Starting a blog is easy nowadays. The next part is about selecting a theme for your blog.
You will find many Premium theme sites on the internet. However, if you don’t have the budget or your blog is just to learn about the stuff, going with the free theme is the best option.
So, we have selected the Best free WordPress theme for blogging you can install today itself.
Choosing the Right theme
A paid version is also available for most of these themes; some offer premium add-ons and extensions.
You can use them to extend the functionality of your WordPress-based website.
If you want to sell something, ensure the theme you choose supports WooCommerce, as many don’t allow WooCommerce in the free version.
Moreover, people often get confused here; if the theme does not have slider functionality or similar, then it does not mean you can’t have it.
You can surely use another plugin for that particular feature.
Almost all the themes provide common plugin support, but some of the plugins, like WooCommerce, Page builder, etc., are only supported by a few.
Hence, you should see the support for these plugins in the theme description. The same goes for RTL. Now let’s get on the top list.
Best WordPress theme for Blogging
#1. Hueman
Hueman is a free multi-column theme. It is rated the best by many users for blogs and magazines.
The theme has over 40,000+ installs and is updated regularly.
The mobile-friendly theme can be fully customized with almost no restrictions.
The load time is faster, and hence it helps you to increase traffic.
You can customize the colors and the layout with no restrictions. As there are no limits on customization, this is the best theme you can use.
#2. GeneratePress
If you are a huge fan of a good light theme that loads fast, the best free WordPress theme for blogging is GeneratePress.
It is a lightweight theme helping your WordPress blog to load faster. The main focus of this theme is on performance.
To access more customization options, you can always go for the extra add-ons available on GeneratePress.
The theme is simple and does not have a lot of fancy content. It is perfect for the one who loves simplicity and wants the best performance.
This theme has over 500000 active installs and regularly gets updates. This theme has paid version, also
#3. ColorMag
ColorMag is one of the best free responsive WordPress themes.
It is a magazine-style WordPress theme that can be used for a blog, magazine, news website, etc.
It is a two-column WordPress theme and also supports RTL sites.
You can check the demo to know more. ColorMag has various color options for the menu, background color options, and much more.
It is just like a simple magazine style but has various options for customization.
It has over 90000+ active installs andd gets regular updates
#4. Hestia
Hestia is one of the famous themes with beautiful typography and looks. It is a modern multi-purpose theme. Blogger nowadays prefers this kind of theme.
It is best for websites such as blogger, E-commerce, wedding, portfolio websites, or others.
It is Retina-ready, SEO friendly, and has many other features. Moreover, the theme is responsive and has an Elementor page builder.
Hestia is my personal favorite theme with all the amazing features.
Hestia has over 100000+ active installations.
#5. OceanWp
OceanWp is a Lightweight theme and has a lot of extendable features.
The theme works with all types of page builders.
It is a multi-purpose theme that can be used on any website, including E-commerce.
Also, it is responsive, RTL, and translation ready. It is rated five stars by over 1,700 people.
It is a perfect theme for your project, lightweight and extendable
#6. Sydney
Sydney is the other best free WordPress theme for a blogging theme. It gives you full-color control, layout control, and Google fonts.
Along with this, you can even customize it more with a full-screen slider, sticky navigation, and logo.
There are construction blocks to help you create an engaging landing or home page.
It has been at the top list of the most popular themes in the WordPress theme directory for years.
You can use it for one-page website also. It is a powerful business theme.
Companies or freelancers can use it to create a beautiful online website. It is also compatible with Elementor
It has more than 100000 active installs and gets regular updates from the developer
#7. Total
As the name says, Total is an all-in-one theme for everyone. The theme can be customized based on colors and layouts. Etc.
You can add a home slider, a featured section with an icon, a Progress bar, an about us section, and also a contact us section.
The theme is SEO friendly, Cross browser compatible, and also has support for WooCommerce. Moreover, if you are a freelancer, you can also show your portfolio in a masonry layout.
