, humanity and humour have always resonated with viewers’’.

The show wraps for the year on Wednesday, November 30.