Disney+ subs ‘to exceed Netflix by 2026’

Disney+ will have more subscribers than Netflix five years from now, according to a report by the UK’s Digital TV Research.

The SVoD Platform Forecasts report predicts that Disney+ will reach 294 million subscribers in 2026, overtaking Netflix, which will have 286 million by that time.

Amazon Prime Video, meanwhile, will have 184 million subscribers, with HBO Max and Apple TV+ at 50 million and 11 million respectively. Local SVoD platforms in China will have 279 million subscribers, while other SVoD services will make up 284 million subscribers combined.

Disney+ ended the first quarter of this year with 94.9 million users globally, up from 86 million subscribers declared at Disney’s December investor day. That surpasses Disney+’s four-year goal in little more than a year, and it is now targeting 260 million subs by 2024.

Despite the expectation that Disney+ will overtake Netflix overall, the former will only have more subscribers than the latter in one country – India – which is predicted to have 98 million subscribers to the Disney+ Hotstar platform in 2026 versus 13 million Netflix users.

Disney+ Hotstar will roll out to 13 Asian countries by 2026. These countries will supply 108 million of the global Disney+ subscriber total, equating to 37%, but only 13% of the platform’s global revenue at US$2.62m. This is because Disney+ Hotstar subscribers pay less than a third of the monthly subscription fee of their US counterpart.

Global revenue for Disney+ will be US$20.76bn by 2026 – just over half of Netflix’s US$39.52bn