ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro confirmed the new pricing in an August 20, 2026 memo, timed to the one-year anniversary of ESPN's standalone direct-to-consumer streaming launch. It is the first price change since ESPN Select (formerly ESPN+) and ESPN Unlimited launched, and it touches every individual plan plus every Disney bundle that includes ESPN.
The increase is modest per plan — $1 to $2 a month depending on the tier — but it lands on top of a year where nearly every major streaming service has raised prices at least once, and ESPN's live-sports rights (it currently carries roughly 32,000 live events a year across ESPN Select alone) are exactly the kind of expensive programming driving that trend industry-wide.
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Get Your Virtual Card →The Full ESPN Price Breakdown
Every plan and bundle goes up, with ESPN Unlimited's standalone monthly price seeing the largest dollar increase:
| Plan | Old Price | New Price |
|---|---|---|
| ESPN Select | $12.99/mo | $13.99/mo |
| ESPN Unlimited | $29.99/mo | $31.99/mo |
| Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Select (ad-supported) | $20/mo | $22/mo |
| Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Select (ad-free) | $30/mo | $33/mo |
Annual plans move the same way — ESPN Select goes from $129.99 to $139.99 a year, and ESPN Unlimited goes from $299.99 to $319.99 a year. ESPN Unlimited is the larger bundle of the two, adding ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Deportes, the SEC Network, ACC Network, NFL Network, and more on top of everything already in ESPN Select.
Another Entry in a Very Long List
ESPN joins a growing list of 2026 price increases — Peacock raised every plan in August too, and our guide to Netflix's 2026 price hike covers a similar pattern earlier in the year. A 2026 Bango subscription report found the average person now juggles 5.2 active subscriptions at roughly $69 a month combined — individually small increases that add up fast once several land in the same year.
Why a Shared Card Makes These Increases Easy to Miss
A $1-2 bump on one line of a card statement that also covers groceries, gas, and three other subscriptions is easy to scroll past without noticing. That is exactly how a bundle increase like this one — $2 to $3 depending on which Disney bundle is involved — quietly becomes permanent: not because anyone decided it was worth the new price, just because nobody caught the change.
Putting Sports and Streaming Subscriptions on Their Own Card
A virtual card dedicated to ESPN, or to the whole Disney/Hulu/ESPN bundle, turns this into something checkable at a glance instead of something buried in a combined statement — that card's activity shows exactly one subscription, so a price change is an obvious jump the next time it's checked. SiraPay's privacy-first onboarding makes this practical: up to five free virtual cards, no facial verification, no lengthy review.
- Put ESPN (or the full Disney/Hulu/ESPN bundle) on its own card before the September 17 change hits
- Group other sports or streaming subscriptions onto a second dedicated card
- Check each card's activity periodically instead of scanning one large combined statement
- Downgrade or cancel the moment a hike pushes a service past what it's worth, since the cost is now visible on its own
Final Thoughts
ESPN's increase is small on its own — but it lands in a year where that is true of nearly every streaming price change, and the accumulation is what actually moves a monthly budget. The fix isn't tracking every price-hike announcement as it happens; it's keeping each subscription's real cost visible on its own card, so a change shows up the moment it happens instead of blending into everything else.