Theme name total this theme comes with many features you can use it for any type of website
This theme has over 50000+ active install
#8. Astra
Astra is lightweight and loads much faster as it is less than 50KB of the homepage.
The theme is a fully customizable and beautiful theme suitable for everyone.
Also, it is WooCommerce compatible. Along with this, the Schema.org code is integrated with it making it more SEO optimized than it is.
There are premium add-ons and extensions if anyone wants more features and access. It has RTL support, and various page builders can be used to build the pages.
It Is a very popular theme and has over one million installs.
Premium and free versions of this theme are available. This theme gets frequent updates
#9. Baskerville
Baskerville is a retina-ready masonry theme for blogging. It is a beautiful theme and has a lot of customization options.
The theme has retina-ready assets, a full-width header image, and Gutenberg support.
Moreover, the theme supports all the post formats and page types, making it easy for bloggers to post the content they like.
This theme has over 8000+ installs
#10. Hemingway
Hemingway is a Minimalist approach for the theme. It has a full-width header image, parallax scrolling effect, and custom accent colours. Also, it has two-column support.
You can custom page templates, and it is translation ready. The theme also supports Custom Flickr and Dribbble widgets.
It is retina ready and has a responsive design
This theme has over 20000+ downloads
#11. Admiral
Admiral is the multi-Column theme for magazines and news sites.
It has two sidebars and is responsive. A featured posts slideshow, a homepage template, and also supports infinite scrolling.
For people looking for two sidebar themes, you can try this theme.
If you have more category options, you can write all of them on one sidebar and use the other for advertisements and other purposes.
However, this theme has very few downloads
It has over 1000+ active installations
#12. Nisarg
Nisarg is a new but most liked best free WordPress theme for blogging. It is fully responsive as it is developed using Bootstrap 3.
Along with the responsiveness, the theme is translation ready and provides various customization options.
The background image, color, header background etc., can be set as you wish.
This theme has over 10000+ active installations
#13. Customify
One of the best features of Customify is the WYSIWYG Header & Footer builder, it means you can fully customize the header and footer as you want.
You can use any page builder to create pages. It is a responsive, lightweight, and super-flexible theme
It is built keeping in mind speed and SEO. This theme works with many page builder
Moreover, the theme loads fasters and is fully SEO-friendly. Also, you can use it in an E-commerce store due to its support for WooCommerce.
This theme has over 50000+ active installations.
#14. Poseidon
Poseidon is an elegant design-free theme. It has clean typography and a beautiful full-screen slide-show feature. Moreover, you can either use one column or more than one.
This theme is a good option for a news website or blog on any niche. Poseidon has support for RTL.
Widget-based home page template makes it easy to create a blog faster.
This theme has over 10000+ active installations
#15. CoverNews
CoverNews is yet another option for choosing the best free WordPress theme for blogging. It is an elegant theme and compatible with WooCommerce.
It is a good theme for magazines or blogs; with this theme, you get custom widgets and a live customization option
You can customize it with many different options. The theme is Search Engine friendly, making ranking your blog easier.
Moreover, For your reference, there are three demos on this theme. you can check all of them and choose the theme accordingly.
This theme has over 10000+ active installs
#16. Verbosa
Verbosa is a multi-purpose theme with a left menu. It is a simple theme for your travel blog, photography blog, or any other.
The theme has over 100 options for customization as well as 100 social icons to choose from.
It has RTL support and is translation ready. Moreover, Verbosa is SEO-friendly and loads fast, making it the best.
This theme has over 2000+ installations however, theme updates are not very frequents
#17. Flash
Flash is a versatile responsive WordPress theme. It has various demos that you can directly import with the importer plugin.
The theme has WooCommerce, Flash Toolkit, and site origin’s page builder support.
It has multiple blog layouts and color options. Also, you can choose any color you want for the menu and background.
