We’ve curated the list of the best free WordPress themes for news and magazine sites.
These free WordPress magazine themes feature:
- Responsive Design
- Blazing Fast Speed
- Customizable Layouts
- Google AdSense Optimized
- Social Media Integration and more
You can use any one of the following free magazine themes to launch a modern, creative, and responsive news and magazine site.
So, let’s dive into the theme details without further ado.
No time to dive into the theme details? Check out our top picks.
Top Picks
1st
ColorMag
Features:
Ready-to-Use Templates
Google AdSense Optimized
Highly Widgetized
Page Builder Support
FREE
2nd
Zakra
Features:
Lightweight Framework
Live Customizer
User-friendly Interface
Custom CSS
FREE
3rd
Newsup
Features:
Clean and Modern Design
Show Related Posts
Footer Widgets
Archive Layout
FREE
25 Best Free WordPress Magazine Themes and Templates for 2024
Though you can find many options for free magazine themes, not every theme is good for your site.
We understand that it’s a daunting task to find free WordPress themes that are equally powerful and meticulously designed for a successful online magazine website.
And that’s precisely why we’ve carefully handpicked the following themes for your ease.
Now, let’s explore the best free WordPress magazine templates perfect for creating unique websites for news, online magazines, editorials, and more.
1. ColorMag
ColorMag is one of the most popular news and magazine themes with powerful features. It offers several magazine and news-related starter demos to eliminate the need to create a site from scratch. Further, it’s fully compatible with major page builder plugins like Elementor. So, using this theme, you can make any layout imaginable.
It also offers boxed and wide container layouts and four different sidebar layouts. The theme features several widgets to place advertisements to enable you to monetize your magazine site. It also comes with a widget for the highlighted post.
Key Features
- Styling and background options
- News ticker
- Display related posts
- Google AdSense optimized
- Social icons integration
2. Zakra
Zakra is a meticulously designed theme to ensure a functional and magnificent news and magazine website. The theme’s live customizer option allows you to customize your site in real-time. It also offers customizable layouts for container, sidebar, and footer widgets.
Zakra also offers global styling options such as base colors, links & button styling. Moreover, it provides advanced typography for the better readability. Most importantly, this Google AdSense-optimized theme also lets you to monetize your site via advertisements.
Key Features
- Lightweight framework to increase site speed
- Boxed and wide layout
- Unlimited header styles
- Highly widgetized theme
- Custom CSS for further customization
3. Newsup
Fantastic and modern-looking, Newsup is the top free WordPress theme for the magazine website. The theme is highly widgetized so, it’s easy to manage all your content using the widgets it provides.
Similarly, you can also create, manage, and modify all your content with the live customizer option. You can also choose from multiple layout options like left sidebar, right sidebar, and full width. To add more functions, the theme is also compatible with the popular WordPress plugins.
Key Features
- Option to view related post
- Multiple color options
- Custom widgets
- Page builders compatible
- RTL (Right-to-Left language) and translation ready
4. Astra
Astra is a popular WordPress theme with high customizability. Thus, it enables you to customize every aspect of your website. For instance, you can easily change the layout settings, header options, color and typography, and more. Further, it also offers an intuitive drag-and-drop Header Footer builder for styling your site as per your need.
Astra, designed with speed in mind, ensures lightning-fast loading times for your magazine website and a flawless browsing experience. Moreover, the theme ensures a clutter-free reading experience for your users with its neat and clean design.
Key Features
- Lightweight theme (less than 50kb on frontend)
- Integrated with schema.org (Improves SEO)
- Site layouts
- SEO plugins compatible with ranking higher
- In-depth documentation
5. OceanWP
OceanWP is a powerful WordPress theme offering customizable header and footer layouts for attractive header and footer styles. Similarly, it also provides several blog layouts to display your magazine content how you want.
