Disney+ UK price rise: the small print says £6.99
From 14 October, Disney+'s cheapest UK deal costs £5.99 a month, up from £4.99. Disney's own small print hints the ad plan's monthly price is heading to £6.99, but the company hasn't said when.
Disney+ has put up the price of its cheapest way in for new subscribers in the UK. From 14 October 2026, the six-month "saver" deal on the Standard With Ads plan costs £5.99 a month instead of £4.99, according to the small print on Disney+'s own UK website. The same small print suggests the regular monthly price of the ad-supported plan is heading to £6.99, although Disney has not said when.
"The price of the Standard With Ads 6-month saver will increase to £5.99/mo from 14/10/26."
— Small print on the Disney+ UK website
A price rise announced in footnotes
There was no press release. The change was spotted in late September by UK fan and streaming sites: Cord Busters reported it on 24 September and Riding the Magic on 25 September, the latter saying the wording also appeared in Disney's Facebook adverts. When we checked the Disney+ UK site on 9 October, the banner offered six months of Standard With Ads at £4.99 a month for "new and eligible returning subscribers only", ending on 13 October, with the £5.99 saver price taking over from 14 October.
The more interesting line sits underneath. The same page said the saver deal is "Based on a 6-month minimum term, subscription then auto-renews at £6.99 a month." The plan card a few inches away still said "then £5.99/mo", which is the current monthly price. One of those numbers is out of date, and it's unlikely to be the higher one.
Cord Busters said Disney "had nothing to share about pricing changes right now" when asked. The ad-free plans, Standard at £9.99 a month and Premium at £14.99 a month, showed no announced changes when we checked.
An autumn habit
Disney+ prices have been climbing on a familiar autumn schedule. On 30 September 2025, Standard With Ads went from £4.99 to £5.99 a month, Standard from £8.99 to £9.99 and Premium from £12.99 to £14.99, Tech Advisor reported. Cord Busters notes that existing subscribers have previously moved to new prices in November, from their billing date, but that is a pattern rather than an announcement.
If the ad tier does reach £6.99, the "cheap" option will have risen by £2 a month in just over a year. That is the same squeeze we saw from Netflix, whose UK ad plan went up by about a third in September. Ad tiers were sold as the budget choice. They are increasingly just the slightly-less-expensive choice, with adverts.
Ada's take: read the asterisk
To be clear about what has actually changed: the saver deal for new and returning customers is now £5.99 a month. That is confirmed in Disney's own words. The £6.99 monthly price is in Disney's small print but has no date attached, and nothing official has been said about the ad-free plans.
Still, burying a price signal in an asterisk on a promotional banner is not a great look. If you're going to charge people more, the decent thing is to say so in a sentence a human might read, rather than letting fan sites decode your footnotes.
What UK subscribers should do
If you already pay Disney+ directly, Cord Busters' reading of Disney's UK subscriber agreement is that you should get an email at least 28 days before any price change affects you, and you can cancel if you don't accept it. If you get Disney+ through Sky, Sky bills you, so Disney's listed prices don't apply directly.
Stronger protection is coming, slowly. The subscription contract rules in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which include clearer reminders and easier cancellation, have been delayed to spring 2027, according to law firm Lewis Silkin. Until then, it pays to check your renewal dates and treat any "then £X a month" line as the real price.
To be fair to Disney
Streaming is expensive to run, and new films and series don't pay for themselves. A saver deal at £5.99 is still cheaper than the monthly rate, and nobody is forced to pick the six-month term. Rising prices are also an industry-wide trend, not a Disney quirk. The complaint isn't that the price went up; it's the way customers had to find out.
Mind the hype. And with Disney+, mind the asterisk too.
Sources: Disney+ UK · Cord Busters · Riding the Magic · Tech Advisor · Lewis Silkin