WordPress is a great platform to use for a news website. There are a number of themes available that imitate the look and feel of a news website. If your looking to start a news website you will definitely need a great WordPress news theme.
In this article, we at WP Squared would like to share with you over forty of the best news designs for WordPress. These themes are perfect for websites that break news and post a high volume of articles. All designs are highly customisable and work with the latest version of WordPress. Check out these amazing WordPress news themes:
1. Exquisite
A self-declared ultimate newspaper theme that offers three home page layouts. The design is retina-ready and it allows you to customise categories with their own unique colours. It also has a built in review system and has a fantastic mega menu for navigation.
2. SmartNews
A responsive news design that can also be used for magazines and blogs. It features seven unique skins, twenty five custom widgets and a built-in review system. The included social media counter looks great too.
3. Newspaper Times WordPress Theme
The newspaper times from Magazine3 is one of the best newspaper theme examples that I have come across. With its dynamic headlines news ticker, responsive design, and superb advertisement options it is sure to make even the most selective web developers shortlist. This news theme also comes with advanced color management options to ensure the design fits closely with brand image you are looking to promote.
4. Business News Theme
Another amazing news theme offered by the very people that designed my first choice (above) describes itself as a business news WordPress theme, though in reality I believe it could fit numerous news related topics. This theme makes images the priority, but doesn’t skimp on the other fantastic features that we have come to associate with Magazine3’s themes.
Superb advertising options included, and fully adsense compatible.
5. News Theme
A clean news design that comes with integrated advertising options. It features a jQuery slider and an image gallery template.
6. Valenti
A stylish WordPress theme that allows you to customise your home page using drag and drop. It lets you publish featured images normally or in full width, parallax or full background. Four unique blog templates are available and it has native support for bbPress. A great WordPress news theme.
7. Awake
A modern WordPress theme that has a news style layout. The theme is responsive and you can select unlimited colours and backgrounds. Shortcodes are also available for styling content.
8. Skoon
Skoon is a professional news theme that makes good use of featured images. It supports audio, video and gallery post formats and has great social media integration.
9. MH Magazine
A fantastic looking WordPress theme that includes the FlexSlider 2 slider and a latest posts carousel. It features advertising integration, Google fonts support and a flexible layout with twenty five widget locations.
10. Advanced Newspaper Theme
A nice looking news related WordPress theme by anyone’s standards, though I personally doubt I would decide to choose this one over and above the previous themes listed – I may be very wrong (this has been proved time, and time again).
11. Fast News
A clean news design that is optimised for high pixel density devices. It includes unique page templates for video, galleries and blogs. The options panel allows you to choose from over six hundred Google fonts and change the colour scheme using a colour picker.
12. Newswire
Newswire is a practical WordPress design that features advertising integration, custom widgets and several custom page templates. The theme has been optimised for mobile devices.
13. Bangkok Press
Bangkok Press is a feature packed WordPress theme that allows you to customise pages using a drag and drop builder. It includes over ten blog styles, six footer layouts and four post types. Custom post types include testimonial, portfolio, gallery and pricing table. A slider is available too.
14. Legatus
Legatus is a versatile news design that can support up to four columns of content on the home page. It features a drag and drop template system that allows you to reuse custom layouts in other areas of your website. It also includes a lightbox photo gallery, five different category templates, custom shortcodes and unlimited sidebars.
15. Magneo
A responsive news theme that lets you customise your home page using a drag and drop page builder. It includes three sliders, unlimited skin colours and a built-in review system.
16. Billboard
Billboard is a clean news template that has a cool slider on the home page. It is optimised for mobile devices and colours can be changed through the options panel.
17. Hola
A big, bold, in-your-face WordPress theme that is perfect for a news website or online magazine. It features a drag and drop layout builder, five predefined skins, video support and a built-in review and rating system.
18. Allegro
Allegro features a unique home page that includes many news related modules, weather reporting and lightbox galleries. Pages can be customised using a drag and drop builder and shortcodes are available for styling content.
19. NewsSetter
A great news design that has beautiful typography and prominent use of featured images. It has four colour schemes available and a built-in contact form.
20. InTouch
A highly customisable news design that has four home page layouts, four blog index layouts, four single post layouts, four category page layouts, twenty widgetised areas and sixteen custom widgets. The design is very colourful and is responsive so looks great on tablets and smartphones too.
