Will Disney close all the UK linear kids channels?

Wouldn't surprise me if Disney+ explains these closures.

Though that won't happen in the UK for at least a year:
Which presumably means Sky Cinema Disney will survive until 2021.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50385260

Disney Channel and Disney Jr are also to leave Fetch as well as Foxtel in Australia. So Disney now operate no linear kids channels in Australia and will focus soley on Disney+. Its a sign of the times. Could other countries follow? Or why just Australia now? Its a bit weird how a fairly large country like Australia will have no Disney channels. Could the UK lose channels? Surely Disney will get rid of their deal with Sky for Sky Cinema Disney. They have not renewed deals recently in many countries like Germany and Australia. Why would the UK be any different? https://tvblackbox.com.au/page/2020/2/6/disney-quits-fetch-tv

Wowzers, there's a lot of questions in that paragraph.

I'd expect that deals with Sky and other providers will just lapse rather than be renewed in most cases. You may see new distribution deals for the app itself though.

Clearly Disney are thinking long term in a sense that Disney+ will be the ‘go to’ service over the linear channels, especially when a good chunk of your audience are young, tech savvy and take on demand over linear television. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility for the same to happen in the UK realistically. If Disney choose to close their channels then that’s up to them. There’s clearly a greater cost incentive for Disney to invest in Disney+ over linear TV.

If I was Sky I wouldn’t be too bothered as a good chunk of Disney kids programming is not available on catch up or demand right now anyway.

Disney XD and Disney Cinema (but Cinema was to be expected) both shutting down in France, on the 31st of March, one week after the launch Disney+

Germany (on Sky) and Italy already don't have Disney XD anymore, and Disney Channel Australia and DJ Australia are shutting down from Foxtel at 6:00am Eastern Australia time, and shutting down completely in April

There are also rumours that tell us popular Disney Channel and Disney Junior might be closing down completely in Italy at the end of March (so they're experimenting with the "Australian closures" even in Europe)

So, you can see, the Western European markets are going through major transformations, with Disney+. I wouldn't be surprised if Disney XD was to close down at the end of March in the UK too or some time after

You'd think actually an overlap of a year or so would be beneficial to Disney to promote the hell out of Disney+.

The closure of Disney’s linear channels appears to be a market by market approach.

They recently signed a deal with Viaplay which includes carriage of Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior - https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2020/02/17/nent-group-extends-disney-deal-for-viaplay-and-viasat/

They also signed a new carriage deal with Charter in the US which includes the linear Disney channels - https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/disney-plus-charter-carriage-deal-acc-1203302706/

So there’s nothing yet to suggest either way what Disney intend to do with their linear output on these shores - if they still make money on their UK portfolio, will they be in such a hurry? Sure we’ll find out soon enough

Out of interest are the Disney channels in the UK still completely ad free?

No. It changed about 5/6 years ago IIRC.

It was only relatively recently Disney Channel and Disney Junior went 24hrs. XD had been 24hrs since it launched and for a while was the only one out of the suite of channels that did so.

Sky Cinema Disney follows the Sky Cinema model of adverts (ie, none) but I can't remember if Cinemagic, the forerunner of this, was ad-free as well.

Was XD ever ad free? That channel was renamed from Jetix, which itself was originally Fox Kids, and I know they carried ads back then.

Sky Cinema do show adverts between films.