Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, announced today that Disney will "fully integrate" Hulu into the Disney+ app in 2026. Although a company representative told Variety that people will still be able to buy standalone subscriptions to Hulu, we can't help but wonder how long that will last.
A prim and polished app combining the catalogs, recommendations, and profiles for Disney+ and Hulu subscribers could make a standalone Hulu app redundant. In fact, the ability to successfully combine those two streaming services into one platform could, depending on how executives look at it, make the entire Hulu business redundant.
Some are reporting that Iger means that the Hulu app will be phased out next year, while others are saying that the death of the Hulu app is likely but not yet guaranteed.
We asked Disney if it is phasing out the standalone Hulu app or service but didn't receive a response.
When MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman asked Disney execs what the apps' integration means "for the future of Hulu as a standalone app" during an earnings call today, Iger responded, according to a transcript:
I think the way to look at the combination is to start with the consumer. You're going to end up with a far better consumer experience when those apps are combined by combining all of the program assets of both apps... And obviously with an improved consumer experience comes the ability to lower churn, which is obviously something that we're very, very focused on and committed to doing.
That's not a completely straight answer but does underscore the value that Disney sees in getting people to pay for access to Disney+'s and Hulu's respective libraries, and in getting people to watch all of that in the Disney+ app.
One tech platform
Disney's announcement may sound familiar because it started integrating Hulu into Disney+, including with a dedicated tile, in March. People who subscribe to both Disney+ and Hulu have been able to search for and watch Hulu content within the Disney+ app since then.
"When we gave people an opportunity to have a more seamless experience between Disney+ and Hulu, we saw engagement increasing," Iger said today. "And we would hope that when we take this next step, which is basically full integration, that that engagement will go up even more."
The initial integration of Hulu, which previously used a different tech platform than the 12-year- younger Disney+ app, required the reworking of "everything from login tools to advertising platforms, to metadata and personalization systems," as well as moving over 100,000 individual assets/artwork, The Verge reported in March. At the time, Disney said that it was still working on re-encoding all of Hulu's video files to work on Disney+ so that there could be one master library.
The updated app coming in 2026 seems to be the end result of all of this work. Iger today also pointed to work around the app's recommendations, including what users see on the Disney+ homepage. Additionally, the app has added more streams, such as one that plays The Simpsons 24/7.
The updated app also follows Disney's purchase of Comcast's remaining stake in Hulu. (Disney ended up paying about $9 billion for it, compared to the approximately $14 billion that Comcast wanted.)
During today's earnings call, Iger said the updated user experience will help the profitability and margins of Disney's streaming business (which also includes ESPN+) by boosting engagement, reducing subscriber churn, increasing advertising revenue, and driving operational efficiencies.
Hulu still has value
It seems likely that Disney will eventually strive for everyone to subscribe to a beefed up Disney+ that incorporates stuff that used to be on Hulu. But there's also value in keeping Hulu around for a while.
According to Disney's Q3 2025 earnings report [PDF], Hulu has 55.5 million subscribers. That makes Hulu less than half the size of Disney+ (127.8 million subscribers) but also means that ending Hulu subscriptions would put Disney at risk of losing millions of streaming subscribers. Today, though, it already makes little financial sense to buy standalone subscriptions to Disney+ or Hulu. A subscription starts at $10 per month for each app. A subscription to a Disney+ and Hulu bundle is only $11/month. Of course, Disney could change how it prices its streaming services at any time.
However, that bundle deal could help Disney drive streaming subscribers. A Disney+ and Hulu bundle for $11/month sounds like a better deal than an $11/month subscription to Disney+, even if Disney+ included Hulu's whole library. And streaming companies have reported that bundling their service with other services helps reduce subscriber churn.
"[The unified app] also provides us with a tremendous bundling experience, because when you have the one app that has a significant amount of all of the Disney and the other Disney-branded programming with the general entertainment programming bundled, for instance, with the ESPN direct-to-consumer app, I think you end up with a proposition from not only a consumer perspective, but also from our perspective that's far better than what we've had before," Iger said.
In its earnings report, Disney also revealed that Hulu makes more monthly revenue per paid subscriber on average ($12.40 in Q3) compared to Disney+ ($7.68). That could be viewed as an argument to both keep Hulu around, as well as to fold it into Disney+ entirely.
Other factors that complicate killing the standalone Hulu service is its Live TV subscription offering, as well as the optics of Disney taking over a streaming service and then shutting it down in favor of its own.
Disney will at least keep the Hulu branding around for a while. It plans to introduce the Hulu brand internationally as a tile representing Disney's "global general entertainment brand," per today's press release. In the fall, Hulu will replace the "Star" tile/hub for general entertainment that some international Disney+ users have.
In the immediate future, we expect Disney to continue pushing Hulu subscribers to Disney+. Eventually, Disney+ could be the only way to access the Hulu library. In either case, Disney's Hulu acquisition and subsequent merging of the services is one to watch in a nascent streaming industry expected to see further M&A activity over the next few years.
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