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Get ready for yet more online video content fragmentation as the CEO of American TV and Movie streaming giant HBO Max, Casey Bloys, has announced that its service will finally go live in the UK and Ireland during March 2026. But the platform will be going live in Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein first, on 13th January 2026.
Historically, if you wanted to watch HBO’s content in the UK (e.g. “It: Welcome to Derry,” “House of the Dragon,” “The Last of Us” etc.), then you would have had to pay for access via different platforms and channels, such as Sky TV (inc. NOW TV). Sky has already done a deal to ensure that they’ll still be able to carry the content (here), but others will now be able to subscribe directly to HBO Max instead.
The big uncertainty in all this is that HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which earlier this year revealed its plan to split into two separate companies, with HBO becoming part of the “Studios & Streaming” business. Suffice to say that several bids have already been made and the situation has created some uncertainty over what content HBO Max will actually end up carrying by the UK launch date.
HBO Max currently offers three main plans in the USA: Basic with Ads for $10.99/month or $109.99/year, Standard for $18.49/month or $184.99/year, and Premium for $22.99/month or $229.99/year. The Premium plan includes 4K content and streams on four devices simultaneously, while the Standard plan has no ads and streams on two devices.
At the time of writing we don’t yet know how much HBO Max will charge UK consumers for these, but we suspect the £ GBP price will follow a similar standard level to the USA (i.e. if you add 20% VAT then that gets you close to £10 per month for ‘Basic with Ads’). Whether consumers will appreciate having to pay for yet another streaming service, which further fragments their access to content, is another matter.
The news also comes in time for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, which will be broadcast live on HBO Max from 6th to 22nd Feb 2025, albeit not for the UK and Ireland since it won’t have launched yet.