How to watch the U.S. presidential debates online

The 2016 presidential debates between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump will be, without a doubt, the easiest debates to watch online, ever.

If you plan on being anywhere near the internet during the three debates, you will likely stumble upon them without our help. The options this year are so vast, however, that you may not realize your social network du jour probably has its own livestream. Here’s our guide to following the debates online.

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When?

All of the debates start at 9 p.m. Eastern (6 p.m. Pacific) and last 90 minutes.

• Debate 1: Monday, September 26 at Hofstra University
• Vice Presidential Debate: Tuesday, October 4 at Longwood University
• Debate 2: Sunday, October 9 at Washington University
• Debate 3: Wednesday, October 19 at the University of Nevada

YouTube

NBC, PBS, Fox, Telemundo, the Washington Post, and Bloomberg are all streaming the debates live on YouTube, says Google.

Facebook

ABC will stream the debates on Facebook here.

Twitter

Twitter will stream every debate here — at debates.twitter.com — in partnership with Bloomberg.

Snapchat

Snapchat will stream clips of the debates inside its app, as an official partner of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Streaming boxes and consoles

• Apple TV: See above YouTube channels and the ABC News app. More options here.
• Roku: Via the ABC News, Bloomberg, and CBS apps. See Roku’s full guide here.
• Chromecast: See above YouTube channels.
• Xbox: See above YouTube channels and the ABC News app.
• PS4: See above YouTube channels.
• Amazon Fire TV: Via the Bloomberg app.
• Android TV: See above YouTube channels and the Bloomberg app.

Directly from news orgs

C-Span, ABC News, Yahoo, CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, and plenty more are streaming the events live directly on their respective sites.

Bing

Search “presidential debate video” on Bing and Microsoft’s search engine will offer you two streams: one from CBSN, and another from ABC News.

Virtual Reality

NBC and social virtual reality company AltspaceVR will stream the debates in VR for owners of HTC’s Vive, Facebook’s Oculus, and Samsung’s GearVR — and in a 2D mode for Windows PCs. You can download AltspaceVR’s apps here.

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Who’s debating?

For the moment, just Trump and Clinton (and their vice presidential nominees). The Commission on Presidential Debates has so far excluded Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein from the debates, based on their low national polling numbers.

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Corrected 8:16 p.m. PT: The first debate is on Sept. 26, not Sept. 28.

Updated Sept. 26 with additional links to streams