Late August 2026 sport: the Vuelta, the US Open and the free channels showing them
The last stretch of August 2026 brings the Vuelta a España and the US Open, and a lot of it airs on free-to-air broadcasters — just not in your country. Here is the calendar, which channels carry what, and an honest look at where a VPN helps and where it does not.
Table of contents
August tends to be the quiet month in sport, right up until it isn't. The back half of 2026's calendar turns busy fast: a three-week Grand Tour, the last Grand Slam of the tennis season, and the closing rounds of England's short-format cricket competition.
What makes this stretch interesting isn't only the sport. A surprising amount of it airs on free-to-air public broadcasters — channels that cost nothing to watch, and are locked to one country.
What's on, and where
| Event | Date (2026) | Notable broadcaster |
|---|---|---|
| The Hundred — closing rounds | through 16 August | BBC (UK) |
| Vuelta a España | from 22 August | SBS (Australia) |
| US Open tennis | from 30 August | 9Now (Australia) |
A caveat worth stating plainly: broadcast rights move, sometimes yearly and often mid-tournament for secondary matches. The channels above are the ones commonly associated with this coverage, not a guarantee for your region. Check the listing where you actually live before you plan an evening around it.
The free-to-air angle
This is the part most guides skip. SBS in Australia and the BBC in the UK are publicly funded — no subscription, no paywall. If you are Australian, SBS's cycling coverage is genuinely free. If you are British, so is the BBC's cricket.
The catch is geography, not money. Step outside the country and the stream stops, because the broadcaster's rights end at the border. That's the situation a VPN is usually reached for — and it is worth being precise about what that means.
What a VPN actually does here
A VPN routes your connection through a server elsewhere and encrypts the traffic in between. Two consequences matter for streaming:
- Your apparent location changes. A service checking where you are sees the server's country rather than yours.
- Your ISP can't see what you're streaming. That matters if your connection slows down during peak evening hours specifically for video, which some networks do.
And the things it does not do, which get glossed over far too often:
- It doesn't make you a subscriber. If a stream needs a TV licence, a paid account or a domestic payment method, a VPN changes none of that.
- It usually breaches the streaming service's terms. Nearly every platform's terms of use prohibit misrepresenting your location. Enforcement is typically a blocked stream, not a banned account — but you should decide that knowingly, not by accident.
- It can't outrun physics. Routing an Australian stream through Sydney while you sit in Europe adds latency. On a live finish, that gap is the difference between watching it and reading about it on your phone first.
The honest use case is the unglamorous one: you already have legitimate access at home and you're travelling. You pay for the licence, you hold the account, you're simply in the wrong airport lounge. That's what most people in this situation actually need.
What to look for
If you're choosing a VPN with this calendar in mind, four things matter more than the marketing:
- Servers in the countries you need — for this month, Australia and the UK. A large total server count means nothing if the locations you need aren't among them.
- Consistent speed, not peak speed. A stream that holds 1080p for three hours beats one that spikes higher and buffers in the final kilometre.
- Simultaneous connections, if the household watches on more than one screen.
- An app for the device you'll actually use — a smart TV or streaming stick is a very different proposition from a laptop. We covered that in essential apps for a new Firestick.
Where ExpressVPN fits
ExpressVPN is the one we most often end up recommending for this specific job, for reasons that are narrow and practical: a wide spread of locations including 113 countries after its most recent expansion, speeds that hold up on long live broadcasts, and apps on the TV platforms where sport is usually watched. Our full assessment, including where it's beaten on price, is in the ExpressVPN review.
It is not the cheapest option, and if budget is the deciding factor we've said elsewhere that it shouldn't automatically win — see the best VPN services in 2026 for the wider field.
Check current ExpressVPN plans
The short version
The Hundred wraps up mid-month, the Vuelta rolls out from 22 August, and the US Open starts on the 30th. A good deal of it is free at the source and unavailable everywhere else.
If you're at home in the right country, you need nothing but the channel. If you're travelling and already pay for access, a VPN is the practical way to keep watching what you're entitled to watch — with the terms-of-service caveat above understood rather than ignored.
For a broader look at how streaming unblocking has shifted this year, see why VPN unblocking keeps changing.
