Streaming platforms in Germany

3sat is an ad-free, non-profit cultural channel run jointly by ZDF, ARD, ORF and SRG SSR, on air since 1984. The free service gathers culture, science, documentaries and the arts from the German-speaking world and is available in 3 countries.

ARD Mediathek is the shared streaming and catch-up portal of Germany’s public broadcasting federation ARD, which is made up of nine regional broadcasters (Bayerischer Rundfunk, WDR, NDR, MDR and others). The app carries the live stream of Das Erste, the children’s channel KiKA, culture-focused 3sat and news network tagesschau24, with no ads and no subscription fee. The whole service is funded by the German broadcasting licence (Rundfunkbeitrag) and, as a result, geographically restricted to Germany.

DMAX is a German free-to-air channel from Warner Bros. Discovery that has chased facts and rugged curiosity since 2006. The schedule leans into motors, adventure, engineering, survival, science and a hefty dose of reality, from gold prospectors and repair garages to treasure hunters. You can watch it for free, either straight on dmax.de or inside the Joyn library. The signal is aimed at viewers in Germany and Austria.

Dyn Media is the Germany-based sports streaming service that went live in August 2023 with a simple thesis: give the disciplines that football pushes to the margins (handball, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, field hockey and women’s sport) a proper broadcasting home. The schedule spans the LIQUI MOLY HBL, 2. Handball-Bundesliga, the Basketball-Bundesliga (BBL), VBL volleyball, table tennis and field hockey, all with in-house commentary and full-length studio shows around each game.

Kabel Eins is a German free-to-air private channel from the ProSiebenSat.1 group, on the air since 1992 and best known as a home for US crime and procedural series. This is where you settle in for the Navy CIS franchise, Castle, The Mentalist, Bull, FBI, rounded out with Hollywood action movies and the channel’s own documentary strand Abenteuer Leben. Reality cooking and restaurant formats are a fixture too, from Mein Lokal Dein Lokal to Rosins Restaurants with Frank Rosin, alongside Achtung Kontrolle and short kabel eins news bulletins. You can watch live TV and the Mediathek for free, with ads, through Joyn, where the channel’s website sends you. Just keep in mind that access is geo-restricted to Germany.

Kabel Eins Doku is a German free to air documentary channel from the ProSiebenSat.1 group, launched in autumn 2016 as the factual sister channel to Kabel Eins, which is a separate station. It leans toward men in their middle years and builds its schedule around documentaries first, with healthy doses of true crime, history, science and nature, technology, and motoring and engineering. Expect titles like Ancient Aliens, Steel Buddies, Mythen-Jaeger and Coast Guard USA, plenty of them US imports dubbed into German. Live TV and catch up both stream free and ad supported through Joyn, since there is no standalone app. Sharper picture quality sits behind the paid Joyn tier, and viewing is limited to Germany.

MagentaSport is Deutsche Telekom’s dedicated sports streaming platform, built for live action rather than catch-up TV. It holds exclusive German rights to 3. Liga, co-exclusive coverage of Frauen-Bundesliga, plus full packages for PENNY DEL ice hockey, Champions Hockey League, EuroLeague and EuroCup basketball. The headline event for 2026 is all 104 FIFA World Cup matches, streamed live. Available on smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, and Apple TV, MagentaSport works entirely over the internet with no cable or satellite contract required. EU portability rules apply.

N24 Doku is the documentary sister channel of WELT, the German news network run from Berlin by publisher Axel Springer. It has aired free and ad-supported since September 2016, and there is no standalone app of its own. Instead you watch the live stream on welt.de, inside the WELT app, or on FAST platforms such as Pluto TV, Joyn and Zattoo, alongside ordinary German broadcast over satellite, cable and DVB-T2. The schedule leans into long-form documentary and reportage on history, technology, the military, nature and wildlife, science, space and aviation, plus cars and railways, all in German.

ProSieben MAXX is a German free-TV channel from the ProSiebenSat.1 group with a clear profile: daily anime blocks with titles like One Piece, Detective Conan and Dragon Ball, rounded out by action series and movies. For years it was also a free-TV home for the NFL through the ranNFL show, but that run ended on the channel in 2023. It leans toward a male audience and streams free with ads, both live and on demand, through the Joyn platform. You can watch it across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, while everywhere else runs into a geo-block.

RiC is a German free children’s TV channel aimed at kids roughly aged three to thirteen, run by Your Family Entertainment AG in Munich. It costs nothing to watch and is funded by advertising and teleshopping. Daytime brings cartoons, anime and children’s series, the evening leans toward family viewing, and overnight the schedule turns to teleshopping. You can follow RiC across the German-speaking countries: free-to-air via satellite, on cable and IPTV, or through the free livestream on rictv.de and inside the live-TV apps waipu.tv, Zattoo and Joyn. The stream is geo-locked to the region, so abroad you will need a local IP address to reach it.

Born from the SPIEGEL TV magazine that first aired in 1988, SPIEGEL TV is the documentary arm of Hamburg publisher DER SPIEGEL. It now lives as a family of free, ad supported FAST channels. The flagship SPIEGEL TV mixes magazine features, documentaries, knowledge and history, while SPIEGEL TV Konflikte digs deep into wars, conflicts and global crises, and SPIEGEL TV action+crime serves up true crime. Everything streams in German at up to Full HD. There is no standalone app, so you tune in through FAST platforms such as Samsung TV Plus, Joyn, Amazon Prime Video, Pluto TV, Zattoo, LG Channels and Rakuten TV.

