
DStv’s six Kenyan packages, from Lite to Premium, will change in November. DStv, the satellite and streaming pay-TV service, posted a short notice on its Kenyan site on 6th October 2026 promising “a brand-new suite of packages” under a new slogan, DStv Expect More. The same notice is up on DStv’s sites for Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Ghana, so this is a change across DStv’s African markets. DStv belongs to MultiChoice, which the French pay-TV company Canal+ took over last year.
The notice leaves out what most subscribers want to know. It doesn’t name the new packages, give their prices, say which day in November they start, or say which package each current subscriber moves to. So for now, your bill stays the same. DStv Kenya’s package page, checked on 13th October 2026, still lists the old prices:
| Package | Monthly price |
|---|---|
| Lite | KES 750 |
| Access | KES 1,450 |
| Family | KES 2,250 |
| Compact | KES 4,200 |
| Compact Plus | KES 7,300 |
| Premium | KES 11,700 |
Those prices reach a lot of homes. DStv had 259,047 active satellite subscriptions in Kenya at the end of June 2026, by the Communications Authority’s count, up from 248,053 in March.
Sport and movies may be sold separately
The notice describes three kinds of viewers: movie and series fans, sports fans, and big families. Each, it says, will get a DStv “tailor-made” for them.
That’s how DStv rebuilt its packages in South Africa. Before September, the packages there worked like Kenya’s still do: a ladder, where each step up adds more sport, movies and series on top of the one below. Now there’s a Sports package built around football and cricket, and a Movies & Series package built around M-Net and the movie channels. So a household that only wants football can pay for that without buying the movie channels, and the other way round.
In September, unconfirmed figures pointed to three Kenyan packages: Select at KES 1,500, Compact at KES 3,000 and Premium at KES 7,300. The notice confirms neither those names nor those prices, and its wording sits closer to South Africa’s split.
What changed in South Africa
South Africa switched on 17th September 2026. DStv said then that the rest of Africa would follow later in the year. These are the South African packages now, with the starting prices on DStv’s South African comparison page:
| Package | What it replaced | Channels | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Access | 85+ | R99 (about KES 780) |
| Select | Family | 100+ | R299 (about KES 2,300) |
| Sports | Compact | 115+ | R399 (about KES 3,100) |
| Movies & Series | New | 115+ | R500 (about KES 3,900) |
| Premium | Premium | 130+ | R799 (about KES 6,300) |
Shilling figures use R1 = KES 7.85.
Sports carries the Premier League, the UEFA Champions League, cricket, WWE and UFC. Movies & Series carries M-Net, kykNET and the M-Net movie channels. Premium keeps the sport the other two don’t get, including Springbok rugby, Formula 1, golf and tennis.
Nobody had to sign up again. DStv moved Access, Family and Compact subscribers automatically to Starter, Select and Sports. It also told them they wouldn’t pay more because of the move and wouldn’t need a new decoder. So if Kenya gets the same treatment, the new package would show up on your account in November without you doing anything.
Compact Plus closed to new subscribers. The people already on it kept the package name and the price they were paying, and DStv said they now get the “full Premium channel experience”. MultiChoice says that runs month to month and has given no end date. Kenya’s Compact Plus subscribers have the most riding on whether DStv repeats that here.
What it means for Kenya
Kenya may not get a straight copy. As we explained last month, DStv Kenya is run by a different MultiChoice company from South Africa’s, with its own prices and its own sports and movie rights. Kenya also sells Lite, its cheapest package, which South Africa doesn’t have, so there’s no South African example for where Lite subscribers land.
The prices are where the two countries differ most. Kenya’s Premium costs almost twice what South Africa’s starts at. Kenya’s Compact, the step below Compact Plus, has the Premier League too, and costs about KES 1,100 more than South Africa’s Sports package.
If the Kenyan prices land anywhere near South Africa’s, Premium and Compact subscribers will pay less from November. If DStv only renames the packages and keeps today’s prices, November brings a new menu and the same bill.






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