Anytime Fitness clubs across the UK and Ireland are adding Apple Fitness+ to membership at no extra cost, giving members a sizeable digital workout library alongside round-the-clock gym access.
The offer begins on 4 August 2026 and lasts for as long as the membership remains active — a neat attempt to make the gym follow members around, rather than sulk behind a turnstile.
Apple Fitness+ becomes part of the membership
The arrangement gives members access to thousands of workouts and meditations across 12 workout types, including Strength, HIIT, Yoga and Pilates. An iPhone is enough to get started; Apple Watch users can also see personalised, real-time workout metrics.
That matters because the modern gym membership is no longer confined to a building. Training now happens in spare rooms, hotel bedrooms, gardens, airport lounges and, occasionally, the actual gym.
By placing Apple Fitness+ inside its standard membership, Anytime Fitness is acknowledging a habit the industry has spent several years trying to understand: people want structure, but not necessarily a fixed address.
Sarah Mather, Head of Marketing at Anytime Fitness UK & Ireland, said: “Today’s members don’t think about fitness in one location. They move between the gym, home and travel, and they expect their membership to move with them.
Adding Apple Fitness+ to membership combines the motivation and guidance of Fitness+ with the support of our clubs, giving members even more ways to stay active and consistent.”
Why the timing is commercially significant
The launch lands in a buoyant UK fitness market. According to figures supplied from ukactive’s UK Health and Fitness Market Report 2026, gym memberships have reached a record 18% of the population. Annual visits rose by 10%, while sector revenue climbed to £6.5 billion.
Those numbers suggest that digital fitness has not killed the gym. It has simply made the old definition of a gym membership look rather narrow.
For operators, the contest is increasingly about usefulness beyond the club visit. A member who misses Tuesday’s session may still complete a 20-minute workout at home. That keeps the routine intact, gives the membership another purpose and may reduce the familiar January-to-March migration from enthusiasm to direct-debit resentment.
A hybrid fitness model, minus the extra bill
The strongest part of the offer is its simplicity. Existing members receive the Fitness+ subscription for the lifetime of an active Anytime Fitness membership, without an additional fee. Existing Fitness+ subscribers who take out a 13-month Anytime Fitness membership receive their first 30 days free.
There is no elaborate points scheme, no scavenger hunt through an app and no requirement to own a small command centre of connected equipment. Members need an iPhone; an Apple Watch adds live metrics but is not essential.
That lowers the barrier to use. It also gives Anytime Fitness a more credible answer to one of the industry’s awkward questions: why should a customer pay separately for a gym and a digital fitness service when both are meant to support the same goal?
The strategy behind the partnership
For Anytime Fitness, this is not merely a bundle. It is a positioning move.
Rich Peil, Director and Co-Founder, Anytime Fitness UK & Ireland and Australia, added: “We’re investing in a model that combines outstanding physical clubs with digital experiences members value to deliver the best member experience in the market. Providing our members with access to the expansive library of Apple Fitness+ content helps them pursue their goals wherever they choose to work out while complementing the experience they already enjoy in our clubs.”
The phrase “wherever they choose” is doing the heavy lifting. Convenience has long been the Anytime Fitness proposition, built around 24/7 access. Apple Fitness+ extends that logic beyond opening hours and physical locations, turning convenience from a keycard benefit into a broader training model.
The partnership also gives the chain a recognisable premium service without asking members to assemble another subscription. For Apple, it places Fitness+ in front of a large pool of gym users who may be more likely than the average iPhone owner to use it with some regularity. Partnerships are rarely acts of charity; the useful ones simply arrange the self-interest tidily.
Expansion adds scale to the digital offer
The announcement coincides with Anytime Fitness opening its 6,000th club worldwide. The UK and Ireland operation currently has 180 clubs and is targeting 500 within five years through a mix of franchise growth and corporate-owned sites.
That expansion target gives the Fitness+ offer added strategic weight. A digital service can provide a more consistent layer across a growing estate, even when club size, location and local management differ. The physical experience may vary between a suburban retail park and a city-centre site; the workout on the phone does not.
The offer has already been launched in Australia, Canada, Japan and the US, with the UK and Ireland now joining that list.
Why members may actually use it
Free additions to memberships can become ornamental rather quickly. The test will be whether members see Fitness+ as part of their routine rather than another icon slowly gathering dust on the home screen.
Here, the odds are respectable. The service covers short sessions, guided strength work, mobility, yoga, Pilates, HIIT and meditation, making it useful on days when a club visit is impractical or appetite for a full session has gone missing. It also gives members a route into unfamiliar types of training without requiring them to wander into a studio class wearing the expression of someone who has taken a wrong turn.
Anytime Fitness is betting that consistency is easier when the membership bends around real life. Sensible enough.
Fitness rarely fails because people lack one more ambitious plan; it usually fails because Tuesday became inconvenient.
