6 biggest questions about streaming services in 2026

In summary, this is what we all learned about streaming TV in 2025:

That the cost was too high, and there's far too much to watch. That there's a word salad of services, with a blizzard of different prices (which mostly went up). We learned that everyone is pushing a deal, while "bundles" and "packages" and "genres" were the industry's hot buzzwords. 

Mostly we just scratched our collective heads and shelled out more cash.

Will 2026 bring more of the same? (Heaven forbid.)

To help sort this out, and get a sense of what to expect over the next 11 months, here are six burning questions.

Will pricing continue to climb?

Of course, and the sun will also rise. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that prices for the streaming video-on-demand services, or SVODs, rose nearly 20% in December over the same period from a year before. Jon Giegengack, founder of Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based Hub Entertainment Research — a streaming and consumer research firm — says bluntly, "They're all going up a lot more now, even [more] than the inflation rate, [so] the idea that streaming is cheaper has now gone by the wayside."

Sports have become the single biggest driver of streaming growth over the past year, and that's expected to continue. As streamers battle for those sports rights, the costs are passed along.

Jared DiPane, general manager of leading streamer site, The Streamable, says: "Consumers are definitely feeling the fatigue, especially those subscribed to multiple services. The problem is content licensing costs — NFL licensing, which is just astronomical and licensing of previous [hit] franchises which remain popular." 

Moreover, streamers are hellbent on turning a profit more than ever before, or as Jared Newman, a Cincinnati-based tech writer and founder of the popular newsletter Cord Cutter Weekly, puts it they "are more focused on profitability over subscriber numbers, so you're seeing a leveling off of subscribers, but they are turning more of a profit now."

A couple of trend reports from last year said the average household spent  between $60 and $70 a month for streaming services, while one said that's actually a decline from 2024 -- because people have started to cut back. 

Why is bundling the hot trend in streaming?

"Bundling" — selling different streamers together — took off in 2025, but it's just beginning to have an impact. Everywhere you turn, some streamer is bundled with another, begetting a whole new vocabulary like "genre pacts" or "skinny bundles" or "day passes."

The biggest bundler remains Disney +/Hulu/ESPN, which now (at around $35.99 with ads) also includes HBO Max. ESPN has a range of bundles while major cable operators (Comcast, Charter, Verizon, Optimum) have added streamers to their various plans, too. Apple and Peacock recently got together, too (for $14.99). 

In a novel form of "skinny" bundling, DirectTV has "genre packs," like cereal brands, which include "MiEspanol," "MyKids," "MySports" and so on. (Costs range from $19.99 a month for "MyKids" all the way up to $69.99 for MySports, while "MyEntertainment" is $35.)

Sling, meanwhile, sells you "day passes" — you pay for just one day — or three day packs, and so on ($4.99 for one day pass; $9.99 for three days; and $14.99 for seven).

YouTube TV is expected to launch 10 new "skinny" bundles later this year, too. (Skinny? It simply means you pay for what you want — not everything.) Amazon Prime remains the OG of bundling, where you can purchase  TV, music, photos, toilet paper, sneakers, you-name-it all in one place. (And, of course, for a price: $139 per year, up $20 since 2022.) 

Newman says, "A lot of these streamers that have been dabbling in bundling have realized that people are less likely to unsubscribe when they're getting a bunch of services together."

Churn, in fact, has been the bane of the streaming industry, so bundling — at least so far — has been a way to mitigate that.

There are benefits for subscribers, too.

Giegengack -- who says "a couple of years ago it would have been anathema for competing services to get together" — now says consumers want these bundles. "When we ask people [in surveys] 'Why?,' the biggest reason is simplicity [because] 'I can see all the content that I have access to in one place without having to log into separate apps.' "

DiPane adds: "This will be the year of more choices from the streaming providers, whether it's Sling and their 'passes,' or YouTube TV and their new skinny bundles. There's just going to be more options from every streaming service — more plans, more bundles — which can definitely create some confusion, but it'll give consumers some real choices once they understand their needs and what works and what doesn't."

Will YouTube prevail in the streaming wars?

This is hardly an idle question because YouTube already has become the single most viewed streaming source in the world. To many rivals, including Disney, YouTube has even established the rules of the battle going forward — the streamer that commands the attention of the youngest viewers will ultimately win.

How this will play out is simple enough. 

Newman says, "I've made this point [in 'Cord Cutter Weekly'] that these streaming services are getting worse — more expensive, more ads, new restrictions on password sharing, removing content for reasons that you can't understand — and then here's YouTube. You open the app and start watching. It's the easy frictionless option."

YouTube has become the largest "default" streamer for a vast majority of people, which means when they can't find something they want to watch on, say, Paramount, they "default" to YouTube.