Furthermore, the mega menu option of OceanWP also makes it easy for users to navigate through your publishing site. The best part is that OceanWP is a multipurpose WordPress theme. Thus, apart from online magazine sites, you can also use this theme to create various other websites.
Key Features
- Multiple logo options
- Customizable header menu link
- Google Fonts and typography
- Blog pagination
- Multiple mobile menu styling options
6. Kadence
Kadence is one of the popular free WordPress themes for building gorgeous magazine websites. The theme seamlessly integrates with drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder to design stunning pages for your magazine sites without breaking a sweat.
Additionally, Kadence offers limitless possibilities to make your site’s header attractive using its drag-and-drop header builder. You can also choose from wide, narrow, or sidebar layouts with a click of a button from the theme customizer.
Key Features
- Professional color palettes
- Header and Footer builder
- Custom layouts
- Sticky header
- Fully responsive design
7. MH Magazine lite
MH Magazine lite is a free WordPress theme perfect for building awesome news and magazine websites. It’s a highly widgetized theme that enables the addition of standard WordPress widgets and advertisements.
This theme is also translation-ready, enabling you to translate your website into any language. Moreover, MH Magazine Lite is fast, secure, SEO-friendly, and fully responsive, ensuring your magazine site looks fantastic on any device.
Key Features
- Built using valid HTML5 and CSS3
- Cross-browser compatible
- 4 custom widgets
- Highly customizable theme
- Free theme updates
8. Neve
Neve is a spectacular free news WordPress theme with a sleek design and easy setup process. This flexible theme gives you complete freedom to customize your news and magazine site to your preference. You can easily choose the layouts, colors, typography, and more with this theme.
Besides, the theme is fully AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) optimized and translation-ready. Neve is also optimized for speed and SEO to ensure that your magazine site ranks higher in Google search results.
Key Features
- Lightweight and beautiful theme
- Ready-to-use starter sites
- Powerful theme options
- Supports popular page builders
- Reliable updates and support
9. GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a clean, and modern design WordPress theme available for free download. The best part of using GeneratePress is its seamless integration with a free Gutenberg blocks plugin, GenerateBlocks. This integration lets you build every aspect of the magazine site efficiently without any coding knowledge.
Additionally, the theme works great with page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder. Other major features of GeneratePress include multiple sidebar layouts, sticky menus, color controls, and more.
Key Features
- Dropdown menus
- Widget areas
- 5 navigation location
- Compatible with popular plugins for enhanced functionality
- Fast and flexible support
10. Ashe
Ashe is a perfect WordPress theme for building an appealing magazine website that’s one of a kind. The top-notch features include multiple sidebar options, image and text logos, header background, and more.
Further, it also features a stunning featured slider that allows you to display the 5 most recent blog posts, news, and so on in the header area. Apart from that, it seamlessly integrates with page builders to create any website layout possible.
Key Features
- Built-in pre-defined styles
- Haeder image
- Responsive and retina-ready
- Multi-level sub menu
- Supports Contact Form 7 for creating contact forms
11. Hueman
Hueman is a versatile magazine theme with an intuitive and simple design. Thus, even a beginner can build a beautiful magazine website like a pro. Further, with the responsive design of the theme, your site is sure to look good irrespective of what devices your users might be using.
To add more, Hueman provides extensive styling options. That means you can easily change the header, footer, and body backgrounds in no time. Moreover, the theme also encourages the users to read more articles with related posts and links to the next and previous articles.
Key Features
- Multiple layout options
- Unique toggle sidebars
- Featured post slider
- Google Fonts options
- Supports different post formats (image, video, and more)
12. Chic Lite
As the name suggests, Chic Lite is an elegant-looking WordPress theme. Due to its responsive design, newsletter, Instagram section, and highly customizable layout, Chic Lite works perfectly as a WordPress magazine theme.
It offers the option to optimize your website’s revenue by placing the Advertisement widget strategically. Additionally, visitors can view the author bio on the sidebar when they scroll through your published articles.
