Goodbye, Hulu standalone app. Next year, Hulu will be fully integrated into Disney+, creating one unified streaming experience.
The news was announced during Disney’s earnings call on Wednesday morning.
“Today we are announcing a major step forward in strengthening our streaming offering by fully integrating Hulu into Disney+,” CEO Bob Iger and CFO Hugh Johnston said in a statement on the company’s earnings call via Variety. “This will create an impressive package of entertainment, pairing the highest-caliber brands and franchises, great general entertainment, family programming, news, and industry-leading live sports content in a single app.”
Hulu will fully move under the Disney+ banner sometime in 2026. Hulu standalone subscriptions will be available for purchase after the move to Disney+. Customers will also be able to buy Disney+ standalone plans.
Hulu’s integration into Disney+ has been in the making for several years. In June 2025, Disney bought out NBCUniversal’s one-third stake in Hulu for approximately $9 billion. Disney now fully owns Hulu.
Disney+ has been integrating Hulu content since the spring of 2024. Disney has used this merging strategy to sell bundle plans that include Disney+ and Hulu.
Globally, Hulu will replace the Star tile on Disney+ internationally starting this fall. According to Iger, Hulu is now a “global general entertainment brand.”
“Over the coming months, we will be implementing improvements within the Disney+ app, including exciting new features and a more personalized homepage, all of which will culminate with the unified Disney+ and Hulu streaming app experience that will be available to consumers next year,” Iger explained on the call.
Disney executives are hoping that Disney+ with Hulu in one app will improve “consumer experience” and enhance the company’s ability to “grow profitability” and “lower churn.”
Disney also used the earnings call to announce the start date and price for its ESPN direct-to-consumer product. ESPN launches its standalone streaming product on August 21 for $29.99 per month.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
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YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.