Between Feb 22–27, 2026, VPN connections from Costa Rica surged 237%, with ~89% routed to US servers. Unlike censorship-driven spikes, this surge coincided with Champions League knockout playoffs on Paramount+, the Winter Olympics on Peacock, and Concacaf matches, all geo-restricted. Google Trends rising queries show 46% were football-related.
Between February 22 and 27, 2026, VPN connections from Costa Rica surged 237% in just five days. Roughly 89% of all sessions were routed through US servers. Costa Rica has no history of internet shutdowns or platform bans, and unlike the censorship-driven spikes we documented in Gabon and Egypt, nothing was blocked here.
What happened instead was a rare collision of geo-restricted sporting events: Champions League knockout playoffs on Paramount+, the Winter Olympics closing ceremony on Peacock, Costa Rica's own domestic football "Clásico," and Concacaf Champions Cup fixtures involving two Costa Rican clubs. All of it fell within the same week.
Google Trends data from the same period shows that 46% of rising search queries in Costa Rica were football-related, which points to sports streaming geo-restrictions as the primary driver behind this adoption wave.
We analyzed aggregated, anonymous telemetry from the VPN Super app covering February 22–27, 2026 to understand the demand surge from Costa Rica.
App telemetry: We tracked hourly connection counts across 36 destination countries. This showed which server locations Costa Rican users selected, when they connected, and how patterns shifted day over day. All data was anonymous and grouped by country only. No personal details or browsing history were collected.
Google Trends analysis: We exported rising search queries from Costa Rica between February 20 and 27, then categorized them by topic. Of the 50 top rising queries, 46% were football-related. These included specific Champions League matchups, domestic league rivalries, and Concacaf fixtures.
Third-party context: Broadcast rights databases, platform availability pages, and news coverage were reviewed to confirm which services are geo-restricted in Costa Rica and which sporting events fell inside the spike window.
PRIVACY NOTE: VPN Super does not collect browsing history or identify which services users access after connecting. This analysis relies solely on aggregated connection counts and destination-country selections. No personal information was collected or analyzed.
VPN connections from Costa Rica grew sharply over a five-day window, with US servers handling nearly 9 out of every 10 connections. The growth compounded day after day. Each day's trough was higher than the previous day's peak, which points to cumulative word-of-mouth adoption rather than a one-off event.
Between February 22 and 27, Costa Rica saw an unusual pileup of high-interest sporting events. Most of them were tied to platforms that are fully or partially geo-restricted to US audiences. Here is what landed on the calendar.
The UEFA Champions League knockout phase playoffs reached their second legs on Tuesday, February 24, and Wednesday, February 25. CBS Sports holds exclusive US English-language UCL rights through 2030 under a $1.5 billion deal, and all eight second-leg matches streamed on Paramount+ in the United States.
Tuesday, Feb 24 second legs:
Wednesday, Feb 25 second legs:
Google Trends confirms that Costa Ricans were actively searching for these matchups. "Real madrid benfica" rose +60%, "atlético madrid club brujas" was up +50%, "inter bodø/glimt" jumped +90%, and broader terms like "champions league" (+40%) and "liga de campeones de la uefa" (+80%) all surged from inside Costa Rica during the same window.
The geo-restriction angle: Paramount+ does technically exist in Costa Rica, but the content library there is significantly smaller than the US version. Champions League streaming, the studio show UCL Today (with Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher), and the multi-match Golazo Show all require a US IP address. In Latin America, ESPN carries the Spanish-language UCL feed through Disney+ Premium and linear ESPN channels. But anyone in Costa Rica who wanted the English broadcast, the studio analysis, or a specific match that wasn't on the Latin American feed would have needed a US VPN connection to get it.
The week kicked off with Costa Rica's biggest domestic rivalry: Saprissa vs. Alajuelense on Saturday, February 21, in Jornada 8 of the Clausura 2026. Saprissa won 2–1 at the Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Aymá in front of a packed crowd. On Google Trends, "saprissa lda" surged +1,850% and "saprissa vs lda" climbed +800%.
This match aired locally on FUTV and TDMAX, so it didn't directly require a VPN. But the buzz around it primed the country's sports-watching population. By the time Champions League matches rolled around three days later on geo-restricted platforms, football attention in Costa Rica was already running hot.
Two Costa Rican clubs, LD Alajuelense and CS Cartaginés, qualified for the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup. Google Trends shows "whitecaps cartaginés" rising +40% from Costa Rica, reflecting interest in the Round One fixture between Vancouver Whitecaps FC and Cartaginés. In the US, Concacaf Champions Cup matches air on Paramount+ and CBS Sports Network. There is a real irony in Costa Rican fans needing a US VPN to watch their own national clubs compete in an international tournament.
