> Quick view: Telekom Malaysia has unlocked all 73 Unifi TV channels for everyone in Malaysia from 31 August to 30 September 2026, including the HBO and Cinemax channels it normally sells as exclusives. There is no subscription and no card entry, just an email address. The part most people will miss is what happens next: on 1 October the line-up drops to 22 channels, and those 22 stay free permanently without you doing anything.

What TM has actually opened up

On 2 September 2026 Telekom Malaysia published a media release with a title that leaves little room for interpretation: Unifi TV offers free full channel line-up to all Malaysians for the first time, including exclusive HBO and Cinemax channels this Hari Kebangsaan and Hari Malaysia.

The substance underneath it is simple. Unifi TV's full suite of 73 premium channels is free to everyone in Malaysia from 31 August to 30 September 2026. TM ties it to the 2026 Hari Kebangsaan and Hari Malaysia celebrations and to its own 80th anniversary, and the campaign artwork carries both the Malaysia MADANI mark and TM's 80-year emblem.

Three lines in the release do the heavy lifting for readers who are not Unifi customers:

  • The access is open to everyone in Malaysia, including non-Unifi customers. Your broadband can be with anyone.
  • New users need only sign up with an email address, with no payment or subscription required.
  • It streams on compatible Smart TVs, mobile phones, tablets or Android TV boxes through the Unifi TV 2.0 app.

The campaign poster puts the same three points in Malay as its benefit strip: strim dari pelbagai peranti, tiada pembayaran, percuma untuk semua tanpa mengira rangkaian. Stream from many devices, no payment, free for everyone regardless of network.

Anand Vijayan, TM's Chief Business and Consumer Officer, is quoted in the release saying that for the first time the company can offer all its channels, including its exclusive HBO channels, free to everyone in Malaysia for a whole month.

Getting it running, and the route nobody mentions

The release and the poster both point at the Unifi TV 2.0 app, which is the obvious path on a phone, tablet, Android TV box or a Smart TV that carries the app. Download it, register with an email address, and the channel list opens.

The route TM does not advertise is the browser. Unifi's own Unifi TV FAQ, published on unifi.com.my, states that you can stream Unifi TV through a web browser at unifitv.com.my, and it lists the supported versions: Google Chrome 99.0.4844.82 and above, which it recommends, Mozilla Firefox 98.0.1 and above, Microsoft Edge 99.0.1150.46 and above, and Safari 12 and above. If you have an older television with an HDMI port and a laptop in the house, that is a working setup with nothing to install.

One thing worth knowing before you go further into the app: the same FAQ notes that on iOS devices, paid subscriptions have to be completed through the Unifi TV Box or the unifitv.com.my website rather than in the app. That does not affect the free month, but it explains a dead end people hit later if they decide to keep a channel.

What the free month is worth, using Unifi's own price list

The honest way to value this is to read what Unifi charges for the same channels the rest of the year, and Unifi publishes that on its own Unifi TV page.

The retail product is called Build Your Own Pack. For RM30 a month, or RM23 a month if you are already a Unifi customer, you get any one streaming app, any five premium channels, and the 16 free-to-air channels on top. That is the entire pack.

Unifi then runs its own comparison beside it, labelled Standard Retail Price and marked "for comparison only". It prices a YOUKU subscription at RM25 a month and five premium channels at RM45 a month, for a total retail value of RM70 a month.

Set that against what is happening in September. The paid pack, at its own list price, is five premium channels. The promotion is all 73. Even measured against the discounted RM23 that Unifi customers pay, the September line-up is more than fourteen times the number of premium channels the pack normally allows.

There is a second reference point on Unifi's channels page: outside a pack, add-on channels are sold from as low as RM1 a day for three channels. At that rate, three channels for the 30 days of September would run to RM30. This month, 73 channels run to nothing.

What is actually left to watch

The release names specific titles rather than gesturing at "great content", and some of them have already come and gone. This is the state of play as re-checked on 9 September 2026.

Already aired. The Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio d'Italia 2026 at Monza, which TM listed as a highlight, ran over the weekend of 4 to 6 September. If that was your reason to sign up, you have missed it.

Four more race weekends fall inside the free month, and TM's release names none of them. The media release lists only the Monza round by title, but the two channels it names for motorsport, SPOTV and beIN SPORTS, are the ones carrying both championships. Taken from the Formula 1 and MotoGP calendars and given in Malaysian dates, what is left is:

  • Sunday 13 September, Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix at Madring in Madrid. It is the first Formula 1 race the circuit has ever held, so nobody has a form guide for it.
  • Sunday 13 September, MotoGP San Marino Grand Prix at Misano, with the sprint the day before on Saturday 12 September.
  • Sunday 20 September, MotoGP Grand Prix of Austria at the Red Bull Ring, round 15 of the championship.
  • Saturday 26 September, Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix at Baku. Read the day again. The Grand Prix was moved off Sunday 27 September so that it would not fall on Azerbaijan's Remembrance Day, which puts the race on the Saturday and qualifying on the Friday. Set a reminder for the Sunday and you will miss the whole thing. It is also the last motorsport of any kind inside the free window.

That last one matters more than it looks. Between Baku on 26 September and the end of the promotion on 30 September there is no further live motorsport, so the practical end of the sports argument for this giveaway is a Saturday, four days before the date on the poster.

Still ahead off the track. The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, which TM says airs live on HITS NOW, is scheduled for the evening of 14 September in Los Angeles, which lands on the morning of Tuesday 15 September in Malaysia. That is the day before the Hari Malaysia public holiday on Wednesday 16 September, so the repeat is likely to be the more civilised option.