For this reason, every other streamer is looking for YouTube-like "user generated" content, or shortly they will be, say DiPane and Giegengack. .

That includes streaming leader Netflix, which has signed deals with Spotify and iHeart Media, for example, to feature videos of popular podcasts like "Dear Chelsea" and "The Breakfast Club." Netflix promises hundreds by later this year.

Disney has also jumped into creator content, by licensing itself out to Open AI's "Sora 2 Video Generator." This will let millions create so-called "fan-inspired" videos of about 200 Disney characters, some of which will then be "siloed" on Disney+. It's expected to begin early this year.

Giegengack says the initiative "is actually going to be huge because [creator content] is already taking share of attention from traditional media companies, especially among young audiences, who are using  Minecraft, Roblox or even Fortnite, where there's an interactive experience and where you can create your own content."

The Disney-Open AI agreement will allow users to do the same, and other streamers with valuable intellectual property, or IP, are expected to follow suit, he says.

How will Netflix's pending purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery change the streaming landscape?

Get beyond Hollywood's well-reported resistance to such a deal -- that theatrical movies will go away -- to what this potential deal is really all about: power. A Netflix-HBO combine — imagine getting "The Pitt" and "Wednesday" here in one place -- would sail past Disney +/Hulu/ESPN, or as Giegengack puts it, "Warner Bros. has the HBO brand, which is one of the only brands in TV that still means something [while this] would put them up to about 40% of all streaming."

Assuming the deal goes through — and Skydance-Paramount has launched a bidding war — not everyone thinks that you, the consumer, will be the beneficiary.

Newman wrote in PC World last month, "For Netflix, it’s a way to fulfill its goal of being a singular source for streaming, which in turn will help it raise prices, freeze out rivals, and tilt the distribution of movies and shows in its favor."

Is Hulu going away … forever? (!)

Hulu launched (in beta) about 10 months after Netflix's streaming service began in 2007, so its roots go deep. But there's widespread speculation Hulu's days are numbered. Last August, Disney chairman Bob Iger told analysts Disney was "combining Hulu into Disney+ to create a unified app experience..." (Disney owns Hulu.) No date was given.

What happens next is a matter of some urgency, at least to fans of Hulu shows like "Only Murders in the Building" and "Paradise,"  and subscribers of Hulu + Live TV (the popular service that lets subscribers see their local TV stations). 

"There's a lot of misinformation and confusion out there," Newman says. "When I talked to [Disney] last year, they said we don't have a timeline for getting rid of the Hulu app and that 'We're basically just going to encourage people to use Disney+ and see what their response is like, then we'll take it from there.' "

In fact, Disney has given mixed messages on the future of Hulu — perhaps because no decision has been made. For example, the company bought a controlling stake in Fubo — the sports-heavy streamer — in October, and some expect the company to eventually bundle both (For now, Fubo's lowest-tier package starts at $55.99). 

That hardly appears like a strategy designed to "sunset" the Hulu brand. A potential Hulu-Fubo bundle could become a hedge against fast-growing rival YouTube TV which will soon launch its own "Sports Plan" bundle.

Bottom line: Maybe Hulu isn't really going anywhere.

Where does FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) go in 2026? 

The answer here would appear to be "up, up and up" for these all-free-all-the-time (with lots of ads) streamers that are stuffed with vast amounts of content. There are nearly 2,000 FAST streamers around the world (well over 1,000 in the United States alone), and they continue to grow. The big ones, like Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Xumo Play and Sling Freestream, dominate much of the action.

According to Wurl, a technology company that's helped launch many of these FASTs, the number of "monthly active households" that tune into them climbed 12% last year. About half of all U.S. TV households watch some form of FAST, and users are expected to reach nearly 80 million by the end of next year.

Tubi — widely considered the biggest of the FASTS, with about 100 million users, and lots of original content, including their own movies — is "doing some really, really interesting things, " Giegenback says.

One of those is called "Creatorverse," launched in 2025 and part of what the service is calling "Tubi for Creators." This effectively brings the YouTube model to the channel, while — according to this Fox-owned FAST — those creators have responded: "Creator content on Tubi has now grown to over 10,000 episodes from more than 100 creators," the company said recently. These include MrBeast, Jomboy Media (a sports-heavy creator, with shows like "Talkin' Baseball"), Alan Chikin Chow (whose "Alan's Universe" on YouTube has 110 million subs) and Tik Tok comic Steven He. 

There's a term for this emerging new genre — CTV, or creator TV — and everyone wants a piece of it. Per Roku's own prediction list, people "should expect even more creators to make the leap to CTV in 2026," including (of course) at Roku.