You can use this theme for any type of website you want; it has pre-built demos which you can use and quickly design your website
This theme has more than 20000+ active downloads
#18. MH Magazine Lite
MH Magazine Lite is one of the modern magazine themes available for free. It has a paid version also and is SEO-friendly.
The theme is best suited for the news and blogs. MH Magazine has various child themes you can try. Some of the famous child themes are MH News mag, MH tech, etc. You can view all MH magazine Child themes here.
It’s a popular responsive modern online magazine theme. You can best use it for news websites, online magazines, and WordPress blog
This theme has over 20000+ active installations
#19. Newspaperly
Newspaperly is new but still manages to be in the best free WordPress theme for blogging lists.
The theme works with almost all types of schema markups. It is Search engine friendly with all kinds of search Engines.
It is designed for newspapers, blogs, and magazines. You can publish any type of content you want
Along with a simple, elegant design, there are a lot of customization options in the theme.
This theme has over 2000+ active installations and is by superb themes
#20. Newscard
Newscard is the last theme on our top list. It is a magazine-style theme with a modern layout.
Various color customization options on the theme make it easier for you to make a beautiful-looking website.
It supports WooCommerce and has various templates available for you to choose from.
You can use this theme for Multi-purpose like a travel blog, Food blog, etc.
This theme has more than 10000+ active installations
Conclusion
To summarize, this was the list of the best free WordPress theme for blogging. You can select the best at your convenience.
We can’t tell you to use the particular theme as there are many factors to be considered.
Some websites look amazing on the modern theme, while some look great in the classic.
Therefore, you need to select the best free WordPress theme for your blogging career as per your website niche and what you like.
If you are randomly browsing a WordPress site and wonder if it is a free theme, you can use WordPress theme detectors to check which theme that website is using.
However, if it is a free theme, there are good chances you will find that particular theme on our list.
Tell us in the comment section which theme you installed on your WordPress website?
Starting a blog is easy nowadays. The next part is about selecting a theme for your blog.
You will find many Premium theme sites on the internet. However, if you don’t have the budget or your blog is just to learn about the stuff, going with the free theme is the best option.
So, we have selected the Best free WordPress theme for blogging you can install today itself.
Choosing the Right theme
A paid version is also available for most of these themes; some offer premium add-ons and extensions.
You can use them to extend the functionality of your WordPress-based website.
If you want to sell something, ensure the theme you choose supports WooCommerce, as many don’t allow WooCommerce in the free version.
Moreover, people often get confused here; if the theme does not have slider functionality or similar, then it does not mean you can’t have it.
You can surely use another plugin for that particular feature.
Almost all the themes provide common plugin support, but some of the plugins, like WooCommerce, Page builder, etc., are only supported by a few.
Hence, you should see the support for these plugins in the theme description. The same goes for RTL. Now let’s get on the top list.
Best WordPress theme for Blogging
#1. Hueman
Hueman is a free multi-column theme. It is rated the best by many users for blogs and magazines.
The theme has over 40,000+ installs and is updated regularly.
The mobile-friendly theme can be fully customized with almost no restrictions.
The load time is faster, and hence it helps you to increase traffic.
You can customize the colors and the layout with no restrictions. As there are no limits on customization, this is the best theme you can use.
#2. GeneratePress
If you are a huge fan of a good light theme that loads fast, the best free WordPress theme for blogging is GeneratePress.
It is a lightweight theme helping your WordPress blog to load faster. The main focus of this theme is on performance.
To access more customization options, you can always go for the extra add-ons available on GeneratePress.
The theme is simple and does not have a lot of fancy content. It is perfect for the one who loves simplicity and wants the best performance.
This theme has over 500000 active installs and regularly gets updates. This theme has paid version, also
#3. ColorMag
ColorMag is one of the best free responsive WordPress themes.
It is a magazine-style WordPress theme that can be used for a blog, magazine, news website, etc.
