What should I do if BBC iPlayer is down for me?

Try a different title before assuming the service is down. A single video that will not start is usually a rights or encoding problem with that title, not an outage. Test the browser and the TV app separately. Living-room apps ship on their own release schedule and break independently of the website. Restart the streaming device rather than the app. Set-top boxes and smart TVs hold stale DNS and tokens for far longer than a phone does. Turn off any VPN. Streaming services actively block known VPN exit nodes, and the resulting error looks identical to an outage.

Streaming

Is BBC iPlayer down right now?

No, it’s up.

BBC iPlayer appears to be up and running normally.

checked 2026-11-05 16:41 UTC

responded in 102ms

HTTP 200

Over the last 7 days, BBC iPlayer has answered our automated checks with 100.00% availability and a typical response time of ~137 ms. The most recent outage began 2026-09-26 18:24 UTC and lasted 15m (severity: degraded).

BBC iPlayer streams live channels and catch-up television in the UK. Live streaming and on-demand playback fail separately, and live events are when it is under most load.

Is BBC iPlayer down for everyone or just you?

Our automated checks are reaching BBC iPlayer normally right now, and it answered our last one in 102ms. That makes any trouble you are hitting more likely to be local to your connection, account or network than a full outage, which usually means you can fix it from your end.

Still not working for you?Try the fixes

BBC iPlayer response time (last 24h)

Last 24h

peak 1437 ms

BBC iPlayer incident history (last 90 days)

SepOctNov

up
slow
down
no reading

Date	What happened	Duration	Severity
2026-09-26 18:24 UTC	Measured by our checks	15m	Degraded
2026-09-22 10:35 UTC	Measured by our checks	15m	Down

BBC iPlayer uptime

100.00%
7 days: 100.00%
30 days: 99.98%
90 days

Measured since 2026-08-21. Windows reaching further back are averaged over the 77 days we watched, not the full period. Counts our own checks. Days BBC iPlayer reported an incident are coloured in the timeline above but do not change this figure.

What to do if BBC iPlayer is down for just you

Try a different title before assuming the service is down. A single video that will not start is usually a rights or encoding problem with that title, not an outage.
Test the browser and the TV app separately. Living-room apps ship on their own release schedule and break independently of the website.
Restart the streaming device rather than the app. Set-top boxes and smart TVs hold stale DNS and tokens for far longer than a phone does.
Turn off any VPN. Streaming services actively block known VPN exit nodes, and the resulting error looks identical to an outage.

Frequently asked questions

BBC iPlayer appears to be up and running normally. Last checked 2026-11-05 16:41 UTC.

Related services

Amazon Music Apple Music Apple TV BBC Disney+HBO Max