About SBS Viceland

SBS Viceland

SBS Viceland was the Special Broadcasting Service's youth-and-entertainment multichannel, broadcast nationally on digital channel 31 in high definition. Launched on 15 November 2016 as a rebrand of SBS 2 under a content partnership with US-Canadian media company Vice, it carried Vice lifestyle and documentary programming alongside SBS entertainment, news and sport for a young-adult audience. On 21 August 2026, SBS ended the Viceland partnership and reverted the channel to its previous name, SBS2 — closing a ten-year branding era. (Wikipedia lists the channel's official site as sbs.com.au; as an SBS service its web presence sits within the broadcaster's site.)

Overview

SBS Viceland was SBS's secondary multichannel — the entertainment-and-culture companion to the flagship SBS channel — targeting younger adult audiences with what the broadcaster described as bold, provocative programming. Its schedule combined Vice Media's documentary and lifestyle programming (aimed at young adults) with SBS's own entertainment, international news, sport and films. From 17 June 2019 it broadcast as an HD-only service on channel 31, following SBS Viceland's move off the channel 32 SD slot (which became SBS World Movies).

The Viceland partnership was a distinctive experiment in Australian television: a public broadcaster borrowing a commercial global youth brand. It outlasted every other Viceland-branded television outlet in the world — the brand receded internationally after Vice Media filed for bankruptcy in 2023, was bought out by a group led by Fortress Investment Group, shuttered its website publishing and closed linear channels across the UK and Europe. Only the American channel (renamed Vice TV) remained on air. Australia's SBS Viceland, renewed in 2020, endured nearly a decade before SBS brought the channel back under its own banner on 21 August 2026 as SBS2, aimed at 25-to-54 audiences seeking "entertainment with real bite."

History

The channel's roots lie in SBS TWO, launched 1 June 2009 as a digital-only companion to the main SBS channel, replacing the SBS World News Channel — the former SBS World News Channel had carried multilingual news bulletins, and its retirement marked SBS's shift toward a youth-entertainment second channel. Originally conceived to attract younger audiences with alternative entertainment, international sport and niche factual content, it was relaunched on 1 April 2013 as SBS 2 — a "bold, provocative" channel for 16–39-year-olds, home to shows including South Park, Community, Parks and Recreation, Skins and Housos.

In June 2016, Vice CEO Shane Smith announced at the Cannes Lions Festival that the company had struck deals with international broadcasters to launch localised Viceland channels; SBS was among the partners. On 4 October 2016, SBS and Vice formally announced that SBS 2 would become SBS Viceland on 15 November 2016. Vice Australia marketing director Michael Slonim said SBS shared Vice's "storytelling sensibilities and curiosity about the world," and that the launch would "help catapult Vice further into the consciousness of young Australians." Despite the branding, the channel had no corporate association with Vice's international affiliates — it was an SBS channel carrying Vice content.

On 17 June 2019, SBS Viceland became an HD-only service on channel 31 (with the SD slot becoming SBS World Movies), and in 2020 SBS renewed the Vice partnership — a vote of confidence at a time when the Viceland brand was already fading internationally. But as Vice Media unravelled globally — the 2023 bankruptcy, the Fortress-led buyout, the shuttering of UK and European linear channels — the partnership's days were numbered. The content pipeline from Vice dried up; the brand that had once signalled youth-culture cachet began to look like a liability. On 18 May 2026 SBS revealed the Viceland brand would end on 21 August; the rebrand was officially announced on 25 June 2026, and at 5am AEST on Friday 21 August 2026, SBS2 returned to air — the name the channel had carried from 2013 to 2016 — pitched at "culturally curious" 25–54 audiences, a touch younger than Viceland's 35–54 skew, with a fixed weekly rhythm: entertainment Mondays, films Tuesdays, factual Wednesdays, "spicy" Fridays.

Programming and Content

SBS Viceland screens mainly light entertainment and documentaries in peak viewing time. Much of its daytime programming is international English-language news programming — a legacy of the channel's news origins — and it previously aired drama series and international films each night under themed programming blocks, a film habit the relaunched SBS2 has revived with its Tuesday film nights. Its Viceland-era slate included Vice documentary and lifestyle programming — Cyberwar, Dead Set on Life, Party Legends, WOMAN, VICE Does America — alongside SBS acquisitions and Australian commissions such as The Feed, Insight, If You Are the One, live sport (cycling, football) and films — a mix of Vice's global youth content and SBS's multicultural public-service core.

The relaunched SBS2's launch slate, announced in June and August 2026, included new AMC series The Vampire Lestat (starring Australian Sam Reid), Adam Hills: The Last Leg, Alone, Precious Metal: A Love Story (hosted by Danny Estrin), RAW Comedy, Minx, Celebrity Jeopardy!, Engineering By Catastrophe, History's Greatest Machines with Dolph Lundgren, La Vuelta 2026, The Mystery of Monster Waves, The Future with Hannah Fry, Will AI Take My Job?, The Naked World and Dating Apps: The Inside Story — plus a Quentin Tarantino season and a Star Trek 60th-anniversary retrospective. The channel remains HD MPEG-4.

Coverage and Audience

SBS Viceland/SBS2 broadcasts nationally on the SBS digital terrestrial multiplex (channel 31, HD) and is available on the VAST satellite service and via SBS On Demand, live-streamed and on demand. Its audience is the young-adult demographic — the 25–54 "culturally curious" viewers SBS now targets, an audience seeking "smart, surprising, sexy and different" programming it won't find on the commercial networks. SBS acting head of network programming Natalie Edgar framed the rebrand as building on what audiences already loved while broadening appeal: "premium drama, thought-provoking documentaries, live sport, entertainment or the next great obsession" for audiences "curious, passionate and looking to be entertained." The channel's repositioning from a 35–54 Viceland skew to a 25–54 SBS2 target reflects the audience SBS believes it can win: younger than the main SBS channel's viewers, older and broader than the Vice youth brand's — the "culturally curious" middle of Australian television.

Ownership

The channel is owned and operated by the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), the national multicultural public broadcaster, headquartered in Artarmon, Sydney (news division at Artarmon; playout operations in Sydney). It is one of SBS's free-to-air multichannels alongside SBS, SBS Food, SBS World Movies, NITV and (until September 2026) SBS WorldWatch. Like all SBS television services, it carries limited advertising under SBS's hybrid public-commercial funding model.

Digital Presence

The channel's programming is live-streamed and available on demand through SBS On Demand (sbs.com.au), the broadcaster's streaming platform, which SBS positions as the unified home of its television brands. The Viceland era's end and the SBS2 return — landing after SBS's FIFA World Cup and Tour de France coverage, timed to put a buffer around the broadcaster's big winter sport — marked a consolidation of SBS's brands around its own name. From SBS TWO (2009) to SBS 2 (2013) to SBS Viceland (2016) to SBS2 (2026), the channel's decade of reinventions tells the story of a public broadcaster searching for its young audience — and, in the end, deciding its own name was the strongest brand it had. Whether SBS2's "entertainment with bite" succeeds where "bold and provocative" and Vice-branded youth culture did not will depend, as ever, on the programming — the one thing no rebrand can supply on its own.