Freely Channel List: Every Live Channel You Get in 2026

If you have bought a new TV recently, or you are thinking about cutting the aerial cable for good, the question that actually matters is a simple one: what can you watch? Freely is the free, aerial-free platform built by the UK’s main broadcasters, and its selling point is live TV over your broadband. The catch has always been the channel list. This is the full picture for 2026, including what is new, what still needs an aerial, and where the gaps are.

The short answer

Freely carries over 70 live channels according to Everyone TV, the broadcaster-owned company behind it. That figure comes with an asterisk worth understanding before you go any further.

There are two tiers. On broadband alone, with no aerial plugged in, you get roughly 50 live channels: the popular ones almost everyone actually watches. Connect an aerial to the same Freely TV and the full Freeview lineup slots in alongside the streamed channels, which is where the “over 70” total comes from. So the honest version is that Freely on its own gives you the channels you reach for most nights, and an aerial fills in the long tail.

For context on how fast this is moving, Freely went from the founding public-service channels at its April 2024 launch to more than 55 by spring 2025, past 70 by the end of that year, and it crossed one million weekly users over Christmas 2025. It is growing quickly, so treat any channel list, including this one, as a snapshot rather than gospel. The official channels page is the definitive source on any given day.

The full Freely channel list

Here is the current lineup, grouped by broadcaster. Channel numbers move around by region and by whether you have an aerial connected, so this covers the channels themselves rather than their exact slot in the guide.

BBC

Channel	What it is
BBC One	Main BBC channel, with your regional variant
BBC Two	Second BBC channel
BBC Three	Younger-skewing drama, comedy and documentary
BBC Four	Arts, music and archive
BBC News	Rolling UK and world news

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland you also get the nations channels, covered further down.

ITV

Channel	What it is
ITV1	Main ITV channel (STV in Scotland, UTV in Northern Ireland)
ITV2	Entertainment and reality
ITV3	Drama and classic series
ITV4	Sport, film and action
ITVBe	Reality and lifestyle

ITV has also added streaming-only pop-up channels through ITVX, including a dedicated The Chase channel and Saturday Night Every Night.

Channel 4

Channel	What it is
Channel 4	Main Channel 4
E4	Comedy, US imports and reality
More4	Documentary and lifestyle
Film4	Films
4seven	Channel 4’s most-talked-about shows

Channel 4 has also launched Freely and streaming exclusives such as 4Reality, 4Homes and 4Life, which you will not find on traditional Freeview or Freesat.

Channel 5

Channel	What it is
Channel 5	Main Channel 5
5USA	US drama and crime
5Star	Reality and entertainment
5Action	Action and film
5Select	Factual and lifestyle

Channel 5 added a long run of streaming spin-offs during 2025, leaning heavily on true crime, factual and its Milkshake children’s brand.

UKTV, entertainment and factual

Channel	What it is
U&Dave	Comedy and panel shows
U&Yesterday	History and documentary
U&Drama	Drama box sets
U&W	Lifestyle and reality
U&Eden	Nature and science
Blaze	History, action and factual
Talking Pictures TV	Classic and archive film
Legend	Genre film and cult TV
Sky Mix	Entertainment mix
Sky Arts	Arts and music
PBS America	US documentary

News

Channel	What it is
BBC News	UK and world news
Sky News	Rolling news
GB News	Opinion-led news and current affairs
CNN Headlines	Fast international news, added late 2025
TalkTV	Current affairs and debate

Shopping and specialist

Freely also carries a set of shopping and specialist channels, including QVC and jewellery channel Gemporia, plus regional Local TV. These are the sort of channels most people scroll past, but they are part of the count.

New Freely channels for 2026

Two waves of additions are worth calling out, because they change the mix rather than just padding the total.

The bigger one is Warner Bros. Discovery. Six of its channels are landing on Freely in early 2026: Quest, Quest Red, Food Network, DMAX, Really and TLC. The standout there is TLC, which becomes free to air for the first time, arriving on Freeview, Freesat and Freely together. If you have ever hit a paywall trying to watch TLC’s reality output, that changes in 2026.

Before that, in late 2025, Freely added a run of factual and news channels: CNN Headlines for quick international news, Blaze from Hearst, Bloomberg TV+ for business, and five AMC channels heavy on true crime and reality, including True Crime UK and Bloodline Detectives. None of these are prestige drama, but they are exactly the kind of always-on background channels that fill a Freeview-style lineup.

The direction of travel is clear. Everyone TV is signing content partners at a steady pace and openly frames Freely as the long-term successor to aerial TV. Expect the list to keep growing through the year.

What is not on Freely

This is the part where you need to be a little careful, because the “missing” list changes as fast as the additions do.

The structural point is the one from the short answer. Internet-only Freely is a subset of full Freeview. If you want the roughly 120 extra Freeview streaming and portal channels, you need an aerial plugged into your Freely TV, and they sit higher up the guide, past channel 552. Freely without an aerial is not trying to match Freeview channel for channel. It is trying to give you the channels you actually watch, over broadband, with a better guide on top.

