Apple Sports Adds Widgets, New Leagues, and Global Reach
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While the public release of iOS 26 is the big news this week, Apple isn’t leaving its standalone apps out of the party, and Apple Sports just got an especially big update that not only embraces the new Liquid Glass world of iOS 26 but also significantly expands its global reach.
When Apple launched Apple Sports two years ago, it was limited to the US, Canada, and the UK, although it supported English, French, and Spanish language content. Over the past year and a half, Apple has expanded its sports coverage to encompass nearly every league imaginable, from MLB, MLS, NBA, and NHL to NCAA basketball, Formula 1 racing, NASCAR, and tennis.
In July, it added Mexico, the first non-English-speaking country to come to the app, in time for fans to pick up the Apertura 2025 championship. Now, it’s taking its first step into a genuinely international rollout, with eight additional countries being added to the list.
Today, Apple announced that Apple Sports is now available for free in Austria, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, covering a good slice of the European Union. To coincide with that, league coverage is also expanding to encompass new European soccer competitions, including the 2. Bundesliga, Ligue 2, Segunda División, Serie B, and Primeira Liga.
In addition to transitioning the app into the Liquid Glass aesthetic, Apple is also bringing widgets for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. These expand on the Live Activities that came with its iOS 18 update a year ago to let fans keep a closer eye on their favorite teams and leagues, even when they’re not in the middle of a match.
Live Activities are designed to deliver real-time updates to the lock screen, and they’re very helpful while a game is in progress. However, until now, fans needed to open the Sports app to check in on things like overall team standings and schedules.
Widgets give fans the ability to customize their iPhone Home Screen with their favorite teams and leagues. Widgets can also be accessed on iPad and Mac, giving fans scores and schedules for their favorite leagues and teams on even more platforms.
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Users can add widgets for their favorite teams to see upcoming schedules and scores across multiple leagues, or choose a league view to keep up with everything that’s going on in a single league. Both widgets are available in medium and large sizes.
These widgets are also supported on the iPad and Mac, but with an interesting twist. While the iPad widgets might lead you to believe Apple has debuted an iPad version of Apple Sports, that’s actually not the case. Instead, you’ll need to install the iPhone version on the iPad, although the good news is that the new windowing system in iPadOS 26 makes running iPhone apps more tolerable.
Similarly, getting Apple Sports widgets on the Mac is done by adding the iPhone widget, using the capability introduced in macOS Sonoma two years ago.
Sadly, while iOS 26 brought Live Activities and Widgets to CarPlay, the new Apple Sports widgets aren’t available on your dashboard. Live Activities from Sports will appear in the new Live Activities pane in the bottom-right corner, below the Now Playing controls. However, you won’t be able to add any Apple Sports widgets, as they don’t currently exist for CarPlay.
To ensure developers wouldn’t have to build new widgets specifically for CarPlay, Apple extended the widgets used for the iPhone’s StandBy view onto the dashboard. However, for whatever reason, Apple hasn’t created a StandBy widget for Apple Sports.
Apple Sports 3.3 is available now as a free download from the App Store.
