After months of campaigning, debates and build-up, the US presidential election is finally here. The votes are continuing to be counted across 50 states to determine who will be the President of the United States for the next four years – the defending Republican Donald Trump, or the challenging Democrat, Joe Biden.
If you’d like to tune in on the action for yourself here in the UK, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know.
It’s worth noting that due to the mass increase of postal votes this year, there is a major delay in the official results. We still may not know who the President is by today – it could take days or weeks due to some states being delayed by counting votes.
How to watch the US election on UK TV
As the election is going on for longer than expected, some of the dedicated election programmes are no longer airing. However, CNN International is still showing its Election Night in America coverage until 9pm GMT on Thursday, with real-time updates.
It’s worth noting that CNN is not available on all TV packages – consult your TV guide to see if its available. If its not, there are other options.
Whilst BBC One has now ended its dedicated programme, you can continue to learn regular updates from the BBC News Channel, as well as Sky News throughout today and tomorrow.
How to watch the US election online in the UK
If you need to stream the election, then there’s two major options to choose from. Firstly, there’s BBC iPlayer, which will allow you to stream the election on BBC News online. You’ll need an account with the website and be a valid TV licence holder.
You can also watch the election coverage live on CNN International – the livestream player is at the top of the page. For this website, you don’t need an account.
If you’re outside of the UK at the moment, you can still tune into both of these platforms through using a VPN such as NordVPN or ExpressVPN. VPNs reroute your IP address so you can browse the internet as if you’re from another country. For tuning into BBC iPlayer, you would connect to a UK server.
You can find more detailed instructions in our guide to watching BBC iPlayer from abroad. You can also use this method to tune into other popular British TV programmes such as The Great British Bake Off and EastEnders from other countries.
Note that you should still have a valid TV licence if you’re watching iPlayer, and that both of these methods are against both streaming platforms’ terms of service.
Author: Hannah Cowton, Senior Entertainment Writer
Hannah Cowton is a Senior Entertainment Writer at Tech Advisor and Macworld, working across entertainment, consumer technology and lifestyle. Her interests and specialities lie in streaming services, film and television reviews and rumours, gaming, wearables and smart home products. She's also the creator of The London Geek, a geek culture and lifestyle blog.