It is a two-column WordPress theme and also supports RTL sites.
You can check the demo to know more. ColorMag has various color options for the menu, background color options, and much more.
It is just like a simple magazine style but has various options for customization.
It has over 90000+ active installs andd gets regular updates
#4. Hestia
Hestia is one of the famous themes with beautiful typography and looks. It is a modern multi-purpose theme. Blogger nowadays prefers this kind of theme.
It is best for websites such as blogger, E-commerce, wedding, portfolio websites, or others.
It is Retina-ready, SEO friendly, and has many other features. Moreover, the theme is responsive and has an Elementor page builder.
Hestia is my personal favorite theme with all the amazing features.
Hestia has over 100000+ active installations.
#5. OceanWp
OceanWp is a Lightweight theme and has a lot of extendable features.
The theme works with all types of page builders.
It is a multi-purpose theme that can be used on any website, including E-commerce.
Also, it is responsive, RTL, and translation ready. It is rated five stars by over 1,700 people.
It is a perfect theme for your project, lightweight and extendable
#6. Sydney
Sydney is the other best free WordPress theme for a blogging theme. It gives you full-color control, layout control, and Google fonts.
Along with this, you can even customize it more with a full-screen slider, sticky navigation, and logo.
There are construction blocks to help you create an engaging landing or home page.
It has been at the top list of the most popular themes in the WordPress theme directory for years.
You can use it for one-page website also. It is a powerful business theme.
Companies or freelancers can use it to create a beautiful online website. It is also compatible with Elementor
It has more than 100000 active installs and gets regular updates from the developer
#7. Total
As the name says, Total is an all-in-one theme for everyone. The theme can be customized based on colors and layouts. Etc.
You can add a home slider, a featured section with an icon, a Progress bar, an about us section, and also a contact us section.
The theme is SEO friendly, Cross browser compatible, and also has support for WooCommerce. Moreover, if you are a freelancer, you can also show your portfolio in a masonry layout.
Theme name total this theme comes with many features you can use it for any type of website
This theme has over 50000+ active install
#8. Astra
Astra is lightweight and loads much faster as it is less than 50KB of the homepage.
The theme is a fully customizable and beautiful theme suitable for everyone.
Also, it is WooCommerce compatible. Along with this, the Schema.org code is integrated with it making it more SEO optimized than it is.
There are premium add-ons and extensions if anyone wants more features and access. It has RTL support, and various page builders can be used to build the pages.
It Is a very popular theme and has over one million installs.
Premium and free versions of this theme are available. This theme gets frequent updates
#9. Baskerville
Baskerville is a retina-ready masonry theme for blogging. It is a beautiful theme and has a lot of customization options.
The theme has retina-ready assets, a full-width header image, and Gutenberg support.
Moreover, the theme supports all the post formats and page types, making it easy for bloggers to post the content they like.
This theme has over 8000+ installs
#10. Hemingway
Hemingway is a Minimalist approach for the theme. It has a full-width header image, parallax scrolling effect, and custom accent colours. Also, it has two-column support.
You can custom page templates, and it is translation ready. The theme also supports Custom Flickr and Dribbble widgets.
It is retina ready and has a responsive design
This theme has over 20000+ downloads
#11. Admiral
Admiral is the multi-Column theme for magazines and news sites.
It has two sidebars and is responsive. A featured posts slideshow, a homepage template, and also supports infinite scrolling.
For people looking for two sidebar themes, you can try this theme.
If you have more category options, you can write all of them on one sidebar and use the other for advertisements and other purposes.
However, this theme has very few downloads
It has over 1000+ active installations
#12. Nisarg
Nisarg is a new but most liked best free WordPress theme for blogging. It is fully responsive as it is developed using Bootstrap 3.
Along with the responsiveness, the theme is translation ready and provides various customization options.
The background image, color, header background etc., can be set as you wish.
