Did you know that 60% of Americans get daily news on digital devices while only 10% get it on print publications?

Likewise, 52% of users prefer getting news on the internet, while only 5% prefer print publications. 

So, if you want your news business to succeed, it’s high time you take it online. An easier and more effective way to do so is by using the WordPress theme.

Even the best names in this industry, like Variety, TechCrunch, Time, CBS New York, and The New York, use WordPress for their official websites. 

So why not you?

WordPress is easier to install and offers unlimited customization options. Also, you can add multiple functionalities and manage them efficiently.

Of course, premium news WordPress themes hold a better advantage compared to free options. However, for a startup news website, a free WordPress news theme is the way to go. 

But with so many options available, choosing the right theme can feel daunting. Therefore, we’ve compiled a list of the 30 best free WordPress news themes in the market, along with answers to the most pressing questions about news themes.

Before we dive in, let’s first explore the essential features you shouldn’t miss when choosing a WordPress news theme.

Things to Consider While Choosing a WordPress News Theme

There are many news themes available online. You might easily get overwhelmed with so many options. To avoid such a hassle, look for the following features when choosing a WordPress news theme:

SEO Optimized

For a news website, it is crucial that your site ranks higher than other news sites to gain maximum views and page conversions. For example, many sites can cover the same news story as you, especially breaking news. If your site is not above your competitors on search engines, you won’t have much traffic on your site to read the same news as in the higher ranking sites.

A theme with built-in SEO can help you achieve this. Choose themes with clean and semantic code that search engines understand.

Performance

Performance is a crucial factor in making or breaking a website. A study shows that just a one-second delay in the page loading results in an 11% loss of page views. This is a fact that you must consider first. 

Choose a theme with clean and optimized code for faster loading times and improved user experience. In addition, opt for themes that support caching to further enhance website speed.

Design and Customization

The next thing you should consider is the design. 

It is known that 38% of visitors immediately leave a website if they find the design and presentation unattractive. So, select a theme with an eye-catching design to showcase your content in a decorated style. Also, ensure that your content is not difficult to read.

A theme with attractive layouts, templates, sliders, and effects goes a long way for a news theme. 

Multimedia Content 

Apart from texts, a decent news website must have the right balance of images, videos, audio, and animations. Such multimedia makes your site much more interesting and engaging, and it also enhances user retention. So, I recommend selecting a theme that lets you add multimedia content.

Plugins Support 

Sometimes, the in-built features are not enough in news websites. In such cases, WordPress offers offers numerous plugins to add more features and functionality to your site. However, not all WordPress themes are compatible with all the plugins available. So, make sure your theme supports most of the popular plugins.

Social Media Integration

Social Media serves as an important platform to share news and media content. In fact, 53% of US adults say that they get news from social media. The same study marks Facebook as the dominant platform with 35% accountability, whereas YouTube and Twitter are runner-ups with 23% and 15%, respectively. 

So, always choose a theme that lets you link various social platforms to your website. Also, social media integration lets your viewers share your content on their profiles. This serves as an important tool to gain more traffic and increase your online visibility.

Multiple Call-to-Action Options 

What if you want your viewers to become subscribers to your news portal? What if you want them to read or go to a particular news section on your site? 

That’s where CTAs come into play. By adding multiple CTA buttons on your website, you can encourage your viewers to take specific action for your benefit. Also, adding multiple CTAs increases user engagement on your site, which is good for business.

Responsiveness

You want everything on your website to look flawless across all devices, from layouts and tables to headlines and your logo. Every element should fit perfectly without any distortion or missing components. A theme’s responsiveness guarantees this seamless experience.

With a responsive theme, your website automatically adapts to any device’s screen size and resolution, ensuring optimal content rendering without any issues.

In the following sections, I will showcase the 30 best News WordPress themes that meet these criteria so you can make an informed choice for your specific needs.

List of Best Free WordPress News Themes

Blossom Magazine

Blossom Magazine Theme

Blossom Magazine is a handy free WordPress theme for news websites. It features diverse layout options and amazing typography control to help you build a stunning website in no time. 

You can use the theme’s Elementor compatibility to design your website at ease. Similarly, Blossom Magazine supports Gutenberg Editor to let you manage different blocks of your site. 

Customization is super easy with Blossom Magazine as it includes a live theme customizer. You can choose from 1000+ Google fonts and unlimited colors to personalize your news site. 

