For a few hours at the start of September 2026, MultiChoice's own website showed a DStv line-up nobody had seen before: new package names, new prices, and a new way of splitting up sport, movies and general entertainment. The pages were pulled quickly, but not before South African tech media had captured them.
Nothing here has been officially announced. But the pages came from MultiChoice's own servers rather than an anonymous tip, which is why every credible South African outlet has run with them.
The package names, prices and the 17 September 2026 date below are reported, not officially confirmed. They come from pages MultiChoice published and then removed, as documented by MyBroadband, BusinessTech and Stuff South Africa. MultiChoice's only on-record comment so far is that there is no change to customers' current subscriptions or content, and that any changes will be communicated in good time.
What the leaked pages actually showed
Five packages, with a launch date of 17 September 2026:
| Package | Reported price | Replaces | Reported highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| DStv Starter | R99/month | DStv Access | 85 channels, one Premier League match a week, Moja Love, kykNET & Kie, Wethu+ |
| DStv Select | R299/month | DStv Family | 100 channels, PSL football, Mzansi Magic, Nickelodeon |
| DStv Sports | R399/month | New | Premier League, UEFA competitions, T20 cricket, local rugby, one URC match a week |
| DStv Movies & Series | R500/month | New | 115 channels — M-Net, kykNET, M Movies+, BBC Earth, Studio Universal, Discovery, plus PSL |
| DStv Premium | R799/month | DStv Premium | The full line-up |
The detail almost everyone has missed
Read the headlines and it sounds like DStv Premium is being cut from R979 to R799 — a R180 saving. That is not what the pages showed, and the difference is worth understanding before you plan your budget around it.
R799 is already the price of DStv Stream Premium. MultiChoice has sold a streaming-only Premium package at R799 a month for some time. The R979 figure is the satellite Premium price — the one you pay when you have a dish on the roof and a decoder in the lounge. Those are two different products at two different prices, and they always have been.
The same is true further down the list. R399, R299 and R99 all match existing DStv Stream prices for Compact, Family and Access respectively. So what the leaked pages appear to show is not a price cut. It looks like a renaming and re-bundling of the existing streaming tiers, with the channel mix reshuffled and one genuinely new package (Movies & Series) added.
| Package | Satellite (decoder) | DStv Stream (month-to-month) |
|---|---|---|
| Premium | R979 | R799 |
| Compact Plus | R659 | R549 |
| Compact | R479 | R399 |
| Family | R339 | R299 |
| Access | R150 | R99 |
Satellite and Stream prices as documented by MyBroadband and Daily Investor, August 2026.
Does this affect your decoder?
Based on the reporting, no — not yet. The leaked pages covered streaming packages. Satellite subscribers were described as unaffected for the time being.
That fits the direction MultiChoice has been signalling since Canal+ completed its takeover in July 2026. Canal+ executives said publicly in April 2026 that they wanted to simplify DStv's package structure and make it easier for customers to understand, with more affordable entry points in price-sensitive markets. A cleaner, cheaper streaming ladder is exactly what that intent looks like in practice.
It does not mean your dish becomes worthless. Satellite still delivers a picture that does not depend on your data cap, your fibre line staying up, or load-shedding at the exchange down the road — which is precisely why most South African households still watch DStv through a decoder. If anything, the sensible reading is that MultiChoice is building a second front, not abandoning the first.
Why the restructure is happening now
- New ownership. Canal+ completed its acquisition of MultiChoice in July 2026 and MultiChoice was delisted from the JSE. New owners reliably reshape product line-ups.
- Showmax folded in. The standalone Showmax app was discontinued in April 2026, with content moving into DStv Stream. That alone forces a rethink of what each streaming tier contains.
- Pressure at the bottom of the market. Netflix, YouTube and free-to-air have made a R979 monthly bill hard to justify for many households. A R99 entry point and a R399 sports-only option are answers to that.
What we would wait to see confirmed
- Whether satellite pricing changes too. If it does not, "DStv Premium is now R799" will be misleading for the majority of subscribers.
- Exactly what is in the R399 Sports package. Reporting suggests Springbok Tests and Proteas internationals stay in the R799 tier, which would make "local rugby and cricket" mean domestic club and franchise content rather than national teams. That is a big difference — our R399 sports package explainer goes into it.
- Whether existing customers are migrated automatically or have to choose a new package themselves.
- The actual launch date. 17 September 2026 is what the pages showed. Reporting suggested an official announcement around 7 September.
What to do in the meantime
Very little, honestly. Do not cancel anything based on a leak. If your bill is the problem, the changes worth making now are the ones that do not depend on MultiChoice at all:
- If you are paying for Extra View decoders in rooms nobody uses, that is real money going out every month. Our Extra View guide explains how the linking actually works.
- If picture quality is poor and you have been compensating by upgrading your package, the problem is usually the dish, not the bouquet. Weak signal shows up as pixelation and dropouts long before it shows up as a black screen — see signal problems and dish alignment.
- If you are moving house before September, book the relocation rather than paying for a fresh installation at the new address.
This article will be updated when MultiChoice confirms the line-up officially.