On demand and on the schedule. TM names *Lanterns* on HBO, *Bisikan Pontianak* as a Unifi TV Original on DEGUP, *The Shadow's Edge* on Celestial Movies, and *Gangubai Kathiawadi* on ZEE Cinema. The poster's channel strip groups the line-up as Tempatan (TV1, TV3 and other local channels), Filem (HBO, tvN Movies, Celestial Movies), Sukan (beIN SPORTS, SPOTV, Unifi Sports 1) and Hiburan (DEGUP, AXN, HITS NOW), with the note "dan banyak lagi".

If you have a specific reason to want this, sport and HBO are it. Everything else in the line-up has a cheaper or equivalent home somewhere else.

The race Malaysians actually want is four days too late

Formula 1 returns to Sepang on 2 to 4 October 2026, the first Formula 1 race held in Malaysia since the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix. It runs under the name Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, because the Bahrain round was relocated here after being postponed from its original April date, and the Grand Prix itself is on Sunday 4 October.

The free month ends on 30 September. The Sepang race is four days after that, and it is not one of the 22 channels' worth of programming that carries over. So if watching Formula 1 at Sepang on a screen is the reason you would want beIN SPORTS or SPOTV, this promotion does not reach it. Doing it on Unifi TV means buying Build Your Own Pack in October at RM30 a month, or RM23 a month as a Unifi customer.

That is a gap worth planning around now rather than discovering on race morning. If you would rather be at the circuit than in front of the television, the ticket picture is in F1 Sepang 2026 tickets.

The 1 October cliff, and why it is not really a cliff

This is the part of the release that deserves more attention than the free month, because it changes Unifi TV's shape permanently.

From 1 October 2026, Unifi TV introduces a standing free offering of 22 channels. That is the existing 16 free-to-air channels plus six premium channels moved into the free tier: DEGUP HD, Dunia Sinema HD, Sensasi HD, Inspirasi HD, Pesona HD and Al Jazeera.

TM is explicit that this is automatic. Viewers keep the 22 complimentary channels after the promotion concludes, with no cancellation and no re-registration needed. So there is no trial trap here, no card on file to cancel, and nothing that quietly converts into a bill on 1 October. That is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly.

The trade is equally plain. HBO, Cinemax, beIN SPORTS, SPOTV, AXN, HITS NOW, tvN Movies and Celestial Movies are not in the 22. If you want those from October, you are back to Build Your Own Pack at RM30 a month, or RM23 as a Unifi customer, and you are choosing five of them rather than all of them.

TM has also lined up October originals on DEGUP, which is one of the six channels joining the free tier: *Nak Dengar Cerita Hantu* Season 2 with Que Haidar and Zizan Razak, and *Secret Book Club* with Tiz Zaqyah and Zahiril Adzim. Those sit on the free side of the line, which is presumably the point of moving DEGUP there.

Who should bother, and who should not

Worth doing now. Households with no pay TV at all, students, anyone in a rental without a subscription, and MotoGP viewers who would otherwise pay for a single race weekend. Registering takes an email and costs nothing, and even if you watch none of it in September you end up with 22 free channels afterwards. The rational move is to register regardless.

Worth doing if you already pay elsewhere. If you carry an Astro or a streaming subscription, this is a month to test whether the Unifi TV line-up covers what you actually watch before your next renewal. That is a real decision the free month lets you make with no money at risk.

Skip it. If you only watch on-demand series and films through Netflix or Disney+, a linear channel line-up will not replace them, and the bundled streaming apps on Unifi TV are not part of this giveaway.

Fine print that trips people up

  • It is channels, not the whole app. U PICK, described on Unifi's own site as straight-from-cinema blockbuster movies you can rent, is a pay-per-title product. The streaming apps that come attached to a paid pack (Viu, iQIYI, WeTV, TVB Anywhere, Vidio, MangoTV and the rest) are the pack's app slot, not part of the free channel line-up.
  • The end date is 30 September 2026, and Malaysia is on one time zone, so plan around 30 September rather than assuming a grace day.
  • Two sign-in surfaces, one account. The app and unifitv.com.my use the same Unifi TV ID or email login, so registering once covers the television and the laptop.
  • Data. Streaming live channels on mobile data will move through a quota quickly. On a phone plan without genuinely unlimited streaming, keep this on Wi-Fi.
  • The official page is still not the official source. Unifi's own Unifi TV promotions page at unifi.com.my/tv/promotions had not picked up this campaign when we re-checked it on 9 September 2026, nine days in. What it was advertising instead was a "FREE 30-day Unifi TV access" offer marked "Exclusive for Unifi customers only" and "Campaign until 30 June 2026", alongside a Ramadan promotion. The Unifi TV channels page is no better: its FAQ still tells anyone who is not a customer that registering an email lets them "stream a selection of free TV channels", which describes the ordinary position rather than this month's. The document that governs this offer is TM's media release of 2 September 2026 and the campaign artwork attached to it.

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is from TM's own hosts, first read on 7 September 2026 and re-read on 9 September 2026: the media release at tm.com.my, the campaign artwork published with it, and the Unifi TV product, channels and FAQ pages at unifi.com.my/tv. The release was word for word unchanged on the second reading, and the promotion is still running. The Formula 1, MotoGP and Emmy dates are the championships' and the ceremony's own published schedules, converted to Malaysian time; the Sepang round's name and dates are from Formula 1's own announcement of the relocation.

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*Image: Telekom Malaysia (Unifi TV Hari Kebangsaan and Hari Malaysia campaign artwork)*