Blossom Magazine boasts a mobile-friendly and 100% responsive design. Your users can enjoy your news content smoothly from all devices and screen sizes. Likewise, the SEO-ready build ensures higher ranks on search engines. 

You can use different theme sections like a newsletter section to boost leads on your site. Moreover, the WooCommerce compatibility feature allows you to set up an online store at ease.

Blossom Magazine is translation-ready and supports RTL scripts. With this, you can translate your website into multiple languages.

Unique Features of Blossom Magazine

● SEO Optimized and Responsive

● Elementor and Gutenberg Ready

● Unlimited Colors and 1000+ Google Fonts

● WooCommerce Compatibility

● Newsletter Section

● 22 Custom Widgets

● Translation Ready

● RTL Scripts Ready

Theme DetailsDemo

Elegant Pink

Elegant Pink WordPress Theme

If you’re looking to create a professional theme with modern features, and elegant design, look no further than the Elegant Pink theme. The theme is super responsive on any device and offers all the features you would need to create your news website.

Elegant Pink is incredibly lightweight and is optimized for speed and SEO to rank you higher on search engines. This will give you an edge over your competitors. 

You can showcase your content in the full-width layout or the sidebar layout. Either way, your page will look gorgeous. Further, the vibrant masonry design gives a neat and clean look to your website similar to that of Pinterest.

The slider section comes in handy to display your important and new posts and grab users’ attention instantly. Adding CTA links to these posts can help in conversion. You can adjust the number of slides, set the transition effect and speed. Likewise, the infinite scroll feature offers a better user experience when browsing news on your site.

In addition, social media integration, widget-ready, translation-ready, and expert support team make this theme a must-try free news theme. 

Unique Features of Elegant Pink

● Responsive

● SEO-friendly 

● Lightweight and Performance optimized 

● Slider Section 

● Vibrant Masonry Design

● Infinite Scroll 

● Translation Ready 

● Social Media Integration 

Active Installations: 1,000+

Ratings: 4.5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Vilva

Vilva WordPress Theme

Vilva is arguably one of the best free news WordPress themes. It is a highly customizable theme dedicated to news, magazines, fashion, beauty, travel, food, or sports websites. The theme brings elegant design and multiple personalization options to the table.

Its elegant design grabs your visitors on the go and keeps them engaged with your content.

Vilva packs five unique homepage sections and 22 custom widgets to make your website more functional. Its built-in layouts for headers, blogs, single posts, banners, and archives add much-needed elements to your site. The theme also lets you add a video or image to the slider banner. 

Further, you can change your entire website into any color, text, and typography. The theme is also optimized for Google AdSense and WooCommerce. This can help to increase your site’s revenue. Finally, this theme includes social media integration, a distinct Instagram section, and a newsletter section to generate more leads to your website. 

Unique Features of Vilva

● Responsive Design

● Cross-Browser Compatible 

● Multiple Colors and Typography Options 

● 900+ Google Fonts

● Optimized with Multiple Ad Spots

● Social Media Integration

● Five Homepage Sections

● 22 Custom Widgets

● Translation Ready 

Active Installation: 5,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Metro Magazine

Metro Magazine WordPress Theme

Metro Magazine is a lively news WordPress theme with unlimited personalization options and multiple user-friendly features. The theme makes a great choice for magazines, blogs, lifestyle, and similar niches. With the Metro Magazine theme, you can instantly build a decent news site without much effort.

The theme keeps your content engaging with eye-catching style, prebuilt layouts for the header and other sections. There are five powerful custom widgets in this theme — Recent Posts, Featured Posts, Popular Posts, and Social Links. You can tweak the color and typography of your website just the way you want. You also get over 600 Google Fonts bundled with this theme. 

Your site looks sharp on any device with the Metro Magazine, thanks to its responsive and retina-ready device. Moreover, you can also set any secondary language for your site. 

The theme is 100% SEO-friendly. Hence, it boosts your website ranking higher on SERPs. Moreover, it has eight social media buttons for each page to enhance your online presence. 

Finally, the WooCommerce support, one-click updates, extensive documentation, and quick support help you get the most out of this theme.

Unique Features of Metro Magazine

● Optimum Performance 

● Social Media Integration 

● Unlimited Colors 

● Custom Widgets and Custom CSS

● Translation Ready 

● WooCommerce Ready 

Active Installation: 1,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Numinous

Numinous WordPress Theme

Numinous is a responsive theme with a content-focused design, suitable for just about any website niche. The theme features a clean magazine-style layout that goes well with the news, magazine, food, and technology websites. 

