Belarus 5

What is Belarus 5?

Belarus 5 is a television channel of the Belarusian state broadcaster, Belteleradiocompany (BTRC). The President's official portal lists the company's television channels as “Belarus 1 main information channel; Belarus 2 educational and entertainment channel for the family; Belarus 3 social and cultural channel; Belarus 4 regional channel which airs in five regions of the country with the name of the region specified: Mogilev, Gomel, Vitebsk, Grodno, Brest; Belarus 5 sports channel; NTV-Belarus; Belarus 24 international satellite TV channel”.^[3]

The belarus.by portal, headed “Official Website of the Republic of Belarus”, states on a page dated 1 August 2026: “There are national TV broadcasters in Belarus: Belarus 1, Belarus 2 (youth audience), Belarus 3 (social and cultural content), Belarus 5 (sport), Second National TV Channel (ONT), Stolichnoye Televideniye (STV).”^[4]

The channel's website is sport5.by, which carries a live stream, a programme schedule, news, interviews and video.^[1]

What does Belarus 5 cover?

The published schedule for one day of the week of 21 September 2026 lists, among other items, “Хоккей. КХЛ. Амур (Хабаровск) – Северсталь (Череповец)” at 11:50; two games of the Belarusian hockey championship, “Шахтер (Солигорск) – ХК Могилев” at 17:50 and “Юность-Минск – Славутич (Смоленск)” at 20:10; a Spanish league game, “Атлетико (Мадрид) – Реал (Мадрид)”, at 09:50; and the final of a WTA tennis tournament in São Paulo at 07:00.^[2] Those are one day's listings.

The news on sport5.by between 23 and 25 September 2026 included an interview with Simanenka, headlined “Какие еще задачи ставить”, about the national team's ambitions in the UEFA Nations League; a report that Dinamo Minsk had again lost to Dinamo Moscow in the Kontinental Hockey League; the mass-start golds of the Smolsky pair at the national biathlon championship; the resignation of the coach of the football club Torpedo-BelAZ; and volleyball items on the clubs Minchanka and Iskra.^[1] Those are three days' headlines.

The President's portal records one piece of sport-related investment by the parent company: “In the run-up to the 2nd European Games in Minsk in 2019 the company purchased cutting-edge equipment, including four state-of-the-art outside broadcast vehicles.” The words are the portal's.^[3]

How large is Belarus 5's audience?

ЗАО «МедиаИзмеритель» (MediaIzmeritel) measures television audiences in Belarus and publishes weekly and monthly reports at mediameter.by. Its report for August 2026 covers the urban population aged 4 and over, “Городское население в возрасте 4 лет и старше”, and counts linear and time-shifted viewing for 1 to 31 August 2026.^[5]

In the report's table of average daily share, headed “ДИНАМИКА СРЕДНЕСУТОЧНОЙ ДОЛИ, Share%”, Belarus 5 has 1.44 per cent for August 2026, up from 0.83 per cent in July.^[5] That is one month's reading for the channel as a whole, not for any sport broadcast, and it measures urban viewers only.

No figure for visits to sport5.by from an audited web measurement was retrieved.

Since when has Belarus 5 existed?

No launch date for Belarus 5 was retrieved from the channel, its parent or a regulator.

The parent company is older. The State Media Monitor, published by the Media and Journalism Research Center, states in its entry dated August 2025: “Its roots stretch back to radio broadcasts that began in November 1925, while television followed in January 1956.”^[8] The same entry lists, among BTRC's television channels, “Belarus 5 (sports)”, and names a First News Channel launched in September 2024.^[8]

Why does Belarus 5 matter in Belarus's sport?

It is the channel that the belarus.by portal lists as the sport channel among the national TV broadcasters, and the President's portal describes it as the sports channel of Belteleradiocompany.^[4][3] Its schedule carries both the Belarusian hockey championship and the Kontinental Hockey League, in which Dinamo Minsk plays.^[2]

Ownership. The State Media Monitor classifies BTRC as “State-Controlled (SC)” and states: “Like most media outlets in Belarus, BTRC is state-owned and falls directly under the purview of the Office of the President, Alexander Lukashenko.” It adds: “BTRC is wholly financed through the state budget.”^[8] Those statements are from an entry dated August 2025.

The EBU decision. On 28 May 2021 the European Broadcasting Union announced: “At a meeting today the EBU Executive Board agreed to suspend Belarus Member BTRC.” It stated: “BTRC will have two weeks to respond, before suspension comes into effect.” Among its reasons it stated: “In recent weeks, we have been particularly alarmed by the broadcast of interviews apparently obtained under duress.”^[6] The EBU's members page, retrieved on 25 September 2026, states: “The EBU's Belarusian Member was suspended from the Union in May 2021.”^[7]

A monitoring body. Reporters Without Borders, in its 2026 entry, which ranks Belarus 165th of 180, states: “Only the state broadcaster BTRC continues to operate normally, pumping out the regime's propaganda.”^[9] That is RSF's characterisation.