The Hundred 2026 Live Streaming in India: JioHotstar, Star Sports and the Match-1 Kickoff at The Oval

JioHotstar holds the streaming rights, Star Sports the TV feed

The Hundred 2026 lands in India on the same broadcaster pair that has carried the previous two editions. JioHotstar is the official digital platform for every match across both the men's and women's competitions, with full live coverage available to subscribers on smartphones, tablets, laptops and connected TVs. Star Sports carries the linear feed, so any cable or DTH package that includes the Star Sports bouquet will show the matches live without a separate streaming login.

The arrangement covers the entire window: the 21 July openers, every league-stage fixture across the 34 matchdays, the 14 August Eliminator, and the 16 August Final. Subscribers who bought JioHotstar for the IPL cycle earlier in the summer will find The Hundred is included on the same plan. For cord-cutters, a JioHotstar mobile or super subscription is the cleanest single-app route; for households with a TV, a Star Sports DTH add-on is enough to catch the marquee matches without a separate streaming login.

One common confusion worth clearing up: FanCode is not carrying The Hundred 2026 in India. Early-season speculation pointed to FanCode as a possible co-broadcaster, but the platform is not part of the India rights package this year. Anyone routing through a FanCode login will not find the live feed; JioHotstar is the digital home, and Star Sports is the television home.

What is actually different in the 2026 edition

The Hundred enters its sixth season with two structural changes that have visibly lifted the ceiling of the competition. The first is the four-overseas-player rule. For the first time, franchises can name four overseas players in the playing XI, up from the previous cap of three. The change is a direct response to the recent investment by IPL franchise owners into the eight teams, and it shows up most clearly in the depth of the squad sheet: most franchises are now stocking three or four international match-winners across batting, pace and spin, with the bench picking up the rest.

The second is a new combined championship trophy. The England and Wales Cricket Board has introduced a single piece of silverware that is awarded to the franchise with the best combined performance across the men's and women's competitions in 2026, sitting alongside the two separate men's and women's titles. The effect on league standings is real: a franchise that finishes mid-table in the men's draw can still lift the combined trophy if its women's side wins more than its share. Coaches have already spoken publicly about treating the women's fixture list as a first-priority selection week rather than a parallel tournament.

Three franchises have also rebranded. MI London, Sunrisers Leeds and Manchester Super Giants are the new identities, picking up the brand cues from their IPL-aligned investors. The rebrand does not change the player lists, but it changes the kit, the anthem and the social handles, and it makes the team-name lookup on fantasy apps worth double-checking before the first match goes live.

The eight franchises in the 2026 field

Eight men's teams and eight women's teams line up across the 34 matchdays, split across the traditional English circuit. The full franchise list, with the 2026 rebrand names applied, is the cleanest reference for fantasy lineups and broadcast graphics.

The rebrand matters for the first matchup in particular: anyone searching the fixture list for the previously named Oval Invincibles or Northern Superchargers will not find them under those names on JioHotstar or Star Sports in 2026. The eight new identities are the canonical labels for the season.

Match timings in IST

India-friendly scheduling has always been part of The Hundred's pitch to the subcontinent audience, and the 2026 calendar holds the line. Most weekday men's fixtures are slotted at 11:00 PM IST, which is the prime window for an evening-into-night viewing session. Weekend double-headers front-load the action earlier, with the first match starting at 7:00 PM IST and the second at 10:30 PM IST, so Saturday and Sunday viewers can plan around a full evening of cricket.

The women's competition runs earlier in the day. Women's regular matches start at 7:30 PM IST, the women's opening match is at 7:15 PM IST, and the women's double-header slot is at 3:30 PM IST for the early fixture. Both the men's and women's matches on the opening day (21 July) fall into that early-evening window, which makes the kickoff a natural double-bill for Indian viewers.