The Numinous WordPress theme practices the best SEO so that your site effortlessly ranks higher on the search engines. It is child theme-ready and also offers various customization possibilities. 

For starters, this free theme includes the Featured Post to grab your reader’s attention instantly. The option to add images to this section also helps in user retention. Numinous allows you to set your content in either sidebar layout or full-width layout. Also, you have multiple custom widgets to make your site user-friendly and functional.  

This cleanly coded and lightweight theme does not fail to deliver smooth performance. It also focuses on lead generation with multiple CTAs and social media integration.

Finally, the advertisement widget on your header and footer helps you increase your website’s revenue.

Unique Features of Numinous

● Responsive Design

● Two Different Page Layouts 

● Multiple Colors and Typography

● Optimized Speed and SEO

● Featured Posts

● Social Media Integration 

● Widget Ready 

● Translation Ready 

Active Installation: 700+

Ratings: 4.5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Rara Magazine

Rara Magazine WordPress Theme

Rara Magazine is an attractive WordPress theme perfect for blogging, news, magazine, reviews, etc.  It is an engaging theme that lets you present content in an elegant and user-friendly layout. 

 The theme has a stunning mobile-friendly design optimized for all types of screens of mobiles, laptops, PC, and tablets. It is also an SEO-optimized theme, so your website will appear in higher ranks on search results pages. Your website will again load faster to help you keep your customers and improve engagement on the page. 

 With Rara magazine, you can easily customize your website to suit your brand. You can add social media links on your website for visitors to find you on social media. Besides, you can add widgets for emails, images, social media, etc., without compromising the design of your theme.

Unique Features of Rara Magazine

● Optimum Performance 

● Social Media Integration 

● Unlimited Colors 

● Custom Widgets and Custom CSS

● Translation Ready 

● One click Demo Import

Active Installation: 300+

Theme DetailsDemo

Ziri

Ziri Theme

Are you searching for a theme with exceptional speed for your news website? If yes, the Full Site Editing (FSE) theme, Ziri, is your perfect fit. The Ziri theme serves the website needs of corporates, marketing agencies, startups, life coaches, spas, portfolios, law firms, etc.

This theme boasts a perfect score on Google PageSpeed. As this theme is optimized for core web vitals, you can create a website that loads in a flash. Similarly, you can get over the worries of your website’s ranks in search engines. This theme is also SEO-optimized, so your website will improve its ranking in search engines.

You can add links to essential information or landing pages using an attractive Call To Action section. With this feature, you can guide visitors to the important pages on your website and boost engagement. And, it is a huge advantage of any news website.

Also, the Ziri theme has various options for customization. You can choose from 20 block patterns and different block and style variations to create a website that resonates with your branding. With FSE compatibility, you can design and customize the entire look of your website using blocks.

All in all, the Ziri theme is packed with features and customization options, allowing you to design a website of your choice without the need for any coding knowledge.

Key Takeaways
  • Core Web Vitals-Optimized for unparalleled speed
  • SEO-optimized for higher search engine rankings
  • Full Site Editing compatibility for flexible customization using blocks
  • 20 predefined block patterns
  • Five unique page templates
  • Style variations
  • Block variations
  • Translation ready
  • RTL Script ready
Theme DetailsDemo

Astra

Astra theme

Astra is an incredibly popular free WordPress theme with over 2.4 million users. It’s highly rated, with over 6,000 five-star reviews and is the most popular theme after the Twenty Twenty series that come with WordPress!

Astra would make an excellent news theme. It’s fast, flexible and very easy to customize. In addition, it’s fully compatible with the WordPress block editor and leading drag-and-drop page builders such as Elementor, Spectra and Beaver Builder.

It is also compatible with most WordPress plugins, can easily handle dynamic content, can be translated and scores well on any speed test you care to use. Moreover, there’s also a great support with automation tools like SureTriggers, SureCart and SureMembers too. So, when news moves fast, you need your website to move equally fast. That’s Astra!

Astra comes with over 240 Starter Templates, readymade templates you can install and use immediately. While there’s a mix of premium templates, more than half are available with the free version.

All can be customized in any way you like using intuitive tools and simple controls. You get complete control over color, typography, layout, header, footer and everything you see on the page.

