Canal+ Pulls the Plug on Showmax — Africa’s Biggest Streaming Experiment Is Over

Canal+ has confirmed it is shutting down Showmax, Africa’s largest homegrown streaming platform, after losses that proved, in the company’s own words, unsustainable. For millions of subscribers and hundreds of African content creators, the plug has been pulled.

Showmax · MultiChoice / Canal+ · Africa

It is official. Canal+ has confirmed it is closing Showmax, the streaming platform that spent over a decade trying to be Africa’s answer to Netflix. The announcement, confirmed by Canal+ on March 5, 2026, ends one of the continent’s most ambitious and costly digital entertainment experiments.

The decision was made by Showmax’s board, with Canal+ framing it as a matter of financial discipline and investment optimisation in an increasingly competitive global streaming environment. For subscribers across Africa, the service will be phased out gradually with no immediate blackout, but the direction is clear. Showmax is done.

The financial picture tells a brutal story. By the 2025 financial year, Showmax’s trading losses had ballooned to levels that even a major media conglomerate could not absorb.

Revenue peaked at R1 billion in 2024 before falling back to R800 million, a fraction of the R18 billion target executives had promised investors. Subscriber growth hit 44% year on year, but as MultiChoice CEO David Mignot put it bluntly earlier this year, the business was simply not flying from a financial standpoint.

Canal+ has been careful in its messaging, framing the closure not as a failure but as a strategic pivot. In its official statement, the company said it would continue to invest in premium content for MultiChoice subscribers, technological innovation and strategic partnerships to maintain its position in the African entertainment market.

Canal+ also confirmed that no retrenchments will result from the closure, with the group committing to support employees through transition options. A specific shutdown date has not yet been announced, with Canal+ citing remaining legal implications still being resolved.

Beyond the boardroom numbers, Showmax’s closure lands hardest on the African filmmakers, writers, and production houses who depended on it as one of the few platforms willing to back bold, locally rooted stories. One South African director who produced multiple series for the platform described the loss as devastating, calling Showmax one of the only platforms that was willing to back stories that were bold and authentic.

The closure leaves a gap that global platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ have shown limited appetite to fill at the same scale or with the same cultural specificity. For Africa’s creative industry, the question now is where those stories go next.

Showmax’s collapse is not an isolated event. It is part of a broader reckoning across global streaming. The industry has moved decisively out of its growth at all costs era and into a phase where sustainable economics matter more than subscriber counts. Content costs keep rising. Data costs across Africa remain a structural barrier, with barely 4 to 5% of electrified, TV-owning African households having access to fibre. The maths of mobile streaming on the continent simply do not work at scale yet.

Canal+ is now expected to deepen its existing partnership with Netflix, which is already bundled into pay-TV offerings across 24 African countries. A so-called super app combining the group’s video services is also reportedly in development, suggesting the future Canal+ is imagining is one of aggregation and bundling rather than standalone streaming competition.

What was once positioned as Africa’s last great frontier for streaming growth has become one of its most costly experiments. Showmax leaves behind a library of African stories, a base of loyal subscribers, and a continent still searching for the streaming model that actually works.