Why Disney+ Hotstar Is Trending in India: The JioHotstar Merger and Global Rebrand Explained

Why are Indians searching for Disney+ Hotstar now?

Google Trends data observed on 26 September 2026 shows the term "Disney+ Hotstar" on the rising list in India, with roughly 30% growth in search interest over the past 12 months. The reason is straightforward: the service many Indians still call Disney+ Hotstar no longer exists under that name. It merged with JioCinema in February 2025 to become JioHotstar, and the brand has kept evolving since — including a fresh international expansion announced on 1 September 2026.

Search interest often lags rebrands. Millions of users still type the old name when looking for the app, subscription details, or cricket streams, which keeps the legacy term alive in search data even after the rebrand took effect.

From Hotstar to Disney+ Hotstar to JioHotstar

Star India launched Hotstar on 11 February 2015, timed with the 2015 Cricket World Cup and that year's IPL. After Disney acquired Star India's parent company 21st Century Fox in 2019, the service was folded into Disney's global streaming brand and relaunched as Disney+ Hotstar in April 2020, adding Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic content to the existing Indian catalogue.

The bigger shift came after Disney merged its Indian television and streaming assets with Reliance Industries in November 2024, forming the JioStar joint venture — held 63.16% by Viacom18 and Reliance, with Disney retaining a 36.84% stake. On 14 February 2025, Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema were merged into a single platform, JioHotstar. At launch, JioStar said the combined service carried over 300,000 hours of content, with plans for 40–50 new original series a year and the return of IPL streaming rights alongside HBO and Paramount content inherited from JioCinema.

What changed internationally in 2025 and 2026

The Hotstar name has had different fates in different markets, which adds to the confusion driving searches:

• Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand: Disney+ Hotstar was rebranded simply as Disney+ on 9 October 2025, as part of Disney's global rebranding of Star into Hulu.
• India: The service continues as JioHotstar following the February 2025 merger.
• Canada, Singapore and the United Kingdom: On 1 September 2026, JioStar announced the diaspora-focused Hotstar service would rebrand as JioHotstar; on 3 September 2026, the app was added to Sky Q, Glass and Stream in the UK.
• United States: Hotstar shut down in 2021, with content folded into Hulu and ESPN+. The Hotstar website itself now leads with a Disney Bundle promotion — a reminder of how tangled the brand's geography has become, and part of why searchers land on unexpected pages.

How big is JioHotstar?

According to figures reported as of 17 October 2025, the platform had around 400 million users, and in 2025 it was described as the world's second-largest streaming service by subscribers, behind only Netflix. That scale — combined with cricket rights including the IPL, ICC events and the 2025 Tendulkar-Anderson Trophy — keeps the platform and its old name in constant search rotation.

What this means for viewers in India

If you search for Disney+ Hotstar today, the practical answer is that JioHotstar is the same service's successor in India: your subscription, watchlist and content library carried over at the February 2025 merger. The Disney+ Hotstar branding survives mainly in older articles, app-store listings and search habits. Note that Google Trends figures are normalized interest scores, not absolute search counts — they confirm rising curiosity about the term, not any specific claim about subscriber numbers.