House of the Dragon season 3

Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO

There are almost no news stories these days about subscription services cutting their prices, but in this case, HBO Max really, really wants you to watch its new shows, starting with House of the Dragon season 3, arriving this weekend, and its upcoming Harry Potter show, coming this Christmas.

HBO Max is now cutting prices for its yearly subscription service tiers by 40% over the monthly price, and 28% for the yearly bundle. The promotion is available now through July 15, and will run for a year. This is available for both new subscribers and even existing ones, and you can “restart” your subscription under the new prices. Those prices are:

• HBO Basic With Ads - $79, down from $109
• HBO Standard - $132, down from $184
• HBO Premium - $165, down from $229

Subscribing month-to-month instead ups those subscription prices significantly. This promotion is the first significant change to HBO Max pricing since its last increase in October 2025, which upped prices $1-2 across its plans, taking Premium to $24 a month. That is just behind Netflix, which is now $27 a month for its premium plan, as we march toward the old cable prices when you add a few of these together.

HBO Max is no doubt doing this promotion due to a number of key shows coming up this year, which include the aforementioned House of the Dragon season 3, said to be its best yet. Then, Lanterns, the first live-action DCU series, an important step for that universe. Finally, what HBO expects to potentially be a monster hit, the Harry Potter series, out this Christmas, where this deal would get subscribers to that release as well. This is also on the back of recent hits like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Industry and the final, controversial, well-watched season of Euphoria.

All of this, of course, also comes alongside the current unfolding drama of Paramount working its way toward an acquisition of Warner Bros. The stated idea has been to keep HBO Max as its own entity, separate from Paramount Plus, for now, but if this does end up going through, if you were to subscribe to both, those combo costs for premium are $24 a month for HBO to $15 for Paramount+. Or, non promotionally, $369 for a year. Presumably, merging the two would not cost $39 a month, as no one is going to pay that.

It’s a rare deal to see in the streaming space, and with some services starting to hit subscriber ceilings, it’s easy to wonder if more could follow.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.