Key Takeaways
  • Top marks on GTMetrix and Pagespeed Insights
  • Fully compatible with popular drag and drop page builders
  • Wide range of Starter Templates that can be imported in seconds
  • Compatible with WooCommerce, SureCart and other eCommerce plugins
  • Supports subscriptions and paywall content
  • Fully responsive
  • Translation-ready
Theme DetailsDemo

ColorMag

ColorMag Wordpress Theme

ColorMag delivers an unmatchable performance to promote user retention on your website. Blending this quality with eye-catching layouts and advanced features, ColorMag suits just about any website niche, especially magazines, newspapers, and other publishing businesses. 

You can test your creativity with multiple theme customization options such as multiple widgets, colors, and typography. You can even add your custom widgets apart from the ones available in the theme. 

ColorMag fully supports the drag-and-drop Elementor Page Builder. Thus, you can easily build your very own templates or customize your website. Likewise, this news theme is 100% responsive. So, you no longer need to bear the concern of your site’s appearance on various devices.

The theme generously offers a collection of more than 15 ready-to-use demo websites for creating your site in a matter of seconds. No hassle and no complaints! But in case you run into any problem, ColorMag offers a reliable support line to help you out.

Unique Features of ColorMag

● 15+ Demos with a One-Click Installer

● WooCommerce Compatible 

● Supports Popular Drag-and-Drop Page Builders 

● Advanced Customization Options

● Dedicated Support Line 

Active Installation: 100,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Newsup

Newsup WordPress Theme

Newsup is a flexible, fast, clean, and modern news WordPress theme. It is fully widgetized and feature-packed to help any level user manage content without any hassle. 

The live customizer works at your command to bring the necessary changes. Its homepage is loaded with highly functional sliders and widgets. You can choose between columns, tabs, lists, and double list templates to showcase your content. Likewise, you can set up your sidebar to the left, right, or even full-width. 

Newsup theme also offers built-in support for Elementor, WooCommerce, and Contact Form 7. Besides that, it also integrates Banner Featured Posts and Archive Layouts to help retain your audience.

Unique Features of Newsup

● Banner Featured Posts

● Live Customizer 

● Multiple Homepage Templates 

● Sidebar Widgets 

● WooCommerce Compatible

● Powered by Elementor

Active Installation: 20,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Blossom Pin

Blossom Pin WordPress Theme

Blossom Pin is one of the best options for websites related to news, journal, and blogging. It is fully responsive and SEO optimized.

The theme has a masonry layout for your content. This layout presents your content in an appealing fashion, similar to Pinterest. There are banner sliders with eight different layouts. Combining this feature with the promo boxes in the Featured Section can be useful in highlighting important news and stories. You can also add a video to the banner and engage your viewers. 

Blossom Pin has sufficient color options to decorate your website. You also get dedicated sections to add photos and social media profiles on the sidebar. Likewise, the Instagram and Newsletter sections are important tools for lead generation. To help you earn decent revenue, this theme features Adsense optimized spots and WooCommerce compatibility.

Unique Features of Blossom Pin

● Unlimited Color and Typography Options

● 600+ Google Fonts 

● Adsense Optimized Ad Spots

● Video Banner 

● Translation Ready 

● WooCommerce Compatible 

Active Installation: 3,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Blossom Floral

Blossom Floral Blogging WordPress Theme

Are you planning to kickstart a full-fledged news website without spending a single dime? If so, Blossom Floral is undoubtedly your best bet!

Packed with top-notch features and elegant design, this free theme fits seamlessly with all website niches. With full Elementor support, you can design multiple website elements and layouts using this theme in just a few clicks. In addition, you can further personalize your website as per your preference, thanks to the built-in Theme Options Panel.

To highlight the latest news and essential pages, Blossom Floral includes unlimited featured boxes. Likewise, this free theme comes with a distinct newsletter section which comes in handy specifically if you want to grow your email list.

Blossom Flora is a mobile-first and ultra-responsive WordPress theme. Hence, it makes your website seamlessly adapt to any screen size, resolution, and device. In addition, this free theme supports all the popular web browsers, including Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Optimized for Schema Markups and SEO, Blossom Floral is rigorously crafted to help your website reserve the top spot on Google and other search engine platforms. With this, you have a much better chance to grow organic traffic to your news website.

