TL;DR: Live stream the 2026 NRL for free on 9Now. Access this free streaming platform from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

There are few other sports that can compete with rugby league when it comes to physicality and skill. It’s clever handling and outrageous trickery combined with absolute brutality, and that’s why we all love it.

And if you’re looking for all of that and more on a weekly basis, you should check out the NRL. It’s an electric competition featuring some of the best players and teams in the world. We’re definitely not knocking what you get in the Northern Hemisphere, but there’s something special about the National Rugby League. It feels like something wild happens every week.

If you want to watch the 2026 NRL for free from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.

What is the NRL?

The National Rugby League (NRL) is a professional rugby league competition in Australasia, including clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, and New Zealand.

Each team plays 24 matches in the regular season, with the first-placed team at the end awarded the minor premiership. This is followed by a finals series contested between the eight highest-placed teams from the regular season, culminating in the NRL Grand Final.

The defending champions are the Brisbane Broncos.

When is the 2026 NRL?

The 2026 NRL season is the 119th edition of professional rugby league in Australia and the 29th season run by the National Rugby League. This season runs from Feb. 28 to Sept. 5.

How to watch the 2026 NRL for free

Select fixtures from the 2026 NRL season are available to live stream for free on 9Now.

9Now is geo-restricted to Australia, but anyone can access this free streaming platform with a VPN. These tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in Australia, meaning you can unblock free live streams of the NRL from anywhere in the world.

Live stream the 2026 NRL from anywhere in the world by following these simple steps:

1. Subscribe to a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in Australia

4. Visit 9Now

5. Live stream the 2026 NRL for free from anywhere in the world

The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but most do offer free-trials or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can watch the 2026 NRL without actually spending anything. This clearly isn’t a long-term solution, but it does give you enough time to stream select NRL fixtures before recovering your investment.

If you want to retain permanent access to free streaming sites from around the world, you will need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for live streaming sport is on sale for a limited time.

What is the best VPN for 9Now?

ExpressVPN is the best service for bypassing geo-restrictions to stream live sport on 9Now, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries including Australia

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is always secure

• Fast connection speeds

• Up to 10 simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee

A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $68.40 and includes an extra four months for free — 81% off for a limited time. This plan includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.99 (with money-back guarantee).

Live stream the 2026 NRL for free with ExpressVPN.

The explicit tube site Pornhub is now blocked in 23 U.S. states.

This is due to age-verification laws. These laws vary state by state, but typically require visitors of a site with over a third of explicit content to submit a government ID or other form of age authentication. Louisiana was the first state to enact such a bill a couple of years ago, and now others have followed suit. In June, the Supreme Court deemed Texas’s age-verification law constitutional, setting a precedent for such bills that come before and after.

The best VPNs for Pornhub:

---

Best for Porn

ExpressVPN

30-day money-back guarantee

---

Best for security

Proton VPN

30-day money-back guarantee

---

Best for beginners

TunnelBear

30-day money-back guarantee

According to one preliminary study, age verification won’t work to keep minors off porn sites. This is because of software like VPNs that allow someone to appear to be in a different location, and because of non-compliant websites. (The Florida attorney general is suing foreign-based porn sites for not instituting age verification.) Yet, these laws keep getting passed — and are encroaching on non-explicit websites as well, experts told Mashable.

While Pornhub is not blocked in Louisiana, it is blocked in these states, a Pornhub representative confirmed to Mashable:

• Alabama

• Arizona

• Arkansas

• Florida

• Georgia

• Idaho

• Indiana

• Kansas

• Kentucky

• Mississippi

• Missouri

• Montana

• Nebraska

• North Carolina

• North Dakota

• Oklahoma

• South Carolina

• South Dakota

• Tennessee

• Texas

• Utah

• Virginia

• Wyoming

Pornhub isn’t blocked in Ohio despite the state’s age-verification law, due to a clause stating that establishing age verification methods doesn’t apply to a provider of an interactive computer service (Aylo considers itself one).

In Louisiana, where users must submit ID to view Pornhub, the site has seen traffic decline by around 80 percent, Aylo (Pornhub’s parent company) told Mashable.

“These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children,” Aylo stated when asked for comment by Mashable back in January.

In a statement to Mashable, Aylo continued:

First, to be clear, Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.

Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.

Industry experts say that, in addition to not working for their intended purpose, age verification laws also raise concerns about privacy protection and safety since websites now have to host (even more of) people’s personal information. It will be harder to be anonymous online, which experts warn is dangerous to free speech. Adult industry experts Mashable spoke to in an explainer on age-verification laws advocated for device-level filters, as did Aylo in its statement.

Some in the adult industry worry about what Trump’s second presidential term will bring due to the conservative policy outline Project 2025 and its measures to ban porn. One of Project 2025’s authors, Russell Vought, was caught on a secret recording stating that age-verification laws are the “back door” to a broader porn ban.

Tax Day is nearly here, and with it comes tax scams. The U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee has issued a scam alert, with less than a week to go until the tax filing deadline. The warning is, unfortunately, needed, given that nearly one in four Americans have reported being victimized by tax season scams, according to March 2026 research by McAfee.

The alert, seen by Mashable, has other alarming findings: During fiscal year 2025, the IRS reported more than 600 social media impersonators of the agency. Spam blocker app Nomorobo found a 400 percent increase in fraudulent calls claiming to be from the IRS between Jan. and Feb. this year. Fake tax websites are also on the rise, with McAfee identifying 43 new ones every day between Sept. 2025 and Feb. 2026.

“Criminal enterprises are exploiting tax season to target Americans, including seniors,” said Joint Economic Committee Chairman and Arizona Rep. David Schweikert in a press release shared with Mashable. Adults 70 years old and older lost more money to fraud than younger adults, according to the median of data collected by the Federal Trade Commission in 2024: $1,650 for seniors 80 and older and $1,000 for 70-79 year-olds, compared to $189-691 for younger groups.

Schweikert is issuing the alert, along with Ranking Member New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, Vice Chairman Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, and Senior House Democrat Virginia Rep. Don Beyer.

“As Americans file their taxes this month, scammers are deploying an onslaught of attacks — often enhanced by artificial intelligence — designed to steal people’s money,” Hassan stated in the release. “I encourage all taxpayers to review the tips in this bipartisan scams alert so that they can stay vigilant and protect their identities and accounts.”

Here are tips the Joint Economic Committee lays out to avoid common IRS impersonation scams:

• Be wary of phone calls, emails, or social media outreach. The IRS will never message you on social media! The agency will almost always initiate contact by mail, according to the committee.

• Watch out for urgent requests or threats. The IRS will never threaten to call law enforcement or request to see your driver’s license. On that note, the agency will never ask for payment via nontraditional methods such as gift cards.

• You can verify any communications with the IRS directly on the official IRS.gov website.

• You can share an IRS-issued identity protection PIN instead of your Social Security Number.

The committee also urges precaution when dealing with third-party tax services. Here are some tips for identifying non-IRS tax scams:

• Research firms by searching them on sites like the Better Business Bureau. If an offer seems too good to be true, it often is.

• Go to IRS.gov and verify the service’s Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). If the service doesn’t provide this, avoid it.

• Scammers may pretend to be legitimate third-party tax preparation companies or employees. Verify the provider by visiting the official website and calling the listed phone number.

If you believe you’re a victim of a tax scam, you can report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Have a story to share about a scam or security breach that impacted you? Tell us about it. Email [email protected] with the subject line “Safety Net” or use this form. Someone from Mashable will get in touch.