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As we hurtle headfirst into another packed season of cycling we thought we’d take a look at your options for catching all the racing action this year.
We’ll primarily focus on the situation here in the UK where (spoiler alert) things got very expensive in 2025 after Eurosport was closed for good and all its cycling coverage moved over to TNT Sports, behind a £30.99-a-month subscription.
However, fear not, overseas readers — we’ll also have time to whiz around some other parts of the world to assess your options for getting your racing fix, explain everything you might need to know about VPNs, and possibly even ask the question: is it simply cheaper to just go and watch the pros from the roadside?
Happy birthday to cycling on TNT Sports
You’ll have to excuse us if we don’t get the cake and bunting out for this birthday, the end of January marking one year since Warner Bros. Discovery announced all cycling coverage for UK and Irish viewers would, from the end of February 2025, no longer be on Eurosport and instead move to TNT Sports’ premium subscription.
Warner Bros. Discovery bosses said the move was all about consolidating its sports content on one platform, however the headlines were dominated by the extraordinary situation whereby cycling fans in the UK and Ireland were suddenly asked to pay £30.99-a-month for what is, mandatory adverts and a few extra races a year aside, essentially the same coverage as previously cost £6.99-a-month.
It was a tough sell and there were complaints online on this website, on social media, in cycling forums, the pro ranks, group rides up and down the country, newspapers, and even in Parliament.
In fact, as you told us unanimously last summer, just 18 per cent of road.cc readers said they would pay to watch the Tour de France on TNT Sports, raising concerns the paywall is reducing engagement and access to the sport, and even pushing people towards illegal streaming.
As we head into the 2026 road racing season, not much has changed.
One thing that has changed: HBO Max is replacing discovery+ as the streaming platform to watch TNT Sports
If this is all getting very confusing fast, here’s my best somewhat concise summary. In the UK, cycling is broadcast on TV on TNT Sports, but if you’re watching on-demand via the dedicated streaming platform this is now, as of the end of March, going to be HBO Max. Ultimately, Warner Bros. Discovery owns everything involved, it folded Eurosport in the UK, moved cycling to its TNT Sports package, streamed it on discovery+, and is now switching the streaming platform to HBO Max. If you watch cycling on TNT Sports’ TV channels, nothing has changed for 2026. If you watch TNT Sports via discovery+, you’ll need to switch to HBO Max. The price is broadly the same, but more on that in a second.
Get your wallet out
To watch TNT Sports’ (admittedly extensive) calendar of coverage, cycling fans based in the UK and Ireland have to buy a £30.99-a-month premium discovery+ sub.
That £30.99 is a monthly fee. Warner Bros. Discovery have this spring announced a new ‘Saver Plan’ which will be available on HBO Max, meaning you can get TNT Sports viewing for £25.99-a-month, however that does require a 12-month sign-up. In short, if you want to watch bike racing in the UK and Ireland, it’s still going to cost in excess of £300 per year.
What about the Tour de France on ITV and any other free-to-air cycling coverage?
More bad news for you UK and Ireland readers, from this season there will be no free-to-air ITV coverage of the Tour de France, Paris-Nice and Critérium du Dauphiné. Warner Bros. Discovery has exclusive rights to those races and they’ll be on TNT Sports.
The Tour returning to the UK in 2027 may yet see free-to-air coverage return for the Grand Départ of the men’s and women’s races, but that’s all still under discussion and there is no such arrangement this season.
Warner Bros. Discovery also owns Quest and puts some free-to-air content on there, including highlights of certain races, such as Paris-Roubaix, however this is generally sporadic.
To rub salt into the wound, British Cycling this winter announced it would no longer be sharing free YouTube livestreams of the cyclocross national championships, instead asking viewers to pay £2.99 to watch, a move that, at the time, seemed likely would be repeated for similar previously free road races too.
With that said, the governing body then quickly announced the national track champs would be free on YouTube and the whole YouTube membership thing was under review, so who knows? We’re expecting more on this in the coming months.
Do we have to pay £30.99 a month?
There used to not be an option to pay less per month by taking out an annual TNT Sports/discovery+ subscription and the £30.99 was a flat rate to be paid every month. However, as mentioned earlier, Warner Bros. Discovery has unveiled a new ‘Saver Plan’ offering TNT Sports on HOB Max for £25.99-a-month, although this is reliant on a 12-month sign-up. The ‘basic’ HBO Max subscription is significantly cheaper, at £4.99-a-month, but only includes the entertainment channels. No sport.
There are a few ways you might be able to get a cheaper deal, such as what a few people spotted last year whereby, if you attempt to cancel your existing package, TNT Sports might offer you a discount.
Likewise, there are plenty of service providers (often TV, mobile phone contracts or broadband) who’ll let you add TNT Sports to your package for less than £30.99, although admittedly the monthly sub can still be pretty eye-watering. Virgin Media, BT and EE have had deals running in recent times, so it might be worth checking what you’re eligible to add to your existing phone/broadband contracts to see if there is a TNT option.
In most cases we’ve seen online these still seem to be around the £20 mark so your victory would be only paying three times what the old Eurosport sub was, rather than four and a half times, but maybe worth checking. TNT Sports can sometimes also appear in new tech bundles, so perhaps keep an eye out if you’re already on the hunt for a new phone or TV and spot a way in there.
Go halves with a mate
While info on this is unsurprisingly a bit tricky to find on TNT Sports’ website, it does appear (from the road.cc office’s own personal experiences + info online) that you can stream TNT Sports on more than one device at the same time, opening the door to sharing an account with a mate and cutting the price in half.