Unique Features of Blossom Floral
  • Compatible with Elementor
  • WooCommerce Shop Support
  • 22 Custom Widgets
  • 1000+ Google Fonts 
  • Multiple Color Options
  • Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Design
  • Newsletter Section
  • Appealing Instagram Section
  • Translation and RTL Ready
Theme DetailsDemo

NewsMag Lite

NewsMag Lite WordPress Theme

NewsMag Lite has everything you need to set up a professional website for newspapers, magazines, and blogging sites. Its responsive slider highlights your content for better conversions. You can also add images and videos here to elevate the browsing experience.

NewsMag Lite comes with four stylish blog layouts where you can drag and drop your news articles to publish them. Likewise, the featured post banner can be used for adding CTAs or recent news.

NewsMag Lite revolves around three paradigms — clean coding, simple user interface, and beautiful design. Furthermore, this free WordPress news theme is SEO-friendly and translation-ready.

Unique Features of NewsMag Lite

● Responsive Slider 

● Video and Image Options 

● Widgetized Sidebar 

● Featured Post Banner 

● Lightweight and Fast

● Coded with Best SEO Approaches

● Translation Ready

Active Installation: 20,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Hueman

Hueman WordPress Theme

Hueman is one of the most popular news themes on the market. Its installation rate speaks for itself! The reason being its exceptional performance and cutting-edge features. Although free, this theme well-adapts to the needs of personal blogs, news, magazines, or small businesses. 

The built-in live customizer opens endless customization possibilities with a real-time preview on the front end. You can set each page with different styles, layouts, fonts, colors, and more. You get unlimited widget areas and ten unique post formats to enhance the appearance of your website. 

Hueman’s intuitive design is a treat for all eyes. Rarely seen in free themes, you can toggle two sidebars on any corner of your page with this theme.

You will also appreciate the featured story feature at the top. This serves as an important section to add stagnant story images. Finally, this free theme allows you to display the advertisements to the header or footer section to boost your revenue. 

Unique Features of Hueman

● Unlimited Widget Sidebars 

● Header and Footer Ad Widget

● Unique Customization Options

● Built-in Live Customizer

● Integrated Shared Counts 

● Featured Story or Slider

Active Installation: 30,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

News Portal

News Portal WordPress Theme

News Portal is a creative news theme that majorly focuses on performance, sharp looks, and user convenience. As the theme has a content-ready design, it is most suitable for newspapers, personal blogs, and magazines.

With News Portal, you can mold your news website just the way you want and match your brand personality without coding. The built-in customizer gives you complete control to adjust the page elements with a live preview. It also offers multiple colors, fonts, layouts, and sidebar settings to stylize your website. Further, the theme provides five different widgets to add much-needed functionalities to your site.

After making the changes, the theme renders a vibrant display of your site with razor-sharp images on every device. Likewise, its SEO-friendly coding works efficiently to place your site at higher ranks on SERPs.

Unique Features of News Portal

● Magazine-Dedicated Layouts

● Built-in Customizer

● Retina Ready

● 5+ Custom Widgets

● Multiple Color Schemes and Category

Active Installation: 5,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Cream Magazine

Cream Magazine WordPress Theme

Cream Magazine is a contemporary WordPress theme with a multipurpose build. The theme is lightweight and is fully responsive on all devices. The features and layout of the theme align seamlessly with the news and magazine websites.

The magazine-ready homepage is designed to construct a functional site at your command. You can set your page to either full-width or box layout. The theme includes multiple homepage sections where you can add your news and other content. It also features loads of handy sections, including headers, sliders, archives, and single posts to highlight breaking news or to add CTAs.

The six built-in widgets further add enticing features to your site to engage your readers. Moreover, the unique Lazy Load Image feature of this theme helps to make your website fun and interactive.

You can also translate your site into any language, thanks to the translation-ready features.

Unique Features of Cream Magazine

● Two Built-in Homepage Layouts

● Author Widget Included

● Lazy Load Image

● Related Posts Section

● Advertisement Area

● Multiple Page Layouts 

● Six Custom Widgets 

Active Installation: 8,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Poseidon

Poseidon WordPress Theme

Poseidon is a multipurpose WordPress theme that attends to the needs of a variety of website niches. Given its magazine-dedicated homepage, you can instantly set up a news or magazine website in seconds. This built-in homepage also includes custom widgets that make your website more functional and user-friendly. 