Key Features
- 22 customizable widgets
- Social media integration
- RTL scripts friendly
- Unlimited Featured boxes
- SEO and Scheme friendly
13. News Portal
If you wish to create incredible news, magazines, and blogs website easily, then, News Portal is an awesome free WordPress magazine template. It comes with 5+ widget areas with multiple layouts for a perfect magazine site. On top of that, it even offers unlimited color schemes.
Likewise, the theme gives full control over your site’s appearance with a lot of customization options. The best part? The theme is built on the customizer hence you can customize your site effortlessly with live previews.
Key Features
- One-click demo import option
- Multiple category color option
- Advertisement ready
- Customizable sections
- Detailed documentation
14. SuperMag
SuperMag by Acme Themes is the ultimate WordPress theme to create a professional-looking magazine, news, or blog website. It also enables you to add advertisements from customizers or widgets. Hence, it’s one of the best free WordPress magazine themes with ad space.
Not to mention, it also comes with tons of powerful customization options. Therefore, you can easily customize different aspects of your site such as header, footer, sidebar, homepage, and more.
Key Features
- Header and footer options
- Background image
- Amazing featured section with a slider
- Custom CSS
- AdSense optimized theme
15. HitMag
If you are looking for a stylish and powerful magazine theme for free downloading, HitMag is the right choice. This theme provides full control over your site’s appearance with tons of customization options like multiple blog layouts, color options, magazine homepage layouts, and so on.
Likewise, the theme also enables you to upload the logo, change the background color & image, and add custom CSS for further customization possibilities. Additionally, it comes with a detailed image slider to impress your audience with important post highlights.
Key Features
- 4 blog layouts
- Live customizer option
- 3 footer widget areas
- Header image
- Well-coded and documented
16. Cream Magazine
Cream Magazine is a flexible, clean, and modern design WordPress news magazine theme available for free. This theme is exclusively suited for those who want to share their stories, publish news and magazines, and write on different subject matters.
Not to mention, it’s a powerful theme that features a lazy load of images to make your site faster. Further, it has a social widget, an author widget, and several header & footer options. And, it also lets you choose from various heading layouts, banner layouts, post-listing layouts, and so on.
Key Features
- Advertisement spaces
- Multiple front-page news widget areas
- News ticker
- Powerful theme options
- Section for related posts
17. Viral News
Viral News is one of the feature-rich yet free news and magazine WordPress themes. This theme is highly widgetized with 5 widgets exclusively built for your magazine site. Thus, you can easily add them to the widget areas in the sidebar and footer.
Most importantly, it comes with the 20+ elements specifically built for Elementor. Hence, you can drag & drop these elements and build your dream website effortlessly. Further, it even offers you drag & drop magazine modules to create a website from the customizer panel as well.
Key Features
- 12+ pre-built templates
- Supports major WordPress plugins
- Tons of customization options
- Sticky sidebar
- Awesome magazine blocks
18. Elegant Magazine
Clean and minimalistic, Elegant Magazine is a superb free WordPress magazine template to be used for news portals, magazines, and other publishing sites. The theme comes with several customizer options and widgets. Hence, you can implement the website layouts exactly the way you desire.
Similarly, the theme has a responsive design which means creating pixel-perfect news and magazine websites to attract your visitors isn’t a problem. Furthermore, it’s built with SEO in mind to make your site rank at the top of search engine results pages.
Key Features
- Options to customize logo & title
- Live customizer option
- Full & list Archive layouts
- Author biography
- WooCommerce compatible
19. EnterNews
EnterNews is an alluring and fully responsive free WordPress magazine template for an online magazine, newspaper, and other publishing sites. This theme lets you run your website in no time using pre-built demos that can be imported with a click.
Likewise, it enables you to display your articles or blog posts stylishly with two color modes namely default and dark mode. Moreover, the theme comes with a live customization option to preview the changes you make to your site.
