ABEMA will discontinue its WWE streaming service in Japan on September 30, 2026, ending a partnership that began in October 2023. The final broadcast will be Raw on September 29, exactly three years to the day after ABEMA started airing WWE programming.
The news was announced at the top of Tuesday’s Raw broadcast and confirmed by ABEMA Wrestling’s official account, which thanked viewers for watching WWE on the platform and said the service would continue supporting its other content. ABEMA had held exclusive domestic rights to Raw and SmackDown since October 2023, also carrying premium live events like WrestleMania and SummerSlam.
Reaction from Japanese fans online was largely appreciative of the run, with many crediting the free, ad-supported platform for lowering the barrier to following WWE in a market that had previously relied on paid cable options like J Sports.
Netflix Expected To Fill The Gap
ABEMA’s exit lines up with reporting on where WWE is headed next in Japan. Netflix Vice President of Sports Gabe Spitzer said in an interview with Andrew Marchand’s Main Event podcast in May that WWE on Netflix would launch in Japan later in 2026, following earlier rollouts in Germany and Italy. Dave Meltzer also reported on Wrestling Observer Radio that Netflix is expected to take over WWE’s Japanese rights before the end of the year once the ABEMA deal lapses.
Japan has been one of the last major holdouts from WWE’s broader shift of its international library to Netflix, which began carrying Raw and international rights outside the U.S. starting in January 2025. WWE’s Royal Rumble 2026 broadcast map still listed ABEMA as the Japanese home for the show as recently as January.
No start date for WWE programming on Netflix in Japan has been officially confirmed.