The theme has three dedicated magazine post widgets that allow you to add your content in a column, grid, or boxed layout. Its fullscreen image post slider is particularly useful for highlighting important posts such as breaking news. You can even add smooth animation effects for better visualization. 

There are many other powerful features in the theme, including custom menus, featured image header, threaded-comments, multiple post settings, and full-width templates. All these features make Poseidon a comprehensive package for news or other publication websites. 

Unique Features of Poseidon

● Fullscreen Image Post Slider 

● Magazine Homepage Demos 

● Three Post Widgets 

● Threaded Comments 

● Featured Image Header 

● Post Settings and Slideshows

Active Installation: 10,000+

Ratings: 4.5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

SuperMag

SuperMag WordPress Theme

SuperMag offers a simple yet elegant design to set up a professional news website. It also brings powerful web features such as customizable header, footer, inner sections, and sidebar. 

Its custom widgets are effective in managing posts and content. Likewise, you can display breaking news or trending stories using any of the five sidebar layouts. Your content will look marvelous in both the full-width or boxed layout. Further, adding a custom background makes your site visually attractive.

The drag-and-drop widgets are very practical and offer full control over the page elements such as colors, fonts, and sliders. You can also enable the search option to boost navigation and browsing experience. This feature provides convenience to your readers to browse through your articles using keywords.

Unique Features of SuperMag

● Powerful Search Option

● Custom CSS

● Breaking News Option

● Advertisement Ready 

● Five Custom Sidebars

● Multiple Layouts for Posts and Archives

Active Installation: 4,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

CoverNews

CoverNews WordPress Theme

CoverNews is a modern-edge WordPress theme that makes website building fun and easy. This free theme comes with several features and customization options that meet the needs of all website owners.

To begin, its header image is a noticeable section to add your news headlines. It undoubtedly grabs your viewers’ attention at first sight. Combining this feature with the featured post in the banner section can help in user retention. It also guides your visitors around your site.

There are several widgets in the theme, such as – post carousel, post grid, post image slider, single column, and social contact. You can add and adjust their settings from the built-in live customizer. The theme also packs multiple demos to promote an easier news website-building experience.

CoverNews theme is translation-ready and also responsive. 

Unique Features of CoverNews

● Multiple demos 

● Live customizer 

● Header image 

● Featured Post on the Banner

● 7+ available widgets 

Active Installation: 9,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Magbook

Magbook wordPress Theme

Magbook is a free, lightweight WordPress theme built for newspaper, magazine, and blog websites. Its flexible design and responsive features meet all your needs and expectations. 

There are multiple demos you can download and install within a few seconds, thanks to the one-click demo installer. Additionally, you can tweak the website layouts, colors, and other elements using the theme’s built-in customizer.

This free news theme features Smart Sticky Navigation that offers assistance to your visitors. You can even place your CTAs in this section for effective conversions or to guide the readers to a particular segment of your website. 

Magbook is fully compatible with several popular plugins, allowing you to add various functionalities to your pages. Likewise, the social media buttons help in expanding your online reach. Other perks of the theme are smooth performance and lifetime free updates.

Unique Features of Magbook

● Optimized for Search Engines

● Smart Sticky Navigation 

● WooCommerce Compatible

● Multiple Demo Layouts 

● Unlimited Color Option 

Active Installation: 4,000+

Ratings: 4.5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Newsphere

Newsphere WordPress Theme

Newsphere is a feature-rich theme specifically designed for news, blogs, and magazine websites. This responsive theme offers high customizability along with powerful features to help you kickstart a fully functional media website. 

This free WordPress news theme features multiple sections on the homepage. It includes banner sections and featured posts to showcase your content. Furthermore, you can add slideshows, custom backgrounds, post-image sliders, and so on to make your website more interactive. 

This theme even allows you to toggle the comments count, minutes read, and social sharing. Besides that, Newsphere is also a widget-ready theme. Hence, you can take advantage of several custom widgets to make your website more functional.

Unique Features of Newsphere

● Banner Section 

● Comment Count Toggle 

● Minutes Read Toggle 

● Custom Background 

● 8+ Custom Widgets

Active Installation: 3,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Viral

Viral WordPress Theme

If you want to boost the online presence of your news portal, the Viral WordPress theme is a great option. The theme offers eye-catching layouts and user-friendly navigation for a better experience on your site. Because of this, Viral fits almost all media website niches, including news, magazines, blogs, and editorial websites. 

