The short answer: you'll need Sky Sports or a NOW Sports membership plus a UK residential IP. The US Open is Sky-exclusive in the UK, and both Sky and NOW geo-block you the moment you travel. A UK residential IP makes your device look like an ordinary British household, so your own subscription streams the tennis abroad much as it would at home.
With the 2026 tournament starting at the end of August, there's plenty of time to get set up before the first serve. Here's how it works.
The US Open returns to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows, New York. The main draw runs from Sunday 30 August to Sunday 13 September 2026, with the women's final on 12 September and the men's final on 13 September (qualifying and Fan Week fill the days before).
In the UK, the US Open is shown exclusively by Sky Sports — Sky holds the rights to all four tennis Grand Slams. You can watch through Sky Go or a NOW Sports membership, which carries the Sky Sports channels — both stream over the internet, with no dish required. Either way, the coverage is licensed for the UK, which is where the trouble starts once you leave the country.
Some Grand Slams have a free-to-air home. Wimbledon, for instance, is on the BBC, so abroad you can lean on iPlayer. The US Open is different: there is no free UK broadcast at all. Sky Sports is the only place to watch it live, so there's no free stream to fall back on when you're away.
That means your options abroad come down to your own Sky or NOW subscription — and both check where you are. Open the app overseas and it reads your IP address, sees you're outside the UK, and stops the stream. Reach for a mainstream VPN and you'll usually hit a wall too, because Sky and NOW are among the most determined UK services when it comes to spotting VPNs.
The reason ordinary VPNs get caught is the type of IP address they hand you. Most route through commercial data-centre IPs, which broadcasters recognise and block on sight.
Our SmartHub VPN routers connect through genuine UK residential broadband IPs — the same kind of address a real home in Britain uses. To Sky and NOW, your device simply looks like an ordinary UK household, so your subscription is treated as a normal home connection while the data-centre VPNs get shut out. It's the same reason a residential IP tends to be the connection that gets past the streaming blocks. No method can be guaranteed, but a residential IP is the most reliable approach we've found.
There's nothing to configure and no codes to enter — the router supplies the UK connection, and Sky or NOW does the rest.
Sky and NOW run on phones, tablets, laptops, streaming sticks and smart TVs, and once they're on the router's Wi-Fi they all share the same UK IP. For a proper big-screen match, the Netgem PLEIO Freely box is a tidy pairing: it runs the NOW app, so you can put the US Open on the telly rather than squinting at a laptop.
One thing worth planning for is the time difference. The US Open runs on US Eastern time, so the UK coverage carries on well into the small hours here — late-night matches in New York land in the early morning back home. If you'd rather not stay up, catch-up on Sky or NOW lets you pick up the key matches the next day, still behind your UK IP.
Because the router provides the UK connection, every device on that network benefits — not just the tennis. While one person follows the US Open, others can stream ITVX, BBC iPlayer or their own shows at the same time, on TVs, phones, tablets and consoles, all appearing to be in the UK.
On the same services you'd use at home — Sky Sports or a NOW Sports membership, which hold the UK rights. Both geo-block you when you travel, so abroad you need a UK residential IP that makes your device look like an ordinary UK household, then simply sign in to your own subscription.
No. Unlike Wimbledon on the BBC, there's no free-to-air US Open coverage in the UK — it's exclusive to Sky Sports, via a Sky subscription or a NOW Sports membership. There's no free UK stream to fall back on, so abroad you'll need Sky or NOW behind a UK IP.
Yes, with a valid NOW Sports membership. NOW carries the Sky Sports channels that show the US Open, so a UK residential IP lets you stream the tennis abroad on any device — no dish required.
Usually not. Sky and NOW block the data-centre IPs that mainstream VPN apps use. A UK residential IP is a genuine home-broadband address, so it's far more likely to be seen as an ordinary UK connection — though no method can be guaranteed.
The US Open is Sky-exclusive in the UK, with no free-to-air alternative, so keeping your own Sky or NOW subscription working abroad is the whole game. A UK residential IP lets that subscription stream overseas much as it does at home, on every device on the network. With the main draw starting on 30 August, order your router in good time and you'll be settled in well before the first ball is struck.