Get a VPN
You probably already know what a VPN is by now but, in case your favourite podcast’s adverts haven’t rammed them down your neck for years, it stands for virtual private network. In short, it’s a service that protects your internet connection and privacy online via an encrypted tunnel for your data, protecting your online identity by hiding your IP address.
There are loads of providers, many charging a small monthly fee for their services, often far cheaper than the cost of TNT Sports. But what has any of this got to do with watching bike races? Well, many of them allow you to change your location to another country and therefore open the door to accessing race broadcasts that would otherwise be geo-blocked. That might mean watching free-to-air coverage from Dutch broadcaster NOS, Belgian coverage via Sporza, or French racing on France TV.
The most popular providers include Nord VPN (from £2.59 per month), Surfshark (from £1.69 per month) and ExpressVPN (from £4.04 per month). All three of those offer free trials, so you can see which one works best for you before committing to a monthly payment.
But what about me? I don’t live in the UK
In Europe, there is still plenty of free-to-air coverage on country-specific TV channels such as RAI in Italy, France TV in France, Sporza in Belgium. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the country’s ‘cycling mad’ status, Belgian viewers get all three Grand Tours, all the classics action and plenty more free racing on Sporza’s VRT Max streaming service.
In France, most racing can be accessed free too, either through France TV or L’Équipe’s online coverage. UK and Irish VPN users might want to tour the European broadcasters this year for the most authentic viewing experience… Milan-San Remo and the Giro on RAI, Flanders on Sporza, the Tour on France TV, La Vuelta on RTVE. With a VPN that can ping your location around the world there’ll almost always be a free-to-air option.
VPNs aside, things are a bit of an expensive pain in the US too, with ASO races (such as the Tour and Liège–Bastogne–Liège) on Peacock for $10.99-a-month (or $16.99 ad-free). However, Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo and the Giro d’Italia are on HBO Max (another $10.99-$22.99-a-month depending on package). There is also Flo Bikes which has the Tour, World Championships, Paris-Nice, some of the classics etc. but again, it’s not everything under its $29.99-a-month or $150-a-year subscription.
If you want free English-language coverage, Australia is your best bet, SBS showing the men’s and women’s Tour and Vuelta, Paris-Roubaix, Strade Bianche, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and ASO’s offering of stage races.
Get drastic… just watch on the roadside
As our senior news writer and podcast host Ryan Mallon amusingly pointed out over the winter, for £30.99 you could just, well, get to the classics in person… or at least to Brussels airport.
If you wanted to see Milan-San Remo you might even have had enough change to get to the startline…
Food for thought.
As always, please do let us know in the comments if you’ve spotted any other deals or have other (legal) ideas…
11 thoughts on “How to watch cycling on TV in 2026: Cough up for a subscription, consider a VPN, or skip the box altogether with our top tips for catching live racing”
Watching on TV isn’t really my bag.
Live is magical, but it does go like…
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PTIAOW! there they g…
back marker…
more tea anyone?
The first bit is more like
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If you are going to watch the tour I’d recommend a TT stage.
Or you could do something really radical and get involved in the sport in the UK. All clubs are looking for help with Road Races: lead cars, marshalls, commisaires, HQ & Sign-on, it’s great fun and gets you involved in the action.
Then you can rightly claim that you are a person who makes things happen rather than one that sits around watching what happend, or wondering what the hell has happened!
Fair play to anyone who actually wants to be involved but I’m not sure that in offering standing around with a clipboard in the rain next to an A road in Lincolnshire watching local TT riders passing as an alternative to going to the south of France and riding around for a few days enjoying the food and wine in the sunshine and then watching the Tour de France go by you’re really offering a suitable alternative.
I’m not sure you can be occasionally non-sporadic.
Bought a new Samsung 43cm TV for £240 and it came with 2 years of TNT Sport. Paid back monthly at £10 per month. Bargain.
Like it! can you point me in the right direction for this amazing deal?
Who has the time to watch all the sport on TV anyway? I suppose if you have one sport you follow then the subscription is worth it – but there just seems to be an endless stream of it. I occasionally watch a Champions League game and some cycling – but I use a VPN (Proton – it’s European and ultra encrypted) You do have to listen to commentary (or mute it) not in English so it helps if you speak / understand a few languages.
Here in Switzerland, we don’t even get the option of legally giving a company a bunch of money to watch English-language cycling broadcasts anymore. The UK free-to-air channels are shown by the local cable TV providers, so it was no problem until last year to have some races in English. In April last year,
I tried paying for the subscription to our version of TNT for a month and found that they don’t offer English-language feeds for the cycling (even though they do offer that for other less-interesting sports, like golf). I would therefore need to pay for a VPN and then pay for a UK TNT subscription to get what I’m looking for!
I speak French, so fortunately I can watch most races and understand 95% of the commentary, but I do prefer the British version (the French commentators literally turn their race analysis into a stream of “Allez-Allez-Allez” when their riders are doing well).
Just to add that in Ireland I believe the Tour will still be available for free in 2026 on TG4 (Irish language service). The TG4 player doesn’t appear to be geoblocked (at least from the UK – just checked with a VPN), though that might not be the case with something like the Tour
Thanks for the tip but sadly every time I’ve tried to access TG4 for sports coverage it’s definitely geoblocked for most of the UK. I think I remember hearing once that viewers in Northern Ireland can get it?
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