Using its six unique demo templates, you can get your website up and ready in just a few minutes. You can import and install these demos with a single click on the mouse. 

The theme includes both WordPress Customizer and Elementor Page Builder to make customization a breeze. Moreover, you get more than 10 unique customizer blocks and over 20 drag-and-drop Elementor blocks to add more elements to your website. 

It offers several layouts, colors, and backgrounds for your pages. You are also free to add your custom design. The Hide/Show option is useful in highlighting certain news sections, for example, your latest article or breaking news.

Viral is fully responsive and renders all the elements of your website in high pixels across multiple browsing devices. Additionally, this free WordPress news theme is fully compatible with the WooCommerce plugin.

Unique Features of Viral

● Six Different Demos

● 20+ Elementor Widgets 

● 10+ Blocks for Theme Customizer

● Four Magazine-Specialized Widgets 

● Image Banner Ads

Active Installation: 2,000+

Ratings: 4.5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

ColorNews

Colornews Wordpress Theme

The clean and beautiful templates of the ColorNews WordPress theme look flawless for a news website. Moreover, its well-organized style gives a traditional newspaper look to your news site.

The theme has a full-width slider that allows you to add content in style. This free WordPress news theme supports multiple page builders, including Gutenberg, Elementor, SiteOrigin, Beaver Builder, and Brizy to provide a simple and straightforward customization experience. 

Besides that, it also features the Live Customizer that allows you to tweak all the elements of your news website and preview the changes in real-time. ColorNews features a few amazing features, including XML sample content, WooCommerce support, Google font selector, and multiple color options.

Unique Features of ColorNews

● Full-Width Slider 

● Multiple Page Builder Integration

● WordPress Live Customizer

● WooCommerce Support

● Demo Content

Multiple Color Options

Active Installation: 4,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

FreeNews

FreeNews WordPress Theme

FreeNews is a news-ready theme with tons of customization options and modern-day features. The free WordPress theme is ideal for all kinds of publication websites such as newspapers, review sites, magazines, and blogs.

Using FreeNews’ responsive slider, you can highlight the breaking news and trending stories on your website. You can also display your content with images as this theme comes with an interactive banner section. 

With the ultra-responsive design, FreeNews makes your website looks great on all devices. It also includes cross-browser compatibility that supports all popular web browsers, including Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc. 

The theme is also SEO-friendly and supports RTL scripts.

Unique Features of FreeNews

● Image Banner 

● 7 Social Icons

● 6 Sidebar Options

● Responsive Sliders 

● RTL Scripts

Active Installation: 1,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Dynamic News Lite

Dynamic News Lite WordPress Theme

Make your site versatile and unique with the Dynamic News Lite WordPress theme. It is super responsive and has advanced options for personalization. Further, the featured post slider serves as an important section to hold your breaking news and trending stories.

The homepage template is dedicated to news and magazine sites. So, it will be easier to set up your site on the go. There are also options to adjust colors, headers, layouts, sliders, and post settings. 

Other powerful features of this free WordPress news theme include the Header Search Form, social integration, multiple sidebar layouts, and a comment section.

Unique Features of Dynamic News Lite 

● Featured Posts Slider 

● Multiple Homepage Templates

● HTML5 and CSS3

● Built-in Theme Customizer 

● Custom Background and Custom Menu

● Header Search Form

● Submission Form

Active Installation: 4,000+

Ratings: 4.5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Mission News

Mission News WordPress Theme

Mission News is a minimalist theme with a simple design. Its clean and elegant layouts make your content pop up and grab your user’s attention. The responsive design and premium quality build add much-needed credibility to your site. 

Mission News molds its appearance after a classic newspaper with a black and white template, sticky post, and featured image. Also, you can adjust all the elements of your website using the popular Gutenberg Editor or Elementor Page Builder. 

Other noteworthy features of this free WordPress news theme are threaded comments, blog section, custom menu, and sidebars.

Unique Features of Mission News 

● Classic Newspaper Style 

● Sticky Post 

● Featured Image 

● Threaded Image 

● Support for Gutenberg and Elementor Page Builder 

Active Installation: 3,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Newsium

Newsium WordPress Theme

Newsium is a responsive theme best known for news and blogging niches. The WP Live Customizer feature makes it effortless to customize your website just the way you want. It comes with multiple widgets to make your news website more functional. 

