Italy at a glance
- User fines
- Law 93/2023, in force 8 August 2023: €154 up to €5,000 for using pirate IPTV
- Enforcement
- May 2025: 2,282 subscribers fined after customer databases were seized
- Blocking
- Piracy Shield (AGCOM): ISPs block reported streams within 30 minutes
- VPN and DNS
- Blocking duties extended to VPN and public DNS providers; Cloudflare fined €14.2 million in January 2026
- TV licence
- Canone Rai, €90 a year per household with a TV, billed with electricity
- Time vs UK
- One hour ahead all year
Checked September 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.
Is IPTV legal in Italy?
IPTV itself is legal in Italy, and it’s how many Italians already receive licensed TV from their broadband provider or streaming services. What Italy has made unusually clear is the position of viewers of unlicensed services: using one is an offence that can be fined.
That makes Italy different from most of Europe, where enforcement has mainly targeted sellers. For the general checks that apply anywhere, see is IPTV legal?.
Law 93/2023: fines for users
Italy’s anti-piracy law, Law 93/2023, came into force on 8 August 2023. Among other things, it introduced administrative fines for people who use pirate services:
- fines start at €154, and
- rise to €5,000 for repeat offenders.
The law isn’t theoretical. In May 2025 the Guardia di Finanza, working under a protocol with the prosecutor’s office and AGCOM, announced fines for 2,282 subscribers of pirate IPTV services. Their details came from customer databases seized when a large IPTV operation in Lecce was dismantled the previous October, and included emails and other identifying information for current and past subscribers. The authorities said more investigations were under way.
The lesson is the same one UK viewers learned in 2025: when a pirate service is raided, its customer records are seized too.
Piracy Shield: blocking in 30 minutes
The same law created the legal basis for Piracy Shield, an online platform run under AGCOM, Italy’s communications regulator. It has operated since early 2024:
- Rights holders report IP addresses and domains streaming their content without permission, in real time.
- ISPs must block the reported addresses within 30 minutes, which is fast enough to cut a live match mid-game.
Later amendments extended these duties to VPN providers and public DNS services, and added the risk of prison for service providers that fail to report known piracy. In January 2026, AGCOM fined Cloudflare €14,247,698 for refusing to block through its public 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. Cloudflare said it would fight the fine.
For viewers, that means the usual workarounds, a VPN or a different DNS server, are themselves targets of the law, and none of them changes the fine for using a pirate service. See IPTV and VPNs and DNS and IPTV.
The canone Rai: Italy’s TV licence
Italy funds its public broadcaster partly through the canone Rai, a licence fee due from households that own a television set, whether or not they watch RAI. In 2026 it was €90 a year, charged in ten monthly instalments on the household’s electricity bill. It’s paid once per household, not per TV. Households without a TV can declare that to the tax agency to be exempt, and some people aged 75 and over on low incomes are exempt too.
Licensed ways to watch TV in Italy
| Option | What you get | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Digital terrestrial TV | National free channels through an aerial | No subscription |
| Free satellite | Free-to-air Italian channels via a dish | Useful where terrestrial reception is poor |
| Broadcaster streaming | RAI channels on RaiPlay, Mediaset channels on Mediaset Infinity | Free with ads; some paid content |
| Broadband and pay-TV services | Live channels, films, series and sport over your connection | Subscriptions, often bundled with broadband |
These apps run on the same devices people use for IPTV players. See our guides to Fire TV, Android TV and smart TVs from Samsung and LG.
UK TV in Italy
- BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Programmes downloaded in the UK can be watched abroad; live streaming can’t.
- Using a VPN to appear in the UK usually breaks UK services’ terms, and in Italy VPN providers themselves now have blocking duties.
- Time: Italy is one hour ahead of the UK all year. If UK guide listings are an hour out, set the guide offset with our EPG offset calculator.
Before you pay for any service
- In Italy the risk is personal: a cheap pirate subscription can lead to a fine of up to €5,000.
- Check who runs a service, with a company name, terms and a refund policy.
- Remember that customer lists get seized: paying by card or giving your email to a pirate seller leaves a record.
Watching Italian TV from the UK instead? See Italian TV in the UK.