The other clear absence is pay TV. Freely is free-to-air only, so Sky’s subscription channels and premium sport are not part of it. If your weekend revolves around live Premier League football, Freely is not a replacement on its own. Our guide to where to watch the Premier League covers the paid routes.

Beyond that, resist the urge to trust any hard “not on Freely” list you find, including one written today. Channels come and go, and the safest move is to check the official live list before you make a decision based on one specific channel.

Freely vs Freeview at a glance

If you are weighing Freely against the aerial you already have, the difference is less about the big channels and more about the long tail and the extras.

	Freely (broadband only)	Freeview (aerial)
Live channels	Around 50	Around 70, more on a smart TV
Aerial needed	No	Yes
Backwards guide	Yes, seven days	No
Restart live shows	Yes	No
Recording	No	Yes, with a PVR box
Where it works	Newer certified TVs only	Almost any TV with a tuner

The two are not really rivals, because a Freely TV can do both at once. Plug an aerial into a Freely set and you get the streamed channels and the full Freeview lineup in one guide, with the backwards scroll and restart layered on top. The choice only becomes either-or when your home has no usable aerial signal, which is the situation Freely was built for. Our Freeview vs Freely vs Freesat guide goes deeper if you are choosing between all three.

Regional and nations channels

Freely follows the Freeview regional model, so what you see depends on where you are.

In Scotland, ITV1 is replaced by STV, and you also get BBC Scotland and the Gaelic channel BBC Alba. In Wales, S4C has been part of Freely since launch, alongside the Welsh BBC variants. In Northern Ireland, ITV1 is replaced by UTV. BBC and ITV regional variations follow your setup in the same way they would on an aerial, so your local news is the correct one for your area.

How the Freely guide works

The channel list is only half the story. Freely’s guide is the reason a lot of people prefer it to a plain app grid, and it is worth understanding what you get.

The mini-guide pops up whenever you change channel, so you can browse what is live and what is on demand without leaving whatever you are watching. The guide also runs backwards. You can scroll back through seven days of programmes and jump straight into catch-up on iPlayer, ITVX and the rest, all from the same grid. If you land on a show that has already started, restart takes you back to the beginning. There is also a live pause of up to 15 minutes, handled in the cloud rather than on a hard drive, and a My List that saves up to 50 shows.

One thing the guide cannot do is record. There is no PVR function at all, to a drive or to the cloud. Restart and catch-up are meant to replace recording, and for most viewing they do. If you are the kind of household that records a season and watches it later, keep an aerial and a recorder box. There is more on the trade-offs in our Freely explainer.

Which TVs have Freely

Freely does not work on every set, and this trips people up. It only comes built into newer certified televisions. There is no app to download for an older smart TV, and anything sold online claiming to be a Freely app or APK is not the real thing.

The brands shipping Freely built in include Hisense, Panasonic, Bush, Toshiba, JVC, Sharp, Metz and TCL. Since late 2024, Freely is also integrated as the main guide on new Fire TV sets, including Amazon’s own Fire TVs and Fire TV OS models from partners.

The important caveat: Freely is built into Fire TV televisions, not Fire TV Sticks. If you were hoping to add Freely to the streaming stick you already own, that is not possible as things stand. For what you can do with a stick or an older TV instead, our guide to getting Freeview without an aerial walks through the free apps that cover most of the same channels.

What you need to watch Freely

Three things, and only three. You need a TV with Freely built in, since there is no app for older sets. You need a broadband connection, because every channel streams over the internet. Anything that comfortably handles iPlayer or Netflix without buffering will run Freely, and a wired connection helps if your Wi-Fi is weak in the room with the TV. And you need a TV Licence, the same as you would for any live TV in the UK, because Freely carries live broadcast channels.

That is the whole list. There is no set-top box to buy, no monthly bill, and no account to set up before you can watch. Turn on a Freely TV, connect it to your broadband, and the channels are there. If your broadband is the weak link, our notes on data usage and speeds for streaming explain how much headroom live channels actually need.

Is Freely worth it?

For a free service, the channel list is genuinely good, and it is getting better every few months. If you have reliable broadband and you want live UK telly without an aerial, Freely gives you the channels you reach for most nights in a guide that is nicer to use than a wall of separate apps. The 2026 additions, especially the Warner Bros. Discovery channels, close some of the gaps that made the early lineup feel thin.

It is not a total Freeview replacement on its own, and it is not for everyone. The internet-only list is smaller than full Freeview, there is no recording, and you can only get it on a newer TV. My honest take is the same as it was for the platform overall: Freely is a strong reason to choose it when you are already buying a new TV, and a weak reason to buy one just for the channel list. If you want to weigh it against the alternatives, our Freeview vs Freely vs Freesat comparison lays out which free route suits which home.