WELT is a German free-to-air news and documentary channel based in Berlin and run by publisher Axel Springer. Don’t confuse it with the newspaper “Die Welt”: this is the live TV product. On welt.de and in the “WELT News & Live-TV” app you get an ad-supported live stream with no sign-in required, covering breaking news, politics, business and reportage from the WELT Doku strand. A WELTplus subscription unlocks premium articles, but you don’t need it to watch the stream. It runs on the web, iOS, Android and Smart TV, in German and HD. The live feed is limited to Germany and the EU.

waipu.tv is the independent IPTV service run by Exaring, live since 2016 and positioned as the main alternative to Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaTV. Over any ordinary broadband connection subscribers get more than 200 channels in HD (and, on selected streams, 4K), a shared on-demand library and cloud DVR storage of up to a hundred hours. Four tiers are offered: a free waipu.tv Free plan, Start, Comfort and Perfect Plus at the top, which unlocks the largest recording quota. Billing is tied to a German address.

sixx is a German commercial free-to-air channel from the ProSiebenSat.1 group, on air since 2010 and built mainly around a female audience. Its lineup leans into crime and true-crime series, popular American shows, reality, cooking and lifestyle. It streams free with ads, both live and on demand from the catch-up library, through the Joyn platform. You can watch it across the German-speaking markets, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, with geo-blocking elsewhere.

ZDFmediathek is the streaming and archive portal of Germany’s second public broadcaster, ZDF, which has been on air since 1963. The library pulls together live ZDF, the heute news bulletins, the Terra X documentary strand, culture from 3sat, children’s programming via KiKA and the broadcaster’s own fiction output (the long-running crime slots and the so-called Herzkino romance films). Everything is ad-free and funded by the German broadcasting licence, and the content is locked to German IP addresses.

Joyn is run by ProSiebenSat.1 and positions itself as a hybrid between free TV and on-demand. The ad-supported free tier bundles live streams from more than 150 channels (ProSieben, Sat.1, Kabel eins plus partner networks like DMAX or Welt) with catch-up for what has just aired. Joyn+ layers paid content on top: an ad-free viewing mode, selected pay-TV channels in HD, exclusive scripted originals and coverage of European football tournaments. Availability is limited to Germany and Austria.

ARTE is the Franco-German public cultural broadcaster, on air since 1992 and run by ARTE GEIE, a European Economic Interest Group headquartered in Strasbourg. The arte.tv platform streams documentaries, arthouse cinema, classical and contemporary concerts, stage recordings and in-depth European current affairs, all without ads and free of charge. Most programmes ship with subtitles in English, German, French, Spanish, Polish or Italian.

Sky Deutschland was created in 2009 through the rebrand of Premiere and, after years under Comcast, is in 2026 moving to Bertelsmann’s RTL Group following regulatory clearance of the deal. The offering splits into the traditional satellite and cable packages sold under Sky Q and a streaming-only alternative called WOW, billed month-to-month with no long-term commitment. The headline draws are the exclusive Bundesliga and the complete Formula 1 — though since HBO Max launched, only select former HBO shows remain on Sky rather than the full catalogue. WOW streaming is available in Germany and Austria, while the satellite and cable Sky Q packages also reach Switzerland.

MagentaTV is Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV service, launched in 2017 as a replacement for the older Entertain TV. Subscribers get more than 180 German and international channels in HD and 4K, an in-house on-demand library called Megathek with productions from MegaNow and ARD Degeto, and the option to fold Netflix, Disney+ or RTL+ into a single Telekom bill. The Flex, Smart and MegaStream tiers differ in channel count, 4K availability and whether a dedicated set-top box is required.

ProSieben is the Germany-facing commercial channel of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, on air since 1989 and aimed at a younger, family audience. The grid is built from imported US drama and comedy (typically dubbed in German), long-running entertainment shows like Joko & Klaas Live or The Masked Singer Germany, and the Galileo and TV total strands. The live stream and catch-up sit on the free Joyn platform.

RTL+ is the streaming platform of Bertelsmann-owned RTL Deutschland, launched back in 2007 as RTL Now before going through two rebrands (TVNow, then RTL+ in late 2021). On top of the expected TV catalogue (reality formats like Deutschland sucht den Superstar, daily soaps, plus Formula 1 and, in some seasons, NFL coverage) the service bundles a music library powered by Deezer and an audiobook catalogue. The lineup runs from entry-level Basic through Premium and the ad-free Premium Werbefrei up to RTL+ Musik, which adds the music and audiobook catalogue, while the Family tier opens up more profiles. They differ in simultaneous streams, picture quality and music access.

SAT.1 is a national German commercial broadcaster that made history when it launched on 1 January 1984 as PKS, becoming the country’s first privately owned television station. It sits within ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, which has been majority-controlled by Italy’s MFE-MediaForEurope, the Berlusconi family’s group, since September 2025. The channel courts an older, family-minded audience with its Frühstücksfernsehen breakfast show, crime dramas such as Der letzte Bulle and homegrown entertainment. Live and catch-up streaming is free via sat1.de and Joyn.

Play SRF is the streaming and catch-up portal of Swiss public broadcaster SRF, part of the SRG SSR group and aimed at the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Viewers get live feeds of SRF 1, SRF zwei and SRF info, the Tagesschau news bulletins, the political debate show Arena, Swiss-made drama like Tschugger and Neumatt, and full coverage of the Alpine Ski World Cup. The service is funded through the Serafe licence fee and geo-restricted to Switzerland.

WOW is Sky Deutschland’s streaming platform, rebranded from Sky Ticket in May 2023 and backed by Comcast and NBCUniversal. It splits into two distinct tracks: an entertainment tier stacked with Sky Originals, HBO, and Paramount+ titles, and a live sport tier covering Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, Premier League, Formula 1, tennis, and boxing. Watching from outside Germany requires a VPN with a German IP, though WOW actively blocks a portion of VPN providers. Annual subscribers receive a substantial discount over the monthly rate.