This theme has over 10000+ active installations
#13. Customify
One of the best features of Customify is the WYSIWYG Header & Footer builder, it means you can fully customize the header and footer as you want.
You can use any page builder to create pages. It is a responsive, lightweight, and super-flexible theme
It is built keeping in mind speed and SEO. This theme works with many page builder
Moreover, the theme loads fasters and is fully SEO-friendly. Also, you can use it in an E-commerce store due to its support for WooCommerce.
This theme has over 50000+ active installations.
#14. Poseidon
Poseidon is an elegant design-free theme. It has clean typography and a beautiful full-screen slide-show feature. Moreover, you can either use one column or more than one.
This theme is a good option for a news website or blog on any niche. Poseidon has support for RTL.
Widget-based home page template makes it easy to create a blog faster.
This theme has over 10000+ active installations
#15. CoverNews
CoverNews is yet another option for choosing the best free WordPress theme for blogging. It is an elegant theme and compatible with WooCommerce.
It is a good theme for magazines or blogs; with this theme, you get custom widgets and a live customization option
You can customize it with many different options. The theme is Search Engine friendly, making ranking your blog easier.
Moreover, For your reference, there are three demos on this theme. you can check all of them and choose the theme accordingly.
This theme has over 10000+ active installs
#16. Verbosa
Verbosa is a multi-purpose theme with a left menu. It is a simple theme for your travel blog, photography blog, or any other.
The theme has over 100 options for customization as well as 100 social icons to choose from.
It has RTL support and is translation ready. Moreover, Verbosa is SEO-friendly and loads fast, making it the best.
This theme has over 2000+ installations however, theme updates are not very frequents
#17. Flash
Flash is a versatile responsive WordPress theme. It has various demos that you can directly import with the importer plugin.
The theme has WooCommerce, Flash Toolkit, and site origin’s page builder support.
It has multiple blog layouts and color options. Also, you can choose any color you want for the menu and background.
You can use this theme for any type of website you want; it has pre-built demos which you can use and quickly design your website
This theme has more than 20000+ active downloads
#18. MH Magazine Lite
MH Magazine Lite is one of the modern magazine themes available for free. It has a paid version also and is SEO-friendly.
The theme is best suited for the news and blogs. MH Magazine has various child themes you can try. Some of the famous child themes are MH News mag, MH tech, etc. You can view all MH magazine Child themes here.
It’s a popular responsive modern online magazine theme. You can best use it for news websites, online magazines, and WordPress blog
This theme has over 20000+ active installations
#19. Newspaperly
Newspaperly is new but still manages to be in the best free WordPress theme for blogging lists.
The theme works with almost all types of schema markups. It is Search engine friendly with all kinds of search Engines.
It is designed for newspapers, blogs, and magazines. You can publish any type of content you want
Along with a simple, elegant design, there are a lot of customization options in the theme.
This theme has over 2000+ active installations and is by superb themes
#20. Newscard
Newscard is the last theme on our top list. It is a magazine-style theme with a modern layout.
Various color customization options on the theme make it easier for you to make a beautiful-looking website.
It supports WooCommerce and has various templates available for you to choose from.
You can use this theme for Multi-purpose like a travel blog, Food blog, etc.
This theme has more than 10000+ active installations
Conclusion
To summarize, this was the list of the best free WordPress theme for blogging. You can select the best at your convenience.
We can’t tell you to use the particular theme as there are many factors to be considered.
Some websites look amazing on the modern theme, while some look great in the classic.
Therefore, you need to select the best free WordPress theme for your blogging career as per your website niche and what you like.
If you are randomly browsing a WordPress site and wonder if it is a free theme, you can use WordPress theme detectors to check which theme that website is using.
However, if it is a free theme, there are good chances you will find that particular theme on our list.
Tell us in the comment section which theme you installed on your WordPress website?
Hi, I`m Devanshu, the man behind bloggingdost.com. I love writing about SEO, WordPress, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Make money online.