At the Edinburg TV Festival, BBC Director of Content Kate Phillips revealed that the Doctor Who spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea will transmit on Disney+ in 2026, according to TV Zone.
“Rest assured, Doctor Who is going nowhere. Disney has been a great partnership and it continues with The War Between The Land And The Sea next year.”
This diverges from previous information shared by Doctor Who Magazine, the BBC and one of the spin-off’s actors, Colin McFarlane, all seeming to indicate a 2025 transmission date.
Update: the 2025 target was clarified as pertaining only to the UK transmission. Outside the the UK, the spin-off will transmit on Disney+ in 2026. Phillips’ statement is now interpreted as in the context of the Disney partnership.
Half a year will have passed between the 31 May 2025 release date for The War Between the Land and the Sea trailer and the start of 2026 yet the YouTube description for the trailer says “COMING SOON: The War Between the Land and the Sea.”
In other news from the BBC Drama Commissioner Lindsay Salt in Edinburgh via TV Zone, “there’s no update at the moment” on on Doctor Who but “we will share as soon as we can”. She says the BBC is committed to Doctor Who as one of its biggest brands and the show is “hugely important to us”.
Written by Russell T Davies and Pete McTighe and directed by Dylan Holmes Williams, The War Between the Land and the Sea will transmit on BBC iPlayer and BBC One in the UK in 2025, and exclusively on Disney+ outside of the UK (where available) some time in 2026.