The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics wrapped up on Sunday, February 22, with the Closing Ceremony broadcast from the historic Verona Arena. NBC aired it live at 2:30 PM ET (12:30 PM in Costa Rica), and a primetime replay ran at 9 PM ET. Peacock, which streamed the entire Olympics, is fully geo-restricted outside the United States.
The final day of competition also featured the USA vs. Canada men's hockey gold medal game at 8:10 AM ET. Google Trends picked up Costa Rican interest in Spanish: "patinaje libre individual femenino en las olimpiadas de invierno 2026" (women's figure skating) rose +350%, and "hockey sobre hielo en las olimpiadas de invierno 2026" (ice hockey) rose +30%. The Olympics signal was real but modest compared to football.
Here, the United States pulled in nearly 9 out of every 10 connections. That kind of concentration doesn't happen when people just want privacy. It happens when they want access to something specific that lives behind a US geo-fence.
The streaming landscape in Costa Rica backs this up. Several major US platforms are either fully unavailable or severely limited:
Costa Rica's digital infrastructure helps explain how the spike grew so fast. The country has 92.6% internet penetration across 4.78 million users, near-universal mobile coverage, and a bilingual population that regularly consumes English-language content. When a week's worth of compelling events all landed on US-only platforms at the same time, the conditions for rapid VPN adoption were already in place.
The correlation between this VPN spike, US server routing, prime-time peaks, and football-heavy Google Trends is strong. But there are hard limits to what the data can actually tell us.
We can't see which apps or websites users opened after connecting to a VPN server. Our telemetry records server destinations, not browsing activity. That's by design, and we're not going to speculate past it.
We don't know what the evening usage actually is. It could be live Champions League matches. It could be Paramount+ browsing, Peacock shows, social media, or something else entirely. The prime-time peak is consistent with streaming behavior, but we can't confirm that from our side.
The daily curve shape doesn't change on Champions League match days. This is probably the most interesting finding. February 24 (a UCL day) and February 26 (no UCL) look almost identical in terms of curve shape. That suggests football may have been the reason people first downloaded a VPN, but the nightly usage pattern that developed goes beyond just watching live matches.
We don't know exactly why the growth compounds day after day. It could be word of mouth, social media recommendations, or people discovering other geo-restricted content once they already have a VPN installed. We see the effect clearly. The mechanism behind it is harder to pin down.
The bottom line: Football appears to have been the catalyst that got people to try a VPN in the first place. The consistent, US-server-heavy evening usage that followed suggests they kept using it for broader streaming access. Our data supports that reading. It doesn't prove it.
Costa Rica is not a country you'd normally associate with VPN demand. It ranks consistently among the most digitally free nations in the Americas. There is no documented history of internet censorship or platform blocking. In 2010, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled that internet access is a fundamental right, making Costa Rica one of the first countries in the world to take that step.
That context makes the February 2026 spike a fundamentally different kind of story from the ones covered in our Gabon and Egypt articles. There is no government ban to get around. Instead, what this spike shows is that geo-restricted streaming content can be just as powerful a VPN adoption catalyst as outright censorship. And it affects a much larger global audience.
For context: Costa Rica held presidential elections on February 1, 2026. Populist conservative Laura Fernández won in the first round with about 49% of the vote. Press freedom concerns were raised during the outgoing Chaves administration, but there is no evidence linking the election to this VPN spike. The surge started three weeks after the vote, and its evening entertainment pattern is a poor fit for news-access or political-circumvention behavior.
If this is a sports-driven adoption wave, a few upcoming dates could keep it going or push it higher.
Champions League Round of 16: The draw took place on February 27. First legs are set for March 10–11 and second legs for March 17–18. All matches will air on Paramount+ in the US. If the knockout playoffs were the catalyst, the Round of 16 (with bigger clubs and higher stakes) could trigger another surge.
Concacaf Champions Cup Round of 16: LD Alajuelense has a home match scheduled for March 17. That creates another potential collision between Costa Rican domestic interest and US-broadcast geo-restrictions.
Sustained evening habits: The most telling signal will be whether the prime-time usage pattern holds in the days after the Champions League playoff window closed. If it does, that would confirm what the data already hints at: football was the door, and the full US streaming library is what people walked through.
If your streaming access changes based on where you are, you can download a VPN to route your connection through another country.
Step 1: Download
Step 2: Install & Open
Step 3: Connect to the United States
💡 Pro tip: Our 10Gbps servers (marked with ⚡) deliver fast enough speeds for live sport without buffering.
To analyze the Costa Rica VPN spike, a mix of firsthand data and independent third-party sources was used:
Internal data:
External data:
Privacy note: All app data was grouped at country level. No personally identifiable information (PII) was collected or analyzed. VPN Super does not log browsing history or identify which services users access after connecting.