Key Features
- 8+ custom widgets and widget areas
- Sticky header toggle
- Exclusive news section
- Gutenberg compatible theme
- Dark mode option
20. Magbook
Modern and fully responsive, Magbook is another incredible WordPress news and magazine theme free of cost. It’s a super flexible theme that offers several pre-built templates to quickly set up your magazine site easily and quickly.
Above all, it seamlessly integrates with popular page builder plugins for designing stunning pages with ease Further, the theme has amazing features like multiple layout options, unlimited color schemes, sticky navigation, and so on.
Key Features
- One-click demo import
- Major browser compatible
- Multiple layouts
- Social media integration
- Best SEO practices
21. Newsphere
Newsphere is one of the best responsive style free WordPress magazine themes to create an awesome-looking online news portal and magazine sites. Also, the theme is well-optimized for SEO hence it even helps your website to rank at the top of the search engines.
With Newsphere, building a startling news website is a piece of the cake as it comes with a live customizer option and 8+ custom widgets. Besides, you get full freedom to customize your logo and titles to match your brand.
Key Features
- Numeric pagination option
- Posts date format option
- Comments count toggle
- Multiple category color options
- Post Carousel widget
22. Default Mag
Default Mag is an astonishing WordPress magazine template suitable for all kinds of magazines, newspapers, and blog websites. This theme is designed carefully hence it has a clean and sleek look to make your content appear stylish and attractive to the users.
On top of everything, the theme is tested to make your website adapt perfectly to all devices such as mobile, tablets, desktops, and so on. Further, Default Mag is cross-browser compatible thus there’s no doubt that your website is going to look fabulous in any browser, in any screen size and type.
Key Features
- Day and night mode
- Full-width and boxed layout
- Translation ready
- Social share icons
- Google AdSense ready
23. Color Magazine
Color Magazine is a powerful WordPress theme with a creative magazine layout, perfect for creating stunning news and magazine websites. With its WordPress customizer, you can easily make changes to your site with a live preview option.
The theme offers multiple demos for quickly building professional websites. It includes features like a sticky header, customizable category colors, site logo, layout and font options, and more. Additionally, Color Magazine provides a social sharing feature, making it easy to share your news portal with a broad audience.
Key Features
- Trending news section
- GDPR compliant theme
- Custom logo
- Advertisement space
- Popular page builder compatible
24. Editorialmag
If you are looking for a user-friendly and fast WordPress magazine theme for your publishing site, Editorialmag is the ideal theme. Built on the customizer and widget, this theme lets you create your dream website like a walk in a park.
Again, to add more functionality to your site, the theme also supports many third-party plugins like Jetpack, Contact Form 7, AccessPress Social Share, and more. Further, the theme is multilingual and translation-ready. Plus, it also provides excellent RTL support.
Key Features
- Professionally well-coded theme
- One-click starter demo import
- 9+ custom widgets
- Child theme support
- Built-in Mega Menus
25. VW Blog Magazine
VW Blog Magazine is one of the best free magazine WordPress themes with a stylish and classy look. The theme suits blogging and various magazine niches such as Vogue, job-related magazines, review magazines, and other news & publishing sites.
The theme is highly customizable, with flexible header options, numerous styling options, footer widgets, and more. Further, it features beautiful banners, a call to action button, and interactive demos for your ease. All in all, it’s a user-friendly blog and magazine theme built on the Bootstrap framework.
Key Features
- Secure and clean codes
- Responsive slider
- Social media icons
- Featured image header
- Beautiful color palette
Wrapping Up!
Well, that was our list of the best free WordPress magazine themes and templates.
Now, let us know which of the themes above are you planning to try out.
If you have any say on this article, leave us your feedback and suggestions in the comment section below.
If you are interested in reading more of our theme-relevant articles, we suggest going through the best blogging WordPress themes, LMS themes, and WooCommerce themes for your online shop.