You can set your custom background, custom header, custom menu, and custom color. The featured images and blog editor section comes in handy to highlight your content. You can set your page to both full-width and grid layout. 

Some other notable features are sidebar options, post formats, sticky posts, threaded comments, and RTL support.

Unique Features of Newsium

● WordPress Live Customizer

● PreLoader Option

● Sticky Header Toggle

● Logo and Title Customization

● 3 Color Options

● Custom Menu and Background

● 8+ Custom Widgets Available

Active Installation: 1,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

WP Magazine

WP Magazine WordPress Theme

If you want a website that is effortless to manage and is brimming with advanced features, WP Magazine can help you out. The theme minutely focuses on highly readable content. Thus, it makes an excellent companion for news, magazines, writers, and blog websites.

There are several layouts, sliders, headers, and footers where you can add your stories. The feature posts and category sections are particularly designed to help you highlight trending stories or breaking news. The built-in drag-and-drop feature makes it super easy to build and manage your content. Likewise, you can even toggle which posts to show and which to hide. 

The theme also comes with a demo installer, extensive documentation, and reliable support.

Unique Features of WP Magazine

● GPL License

● Drag/Drop and Show/Hide Feature

● One-Click Demo Installer

● Multiple Page Layouts 

● Easy Customization

Active Installation: 1,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Editorial

Editorial WordPress theme

Editorial is a fully widgetized theme with extensive features to set up a decent news website. The built-in live customizer is an efficient feature to customize your theme the way you want. There are more than six widgets dedicated to setting up a magazine or news homepage in a few clicks. 

The theme has several customization options, including multiple color categories, sidebar layouts, and a handful of custom widgets. Rest assured, you will find the Editorial theme much enjoyable as you go on using it. 

Unique Features of Editorial 

● Widget Ready 

● Built-in Customizer 

● Custom Colors

● Full-Width Templates 

● Multiple Sidebar Layouts 

Active Installation: 1,000+

Ratings: 5 stars

Theme DetailsDemo

Which is the Best Free WordPress News Theme?

Based upon various criteria, such as content-focused design, styling options, adequate layouts, plugin compatibility, customization options, and user-friendly interface, Metro Magazine is the best option on the list. Bearing a similar scope, Elegant Pink is also one of the best free WordPress news themes on the market. Both these themes are exceptional when it comes to building a news website.

Likewise, the Vilva theme is the runner-up. It delivers swift performance with various widgets dedicated to news websites. Also, the theme is very easy to set up and use.

We also cannot ignore the ColorMag theme. The theme promotes user convenience with its multiple demo collections and supports the popular drag-and-drop page builders.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is a News WordPress theme?

News WordPress theme is an efficient tool to set up a website for news portals with ease. Such a theme has a minimal design and prioritizes content over design. However, it also offers sufficient options for customization to adjust the page and make your website visually appealing.

Q. Is WordPress good for news websites?

WordPress is free, easier to use, provides unlimited features, and has a wide dimension of scope. Thus, WordPress is not only a good option for news websites but is the best.

Most big names such as The NYT, CNN, Forbes, TechCrunch, BBC America, and Quartz use WordPress as their website CMS. 

Q. Can I use a newspaper WordPress theme on multiple sites?

Most premium newspaper themes come with a single-site license, meaning you can only use it on one website. This is the standard licensing practice for most themes.

However, some themes offer extended licenses, such as a multi-site or developer license, that allow you to use them on multiple websites. These licenses are typically more expensive than single-site licenses.

Q. Are newspaper WordPress themes fast?

The themes I have included are optimized for fast performance and have a minimal design. This ensures less load on your website, thus delivering faster speed.

Final Words

So, these were the 30 best free News WordPress themes to promote your news. All of these themes are effective for setting up a professional website. They seamlessly adapt to the needs of news websites with their content-ready design. Apart from a news website, you can also use it for other publication purposes, such as magazines, reviews, and blogging websites.

However, if you want to kickstart an online magazine to share the latest news and gossip, you should check out the best free magazine WordPress themes in 2024.

About the Author

Nabin Jaiswal

Nabin Jaiswal is the co-founder of CoachPodium, WP Delicious, and other WordPress products. With over six years of experience in WordPress, he is passionate about writing and sharing his insights with the community. Nabin is committed to contributing to the community through knowledge-sharing and innovation. He has also had the privilege of being a speaker at multiple WordCamps, sharing his expertise and experiences.

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