Why is Taskmaster leaving Netflix? There's a free way to keep watching
If Taskmaster has appeared in your Netflix "leaving soon" pile, don't panic — nothing has happened to the show itself, and you're about to lose precisely nothing. The reason is licensing. It usually is.
Why it's going
Taskmaster isn't a Netflix programme. It's a Channel 4 show made by Avalon, and Netflix only ever rented it: series 1–6 arrived on Netflix UK in April 2024, with series 7–13 following weeks later. Streaming licences like that run on fixed windows, and when the window closes, the episodes come down. Netflix doesn't publish its reasons — it doesn't need to — but this is the standard machinery of the business, the same one that removes hundreds of films and shows from the platform every month.
Meanwhile the show is in rude health. Channel 4 renewed Taskmaster in 2026 for six more series running to 2029, on top of the 21 already broadcast.
The free way to keep watching
Here's the part Netflix would rather you skimmed: every single series — 1 through 21 — is already free on the official Taskmaster YouTube channel, with ads. Since series 20 in September 2025, new episodes have gone up just one hour after their UK broadcast. As of June 2026, the channel has 2.22 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion views. In the UK, Channel 4's own streaming service also carries the show free with ads.
- YouTube — all 21 series, free worldwide, new episodes an hour after UK broadcast.
- Channel 4 streaming — free with ads for UK viewers, including the current series.
- Taskmaster SuperMax+ — the show's own subscription service, launched in March 2022, for ad-free viewing worldwide.
Wait — the show has its own streaming service?
It does. SuperMax+ was, by the makers' own admission, a punt.
"We're not taking it off YouTube or anything like that," Alex Horne told the Guardian in 2022.
He described the platform as an experiment and a way of keeping the whole strange world of Taskmaster — including international versions — in one place, while the YouTube episodes stayed free for anyone happy to sit through adverts.
For the record: "put everything on YouTube for nothing" shouldn't be a viable business model. A billion and a half views suggest otherwise.