Virgin Media is unlocking its Kids TV pack for all its TV customers again, so families can watch Sky Kids, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and the rest of its children’s channels free for the whole of October.
The pack normally costs £5 a month on top of your TV bundle. From today (October 1) until October 31, you get it at no extra cost, along with the on-demand episodes that come with it.
If you’ve been a Virgin customer for a while, this will sound familiar. Virgin has turned this into an October habit, opening up the same kids’ channels in 2023 and again last October, timed to land just before the half-term break.
It’s not the only freebie Virgin has handed out this year either. In July, it opened 14 Asian Mela channels to every TV customer for South Asian Heritage Month – a pack that usually costs £12 a month.
What’s Included
The free month covers the channels in Virgin’s Kids pack:
- Sky Kids
- Cartoon Network
- Cartoonito
- Boomerang
- Nickelodeon
- Nick Jr.
- Nick Jr. Too
- Nicktoons
- Baby TV
That’s a fairly wide age range, from Baby TV for the very youngest, through the preschool favourites on Nick Jr. and Cartoonito, up to the older-skewing cartoons on Nicktoons and Cartoon Network.
Virgin is leaning into Halloween for its October picks. Sky Kids has Pip and Posy’s Spooktacular Party, Cartoon Network is showing a Halloween special of The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball alongside Adventure Time Side Quests, and Nick Jr. has HexVets & Magic Pets.
And then there are the reliable standbys, SpongeBob SquarePants and PAW Patrol, which your children have possibly already seen several hundred times and will happily watch again.
How To Watch
As with previous years, there’s nothing to sign up for. The channels should simply appear in your TV guide, whether you have the cable-connected TV 360 box or the broadband-based Stream box, which is now Virgin’s default box for new customers.
The on-demand episodes are there too, which means you’re not tied to the broadcast schedule – though Virgin notes that how much is available on demand varies from channel to channel.
You can also watch on phones and tablets through the Virgin TV Go app, which is free for all Virgin TV customers. It works over WiFi, 4G or 5G anywhere in the UK, lets you register up to five devices and stream on two at once, and includes parental controls.
That two-stream limit matters if you’ve got more than two children who can’t agree on what to watch. Which is to say, if you’ve got more than two children.
The free access ends on the morning of October 31, at 6am according to Virgin’s terms, so anyone planning a Halloween cartoon marathon will find the channels have already gone.
Not Much Left For Kids On Linear TV
Pop and Tiny Pop, which had been on air for more than 20 years, disappeared from Sky and Virgin Media at the end of 2025. Paul Dunthorne, Managing Director of their owner Narrative Entertainment, told us at the time that “commercial value across the UK kids’ TV market” was “now just 4% of what it was ten years ago.”
When CITV closed in 2023, Pop became the UK’s only dedicated free-to-air commercial children’s broadcaster. Now even Pop has given up on traditional TV, carrying on only as a streaming channel, as young viewers drift to YouTube and streaming apps.
And Virgin’s own line-up has one obvious gap. When Disney Jr made its surprise return to TV in the UK last November, five years after Disney pulled its kids’ channels off Sky and Virgin, it came back as a Sky exclusive. As we reported at the time, it’s not available on Virgin Media, NOW or EE TV.
So if your children are hooked on Disney Jr favourites like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, this pack won’t help, and Disney+ is still where you’ll find them.
Is It Worth £5 After October?
Richard Vivian, Director of Commercial Development at Virgin Media O2, calls the free month “a little extra value for our customers and a great way to help keep the kids entertained during half term.”
Fair enough. It’s also a pretty good shop window: open the channels for a few weeks, let families see what they’re missing, and some of them will presumably keep paying for the pack once October is over.
For you, it works the other way: it’s a free trial with no strings. Leave the channels on and see whether they actually get watched. If your kids keep coming back to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, £5 a month is a fairly modest add-on. If they’re back on YouTube by the end of half term, you’ve lost nothing.
One more Virgin date for your diary while you’re at it. The Virgin Media Store stops selling films and box sets on November 1, and from then on you’ll need to move your purchases to Rakuten TV to keep watching them. If you’ve built up a library of kids’ films over the years, now’s a good time to do the transfer.
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