TV licence to rise to £180 from April 2026

The UK TV licence will rise from £174.50 to £180 a year from 1 April 2026.

The £5.50 increase - around 3.1% - follows the inflation-linked funding formula that runs until the end of the BBC's Charter in 2027.

The change affects anyone who watches or records live TV on any platform, or uses BBC iPlayer.

Credit: Goran Petric/Shutterstock.com

TV licence fee rises to £180

From 1 April 2026, the annual colour TV licence will rise from £174.50 to £180. This represents an increase of £5.50 per year, or roughly 46p per month for licence holders.

The change is not a one-off decision for 2026. It forms part of the funding settlement agreed for the current BBC Charter period - the formal framework that sets the BBC's remit, governance and funding - which links the licence fee to inflation until the Charter ends in 2027.

Alongside the main colour licence, the black-and-white TV licence will also increase, to £60.50 a year from April 2026.

The underlying rules about who needs a licence are unchanged, with existing discounts and concessions continuing to apply.

Eligible over-75s on Pension Credit can still apply for a free licence, people registered blind or severely sight-impaired can apply for a half-price licence, and reduced fees remain available in certain qualifying care or supported accommodation settings.

A TV licence is required to watch or record live television on any platform, or to use BBC iPlayer, and the new prices will apply across the UK from April 2026.

Find out if you need a TV licence in this guide.

What this means for household bills

For households that watch live television or use BBC iPlayer, the higher licence fee will simply become part of their annual fixed costs from April.

At £5.50 a year - around 46p a month - the rise is relatively small, but unlike most streaming services it is not optional.

The increase will also feed through to the real-world cost of pay-TV packages that include live channels. Customers of Sky, Virgin Media or BT/EE TV still need a TV licence, meaning the higher fee comes on top of provider price rises already due in April.

For example, Virgin Media customers are set to see monthly bills rise by around £3.50 to £4. At the same time, BT/EE TV prices are increasing by £2 a month, with broadband rising by a further £3-£4. Sky has also recently announced rises for 2026, with some customers facing increases of £5 per month or more on combined broadband and TV bills.

Put together, this means the licence fee rise adds another layer to a spring cost cycle in which many pay-TV households are already paying more for the same services.

By contrast, households that rely only on free services such as Freeview, or broadband-delivered platforms like Freely, won't face those provider hikes - but they will still be affected by the higher licence fee.

Crucially, the licence functions as a universal, mandatory charge for anyone who chooses to watch live TV, regardless of how they do so.

It is not limited to people who watch the BBC: if you watch any live television - whether via Sky, Virgin Media, Freeview, Freesat or broadband-based services like Freely - the fee still applies. That makes it much harder to opt out of than most other media costs, even if someone's viewing has little to do with the BBC itself.

Who should be paying?

The April 2026 increase is another small step in a longer-running pattern of annual rises. However, its significance lies less in the amount itself than in the way it reopens familiar questions about how the licence model operates in practice - and who it ultimately asks to pay.

In particular, the structure of the licence continues to create a familiar tension because a licence is required to watch or record any live TV - including channels such as Sky Sports or Sky News - so the system effectively asks all live-TV viewers to fund the BBC. That dynamic has become more contentious as debates about media impartiality and trust in public institutions have intensified.

One alternative that regularly surfaces in those debates is replacing the licence with direct government funding for public broadcasting. The appeal of this approach is that it would treat the BBC more like other publicly funded services and remove the link between payment and individual viewing habits. The countervailing concern is that closer financial dependence on government could make it harder to guarantee the BBC's editorial independence from political pressure.

There is also a structural difference between the BBC and other major broadcasters. Unlike commercial news providers such as Sky News, the BBC's remit spans national and regional news, radio, children's programming, education and emergency broadcasting. Channel 4, meanwhile, is publicly owned but funded through advertising, which gives it a different set of incentives and constraints.

These questions aren't academic. In December 2025 the UK government launched a formal review of the BBC's Royal Charter - the constitutional framework that defines its remit, governance and funding - as part of a process to "future-proof" the broadcaster ahead of the next charter period beginning in 2028. The Green Paper and public consultation published as part of that review explicitly include consideration of how the licence fee is set, how concessions work, and other potential funding changes, with a White Paper expected later in 2026.

Meanwhile, the number of households actually paying the licence has been edging down. A growing share say they no longer need one because they don't watch live TV, and official estimates suggest about 12.5% of households that should have a licence are not paying. That shrinking base adds another layer of pressure to a model that relies on near-universal compliance.

The steady shift toward on-demand services is gradually reducing the share of households that regularly watch live TV, which raises longer-term questions about how sustainable a licence tied to live viewing will be. The April increase is small, but it arrives at a moment when those questions are only likely to become more pressing.