STREAMING continued to change how we watched telly in 2025 – and with it came the demise of some iconic channels.
While all traditional broadcasting platforms were hit in some shape or form, satellite saw the biggest shift.
Satellite TV has long been Sky’s bread and butter but the focus is increasingly on its streamed TV products that do away with a dish, Sky Glass and Sky Stream.
This has meant some standard definition (SD) channels have been scrapped to make way for high definition (HD) only.
However, where Sky Q is concerned there have been some HD channel departures as well, in a seeming bid to encourage viewers to jump across to Sky Glass or Sky Stream.
Of course, Sky doesn’t operate all channels on its products so many have disappeared beyond the company’s control.
Meanwhile, others have merged or ownership has changed.
For example, most of Eurosport’s content was moved over to its sister channels TNT Sports.
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And London Live closed in January, with a totally new company taking the licence to launch London TV in its place.
Here are all the channels that have disappeared from Sky Q this year already.
We have excluded channels that rebranded, such as ITVBe which became ITV Quiz.
- Brit Asia
- Eurosport 1 HD
- Eurosport 1 SD
- Eurosport 2 HD
- Eurosport 2 SD
- Gems TV (Gemporia) SD
- India Today
- Music India
- Pop Max
- Pop Max+1
- Ramazan TV HD
- Sky History 2 HD
- Sky Replay SD
- Sky Replay HD
- Sky Sports Racing SD
- U&W HD
- U&Yesterday HD
- WION HD
- London Live
And there are still more to come before the year ends.
All four of MTV’s music channels are closing on December 31, as will four Pop children’s channels too.
This will mean a total of 27 channels have departed Sky Q in 2025.
But it’s not all bad news, there have also been some channel launches as well.
Notably, we saw the return of Disney Junior, five years after it closed down.
There has also been more streamed content launches to keep people entertained.
The U app finally landed on Sky Q in September, as well as the 5 streaming app, which itself has extra streamed channels to access.
MORE CHANNEL CLOSURES TO COME?
Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
It’s almost certain we’ll see more channel changes to come in 2026.
Surely the +1 channels will start to disappear.
In the age of streaming, catching up an hour later seems extremely redundant.
There will probably be some standard definition (SD) channels scraped to make way for HD only too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some changes to Sky’s own channels as well with the launch of HBO Max in the UK next year.
Image credit: Getty