21. Sahifa
Sahifa is a WordPress theme that crops up time and time again in WordPress top lists. It is easy to understand why. It comes with a built in review and rating system and allows every aspect of the design to be changed using a visual drag and drop page builder. It also has nine unique page templates, thirty three custom widgets, unlimited sidebars and shortcode support. And to top it all off, the theme is retina-ready.
22. Newsmaker
Newsmaker is a clean news theme that includes a mega menu for navigation, built-in review system and support for responsive advertising. There are some great custom widgets too such as a video widget and social counter widget.
23. Report
A customisable news theme that features a cool layout composer. It has six header layouts, two footer layouts and two post layouts. A review and rating system is also included.
24. News Grid
A flexible news theme that has a beautiful featured area on the home page that can display a slider, parallax image or videos. Seven layouts are available for the home page and an unlimited number of colour schemes can be chosen via a colour wheel. A ratings plugin and social media plugin are also included in the theme package.
25. Publisher
A practical news template that includes advertising integration, custom widgets and social media link buttons. Five unique page templates are also available.
26. Newspaper
A clean newspaper design that has native support for WooCommerce, bbPress and BuddyPress. It features live Ajax powered search and support for responsive Google Ads. Visual Composer is also included to help you create the page design you want.
27. WP Herald
A great looking news template that has two jQuery sliders available. It includes four locations for advertising and six colour schemes. Social media integration is fantastic too.
28. InternationalPost
InternationalPost is a professional news theme that allows you to change the colour of each category block. It has eight pre-defined advertising areas and has great social media support. The theme also has built-in SEO options, however these can be disabled if you use a SEO WordPress plugin.
29. City Desk News Theme
Another smooth news template that offers news with the use of large images. It definitely has a professional look and feel and some great advanced features; allows you to offer different advertisements to your visitors on a per category basis.
30. The News Theme
This is perhaps the most generic WordPress news theme on offer here. I could see this theme working very well for a multitude of niche news websites; everything from sport to technology & back again!
31. Newspaper Theme
Although this theme may not be quite as visually stunning as the first three on our list there is something that I really like about it. This news theme is clear and concise without ever giving that overwhelming information overload feel that many news websites are definitely guilty off – just one look at the BBC website & I forget what I was doing there in the first place.
32. Channel Pro News Theme
I remember when this theme was without argument the best WordPress news theme available. It was a great theme for my news related website at the time and still is a fantastic theme, but I am not sure it still has that wow factor it once did.
33. News Theme (Genesis)
Is this a WordPress news theme? I’m not 100% sure! I suppose it really depends on what you are looking for. If your website is just getting started and has limited writing resources this theme may be a great place to get you started – though I don’t believe it screams we are the most trustworthy news resource on the web….niche news on the other hand, well you couldn’t ask for a better design. A full list of Genesis child themes is available here.
34. Newses Theme
A superbly modern take on a news theme. I personally find the navigation a little clumsy, but I have to admit for the right website it would definitely be well designed enough for me to stick around to see what else I may find interesting.
35. Newsroom WordPress Theme
Similar to the “Newses” theme and also available from Themeforest. Some will love it, others will loathe it.
36. Goodnews
Goodnews is a versatile news theme that lets you customise pages using a visual page builder. It has an advanced options panel and a comprehensive review system. A slider and twenty custom widgets are also included.
37. SportsGazette
Inspired by print newspapers, SportsGazette is a beautiful responsive design that features great advertising integration and SEO options. The admin panel lets you add your social media profiles, upload your logo and more.
38. NewsPlus
NewsPlus is a multi-purpose WordPress theme that features a content slider, post carousel and post format support. It supports the WordPress Theme Customizer, so colours can be changed directly through the WordPress theme area.
39. PrimoNews
PrimoNews is a flexible WordPress theme that has a fully widgetised home page. It features a complete review system and a front-end editor that lets you write posts in the front-end of your website. Theme colours and backgrounds can all be modified through the theme options area.
40. GrandNews
A clean professional news theme that features a widgetised home page and a built-in review system. It supports all post formats and any colour scheme can be selected through the theme options panel.
41. Urban News Theme
An interesting take on a WordPress news theme. I like how this theme dares to be a little different. If I were to do another post on my favorite magazine themes I am confident that I would also list it there – it is somewhere in-between. I can envisage this theme as a city “whats happening?” portal!
We hope you have enjoyed this list of great news WordPress themes. Be sure to share any great news templates that we may have missed 🙂