If you’ve been leaning on ESPN’s standalone streaming service to catch every game, brace your wallet. Starting September 17, 2026, ESPN is raising prices across the board — and the increases ripple out into its Disney Plus bundles too.
Here’s the damage. The ad-supported ESPN Select tier jumps from $12.99 to $13.99 per month, while the annual plan climbs from $129.99 to $139.99 per year. The premium ESPN Unlimited plan goes from $29.99 to $31.99 per month, and its annual price rises from $299.99 to $319.99 per year.
Notably, this is the first price increase for ESPN Unlimited since the service launched. ESPN rolled out its full direct-to-consumer offering on August 21, 2025, so the free ride lasted almost exactly a year before the numbers ticked upward.
What are you actually paying for? The two tiers are meaningfully different, and that difference is worth understanding before you decide whether to swallow the extra dollars.
- ESPN Unlimited is the whole enchilada. It bundles the linear networks — ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Deportes, SEC Network, and ACC Network — alongside thousands of additional live events. All told, it delivers more than 47,000 live events each year.
- ESPN Select is the leaner, cheaper option. It streams roughly 32,000 live events annually, but crucially it does not include access to the ESPN linear networks. If your viewing revolves around the flagship channels, Select won’t cut it.
The bundle situation matters just as much for a lot of subscribers. The Disney Plus packages that fold in ESPN Select are also getting more expensive, so households stacking Disney, Hulu, and sports into a single bill will feel the pinch beyond the standalone plans.
None of this is shocking in a streaming landscape where price creep has become the norm rather than the exception. Still, a $2-a-month bump on Unlimited and a $10-a-year bump on the annual plans adds up over a season — and sports fans, unlike casual streamers, don’t tend to cancel and re-subscribe around content droughts. Live games are the ultimate must-watch-now product, which is exactly why services can nudge prices with relatively little churn risk.
The upshot: if you’re an Unlimited subscriber locked into the annual plan, the smart move is to weigh whether renewing before the September 17 change is possible in your account, and to double-check whether Select’s slimmer channel lineup actually covers the teams and leagues you follow. For everyone else, the new rates are simply the cost of keeping the scoreboard on all year.
