Immunity following an acutely resolved infection or the long-term equipoise of chronic viral infections often depends on the maintenance of antigen-specific CD8 T cells, yet the ongoing transcriptional requirements of these cells remain unclear. We show that active and continuous programming by FOXO1 is required for the functional maintenance of a memory population. Upon Foxo1 deletion following resolution of an infection, memory cells rapidly lost their characteristic gene expression, gradually declined in number, and were impaired in self-renewal. This was extended to chronic infections, as a loss of FOXO1 during a persistent viral infection led to a rapid decline of the TCF7 (a.k.a. TCF1)-expressing memory-like subset of CD8 T cells. We further establish FOXO1 regulation as a characteristic of human memory CD8 T cells. Overall, we show that the molecular and functional longevity of a memory T cell population is actively maintained by the transcription factor FOXO1.