It’s time for another big summer of football. The 2026 World Cup is in full swing across the US, Canada and Mexico, and tonight brings one of the ties of the tournament so far. England face co-hosts Mexico at the Azteca, kicking off at 1am Irish time. That one is actually on BBC One, which is already sitting on your Irish Sky box, so you’re grand for tonight. But if England win, their quarter-final lands on ITV next Saturday, and ITV has a stack of knockout games between now and the final. If you’ve had enough of Didi Hamann or Kevin Doyle (sorry lads, I actually quite like you, honest), or you just want your fix of Roy Keane, you’ll need ITV tuned in. We’ve got you covered with this simple guide to adding ITV to Sky.
One important thing before we start. If you tuned ITV in for a previous tournament, your settings are almost certainly broken. ITV moved its channels to new frequencies in late 2024, so you’ll need to delete the old channels from your box and tune them in fresh using the settings below.
How to add ITV to Sky
ITV doesn’t come preloaded on your Sky box in Ireland. However, because Sky uses a satellite dish, you can manually add the channel in settings once you know the configuration. The settings are the same regardless of your box, but the menus differ slightly between Sky Q and older Sky+ HD boxes, so I’ve covered both.
These are the settings you’ll need either way.
- Frequency: 11.386
- Polarisation: V
- Symbol Rate: 27.5
- FEC: 2/3
- Standard: DVB-S2
- Modulation Scheme: 8PSK
Adding ITV on a Sky Q box
Most Irish homes are on Sky Q at this stage, and thankfully the process is fairly painless.
- Press “Home” on your Sky remote
- Scroll down to “Settings”
- Select “Manual tuning” and enter your PIN if prompted (0000 by default)
- Choose “Add channels” and enter the settings above
- Select “Find channels” and wait for the search to complete
- You’ll see a list of ITV channels. Highlight the ones you want and a tick will appear beside them
- Save your selection and you’re done
Adding ITV on a Sky+ HD box
Still rocking the older Sky+ HD box? Fair play. The steps are slightly different but the settings are identical.
- Turn on your Sky box
- Press “Services” on your Sky remote
- Select “Options” from the menu
- Scroll sideways to the “Add channels” tab and enter the settings above
- Press the yellow button to find channels
- Once the search completes, you’ll see a list of ITV options
- Highlight the ones you want and press the yellow button
- Press the green button to save your settings
- Finally, press the “Select” button
One caveat worth knowing. ITV now broadcasts in HD only on satellite, so if you’ve an ancient standard definition Sky box gathering dust in the spare room, it simply won’t pick these channels up. And if you’re on Sky Glass or Sky Stream, there’s no manual tuning at all because those run over your broadband rather than a dish. You’re stuck with the Sky lineup as it comes.
How to watch ITV on Sky
Now that you’ve added ITV to your Sky box, it’s time to tune into the football. Unfortunately, adding a channel manually doesn’t assign it a channel number. This means the only way to access ITV is back through the same menus.
On Sky Q, head back to “Settings” and then “Manual tuning”, and the channels you’ve saved will be sitting there waiting for you. On a Sky+ HD box, press “Services”, choose “Options”, scroll sideways to the “Other channels” tab, highlight ITV and press “Select”. Not exactly elegant, but it works, and it’s a lot cheaper than a trip to New Jersey for the final.
Why watch ITV coverage of the 2026 World Cup?
Two words. Roy Keane. The Corkman is once again the heavy hitter on ITV’s panel, broadcasting from the channel’s studios in Brooklyn for the tournament. Mark Pougatch, Laura Woods and Semra Hunter are leading the coverage, with Keane joined by Ian Wright, Gary Neville, Patrick Vieira, Karen Carney, Ange Postecoglou, Juan Mata, Emma Hayes, Duncan Ferguson, Jobi McAnuff and Bradley Wright-Phillips. That’s a seriously strong lineup, and Keane sharing a desk with old sparring partners Neville and Vieira is appointment television in itself.
As for the football, tonight’s England versus Mexico clash is on BBC One with coverage from 12.10am, so no tuning required there. But should England get past El Tri at a raucous Azteca, their quarter-final kicks off at 10pm Irish time on Saturday 11 July, live on ITV. The final on Sunday 19 July is on both BBC and ITV, as tradition demands, which means one last chance to pick Keano over the alternative. I know which button I’m pressing.