Sports T20 reading: for Indian viewers, the cleanest weeknight routine is to set a single 11:00 PM IST reminder and stick to it, with a longer Saturday session for double-header weekends. The 3:30 PM IST women's double-header slot is the one that catches fantasy players off guard — if you are running a women's Hundred lineup in a fantasy app, that 3:30 PM slot is the deadline, not the 7:00 PM slot.

The names to watch in the 2026 Hundred

The expanded overseas allowance brings a heavier concentration of global T20 talent into the 2026 Hundred than any previous edition. The confirmed shortlist for the first matchday is the kind of batting depth that an IPL franchise would build around, and most of the names below are confirmed across the men's competition. Jos Buttler, Harry Brook, Phil Salt, Ben Duckett, Will Jacks, Liam Livingstone and Mitchell Marsh anchor the English and Australian top-order batting. Nicholas Pooran and Tim David provide the West Indies-Australia middle-overs strike rotation. Heinrich Klaasen adds the South African finishing depth. Rashid Khan leads the spin column alongside Jofra Archer on the pace side.

For fantasy players, the concentration matters. In a 100-ball format with a four-overseas ceiling, the captaincy picks that capture the most match-up edge in 2026 are the established T20 freelancers who can swing a five-ball set rather than the franchise-rooted batters whose workload is managed. Pooran, Klaasen, Buttler and Salt are the four names that sit at the top of most pre-season fantasy shortlists. Indian viewers tuning in via JioHotstar on opening night will get a clean read on the batting-order positions for each of them, which sets the captain-pick math for the rest of the season.

How to actually watch from India on opening night

The cleanest path for an Indian viewer on 21 July is one of three setups. The first is the JioHotstar app on a phone or tablet, logged in with an active subscription. The second is the JioHotstar app on a smart TV or a connected device (Fire TV Stick, Android TV, Apple TV), which carries the match in full-screen quality for a living-room setup. The third is a Star Sports channel through cable or DTH, which requires no subscription beyond the standard Star Sports bouquet but locks the viewer into the broadcast schedule.

There is no officially confirmed free-streaming route for The Hundred 2026 in India. Some social channels periodically share hotlinks during live matches, but these are not endorsed, are unreliable, and frequently carry a 30-60 second delay that breaks live-fantasy selections. The honest read is that JioHotstar is the price of admission for digital viewers, and Star Sports is the price of admission for cable viewers. Anyone planning to follow the whole tournament from India should pick one route before the 21 July opener and stick with it across the 34 matchdays.

Why the 2026 Hundred matters for T20 fantasy players

The Hundred is a 100-ball format, but it sits close enough to T20 on the points-system rubric that most fantasy apps allow Hundred lineups on the same wallet as IPL and T20 World Cup contests. The strike-rate bonuses that matter most in T20 World Cup contests apply almost unchanged in The Hundred, because the 100-ball structure compresses run-scoring into a tighter powerplay-and-finish shape. For readers who already track T20 fantasy on this desk, the Hundred is the next three-week test cycle after the IPL 2026 cycle and before the rest of the 2026 T20 calendar.

If you are running a Hundred lineup in a fantasy app, the cleanest starting move is to anchor your captaincy around the four-overseas XIs first, because those slots are where the operator's bonus table interacts most directly with the format's compressed run-rate. The full set of operator-side scoring comparisons and contest-size deployment rules lives on the Sports T20 fantasy desk, where the rest of the 2026 T20 fantasy coverage is updated weekly.

FAQs — watching The Hundred 2026 from India

The next match to watch

The first live matchup for Indian viewers is the women's opener at 7:15 PM IST on Tuesday 21 July, followed immediately by the men's opener at The Oval. The cleanest single-fixture to plan around is the men's MI London v Sunrisers Leeds game later that evening, which sets the batting-order baseline for both franchises and gives the first read on the four-overseas XI combinations. From there, the women's double-header at 3:30 PM IST on the following weekend is the second fixed point on the calendar, and the 16 August Final at The Oval is the closing event to plan a viewing session around.