How to watch Shark Week 2025: Live TV & streaming schedule for Discovery special

Shark Week 2025 is almost here, offering new shows full of thrills to celebrate its 37th year. Once again, we’ve put together a handy guide on how to watch Shark Week 2025, including air times, where you can watch, and the standout shows worth keeping an eye on.

Despite recent years having big names like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Momoa on board to lead the proceedings, it appears Discovery is going with a leaner (and hopefully meaner) approach in 2025. Shark Week has been around since 1988, and it’s meant to help us celebrate and understand these beautiful creatures, rather than build up fear.

We’ll admit it hasn’t always lived up to that mantra, but these days Discovery does a good job of showing sharks to the world while ramping up the fun factor for the most part.

The hottest shows lined up to chomp on during Shark Week 2025 include “Dancing with Sharks” — a new Shark Week special — and “Air Jaws: The Hunt for Colossus” (now that’s a wild title).

When is Shark Week 2025?

Shark Week 2025 starts on July 20 (Sunday) and runs until July 26 (Saturday).

The official kick-off takes place on Sunday, July 20, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery, with the content also available to stream on HBO Max.

“Dancing With Sharks” — hosted by Emmy Award-winning TV personality Tom Bergeron — will lead the charge, but Discovery’s full July 20 schedule suggests a substantially larger offering of shark-related shows throughout the whole day.

Where to watch Shark Week 2025: TV & Streaming

Shark Week airs exclusively in the US on the Discovery Channel, which is available on most cable TV services.

If you want to watch Discovery but don’t have traditional cable, you can get it via the new wave of “cord-cutting” streaming platforms, which offer cable channels in an online subscription package.

SlingTV is one of the best, with Discovery on the Blue package for $45 per month (half price for your first month. You can also watch Discovery on Hulu + Live TV, DirecTV Stream, and YouTube TV.

To watch on demand, you can get Shark Week content on HBO Max, ($9.99 per month), which is Discovery’s main streaming platform since the Warner Media-Discovery merger in 2022.

We also believe Discovery+ will offer the full Shark Week 2025 offerings at a later date. As far as we know, you can watch most of 2024’s Shark Week content on there.

How to watch Shark Week outside the US

Shark Week 2025 is only airing live in the U.S.

If you’re stuck abroad during Shark Week and can’t access one of the above streaming options in your current location, we have a solution for you: a VPN.

A Virtual Private Network will allow you to access geo-restricted content by bouncing your connection to a server based in that country. This means that you can access all of your U.S.-based streaming services no matter where you are in the world.

There are many VPN services out there, but NordVPN is the best all-round option, according to our expert colleagues at Tom’s Guide, and it’s a good time to take out a subscription.

Offer applies in the US, Canada, and UK. To take advantage, follow the deal, select a discounted two-year plan, and the four-month bonus will be added automatically to your selection. Once you’ve taken out the plan and reached the end of the 30-day free trial period, your Amazon gift card (amount depends on selected plan) will land in your inbox.

Shark Week 2025 schedule

Below you can find the full Shark Week 2025 schedule, which includes every big show airing during Shark Week plus the dates & times to catch them live. All of them can be watched on HBO Max any time after the air date. More shark-related shows will be part of the complete Discovery schedule throughout Shark Week.

“Jaws vs. Mega Croc”

Right after “Great White Sex Battle,” we highly recommend not skipping the silly-sounding but somewhat compelling “Jaws vs. Mega Croc,” which gives viewers “a CGI fight to the death between two of the biggest and baddest apex predators in the water — the great white shark and Nile crocodile.

► 9pm ET/PT on Monday, July 21.

“Great White Sex Battle”

“In a Shark Week first, male and female great white sharks compete in a series of challenges to determine which sex is the superior predator in the waters off the coast of New Zealand,” the press release says.

► 8pm ET/PT on Monday, July 21.

“Air Jaws: The Hunt for Colossus”

If you’re into shows and documentaries following researchers around as they chase a specific animal of mighty proportions and/or special skills, you should be interested in “Air Jaws: The Hunt for Colossus,” which, as you might expect, focuses on the search for a great white shark known as “Colossus” who has been missing for years.

► 9pm ET/PT on Sunday, July 20.

“Dancing With Sharks”

Hosted by Emmy winner (and former “Dancing With the Stars” host) Tom Bergeron, “Dancing With Sharks” is a brand-new Shark Week 2025 special that features “an unprecedented underwater dance competition between expert divers and their shark partners,” which is something we don’t see often.

► 8pm ET/PT on Sunday, July 20.

Discovery has adjusted recent Shark Weeks to a 20-hour format which might feel a bit small for some viewers, but there’s plenty of exciting and informative programming to watch every day of the event. We suggest carefully studying the full schedule — straight from Discovery — that we shared above, but we’ve picked out some potential standouts leading the pack that you should keep an eye on.

Shark Week 2025: Best shows to watch

What is Shark Week?

Shark Week 2025 is a week-long extravaganza of original content about, you guessed it, sharks.

Shark Week was originally created to spread awareness about conservation efforts and correct misconceptions about sharks in a post “Jaws“ world. Over time, however, it grew in popularity and became a recurring hit for Discovery. As a result, more entertainment-oriented and sometimes fictional programming took over.

By the 2010s, criticism of its most dramatic programs, many of which hurt the reputation of sharks, led to professionals in the science blogger community as well as scientists calling for a boycott of the network.

As accusations of junk science and fake stories piled up, Discovery vowed in 2015 to remove this type of programing from future Shark Week lineups. While dubious shows like “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives” are rarer nowadays, you can tell from the spicy titles that even the most scientifically accurate programs are designed to attract as many eyes as possible.

Shark Week also offers more than just shows. There’s now a podcast — captained by environmental journalist and comedian Kasha Patel — to listen to. Discovery is also highlighting plenty of educational shark-centric articles, facts, and videos to get people interested in these animals.