Best Ghost themes in 2026, by what you publish

Counted on ghost.org/themes on 18 September 2026:

• 51 themes cost $89 and 51 cost $149, so those two prices cover almost half of the market.
• By category, a theme can carry more than one: Blog 131, Magazine 108, Portfolio 26, News 18, Newsletter 16, Docs 8, Podcast 7, Photography 7.
• Ghost takes no commission and runs no checkout. Every listing links to the vendor’s own store, so licenses, update terms and support differ by vendor and are worth reading before you pay.
• Every listed theme has passed gscan, Ghost’s validator, and has a live demo. A theme bought outside the marketplace has neither guarantee.

Ghost installs its own themes in one click from Settings → Design, and the Ghost team keeps them current, so a new Ghost release never leaves them behind. Try one before you spend anything:

• Source is the default and covers a magazine, a news site and a blog in one theme.
• Solo, Edition, Dawn, Journal, Digest and Bulletin are built for newsletters. Solo is for one writer.
• Casper, Headline, Dope, London and Ruby are magazine and news layouts.
• Edge and London put photos first.
• Taste, Alto and Wave are for a blog. Wave and Episode are for a podcast.
• Ease is for documentation.

You can change more than you might expect without changing the theme. Colours and fonts are in Settings → Design. Code injection adds CSS and scripts without touching the theme. Since May 2026 Ghost admin has an Edit code button, so a small change to a template no longer means downloading, editing and re-uploading a zip.

A free theme is enough when you are one writer with one column and the standard pages. It stops being enough when you want a layout the free themes do not have (a sidebar with your sections, a split screen, a gallery-first home page), when you keep reaching for code to change something, or when you need pages the free themes do not ship, such as a pricing page, a contact page or an authors page.

A premium theme is paid for four things. A layout that the free themes do not offer. Settings in Settings → Design in place of code edits. Extra pages and templates: membership and pricing, contact, authors, tags, an archive. And a vendor who documents the theme, answers questions, and updates it when Ghost changes something.

A premium theme is not for speed or for search rankings. Both come mostly from Ghost, your hosting and your content. A theme can only make a site slower, with heavy scripts and oversized images, which is why the checks below ask you to read a demo post on a phone.

Members, paid tiers, Portal and email sending are part of Ghost, so every theme on the marketplace supports them. The theme decides where the signup form sits, whether there is a pricing page, how a post reads next to the email version, and what a visitor sees on a members-only post.

Free: Solo when you write alone, Edition, Journal, Digest, Bulletin or Dawn when the newsletter is the product.

Essence

$99

Cinematic Ghost theme with shader backgrounds and liquid glass cards.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Scope

$99

Minimal Ghost theme with sidebar navigation and landing pages.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Thoughts

$99

Split-screen theme for newsletters and co-authored writing.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Also built for it: Format.

Others in this category on the marketplace: Bright Themes and Aspire Themes with two newsletter themes each, and one each from Fueko, Eduardo Gomez, Iris Themes and Driff Themes.

Check on the demo: the signup and signin pages, a pricing page with more than one tier, and a members-only post viewed while signed out.

This is the busiest category, 108 magazine themes and 18 news themes. What separates them is how many posts a reader sees before scrolling, whether sections and tags get their own pages, and how several writers are shown.

Free: Source, then Casper, Headline, Dope, London and Ruby.

Feed

$99

Social-style theme for tech news with dual sidebars and multiple post layouts.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Aspect

$89

Magazine grid with co-authors and sidebar navigation.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Also built for it: Scope and Thesis.

Others: Fueko has 17 magazine themes, GBJ Solution 10, Storied Themes 8, and High Five Themes, Aspire Themes and Kusa Projects 6 each. For news, Themes by Kyle, Luxe Themes, Aspire Themes, Bright Themes and High Five Themes have two each.

Check on the demo: count the posts above the fold on a laptop and on a phone, open a tag page and a section page, open an author page, and look at where an ad or a promo block would go if you sell those.

Portfolio has no free official theme, and the 26 premium ones vary more than any other category. The gallery card in Ghost takes up to nine images per card, so how a theme lays those out, and what the lightbox does, matters more than the home page.

Free: Edge, and London for a mix of photos and writing.

Moment

$149

Portfolio theme for photographers with galleries and a simple layout.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Also built for it: OnFlow.

Others: Themex Studio has five portfolio themes, High Five Themes three, Bright Themes and Ekto Themes two each.

Check on the demo: open a post with a gallery card, click an image to see the lightbox, and load the home page on a phone over mobile data. Image handling is where portfolio themes differ most.

131 themes carry the blog tag, so the choice comes down to reading comfort: column width, type size, dark mode, and how code blocks, tables and images look inside a post.

Free: Source, Taste, Alto and Wave, or Solo if the blog doubles as a newsletter.

OnFlow

$89

Chat-style layout for personal blogs and portfolios.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Thesis

$89

Double sidebar layout for news sites and personal diaries.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Format

$89

Personal blog with newsletter integration and recommendations.

Theme DetailsLive Demo

Also built for it: Essence, Scope, Thoughts and Feed.

Others: T-Rex Themes has ten blog themes, Storied Themes, Themex Studio and High Five Themes nine each, Aspire Themes eight, and Fueko and Estudio Patagon seven each.

Check on the demo: read a whole post on a phone, switch to dark mode if you will use it, and open a post with code or a table if you write those.

We make neither, so this is a pointer. For a podcast, Ghost’s free Episode and Wave, then one theme each from Enova Studio, Bright Themes, Iris Themes, Aspire Themes and Themeix. For documentation, Ghost’s free Ease, then two themes each from Bright Themes and Layered Craft, and one each from Kick Wheel, Estudio Patagon and Codelet.

1. Ghost version. Ghost 6 shipped in August 2025. A marketplace listing has passed gscan, but a theme sold elsewhere may not have been updated since, so run it through gscan.ghost.org before you upload it.
2. Read a real post on the demo, on a phone. Demos are staged to look good on a large screen.
3. What the download contains. Built files only, or the sources and a build too. Sources are what let you or an agent change the theme properly.
4. The license. One site or several, and what happens when you move the theme to a new domain.
5. Updates and support. Whether updates are for life or for a year, how long support lasts, and what a renewal costs.
6. Documentation. A page per setting, or a README. You will read it more than once.
7. Settings against code. How much of the theme changes in Settings → Design and how much needs a code edit.
8. AI agents. A theme that ships an AGENTS.md file and Markdown documentation can be customised by Claude Code or Cursor, and the agent knows which files a theme update replaces. Every theme we sell ships both, and its agent file points changes at custom.css and custom.js, the two files an update ships unchanged, so carrying them over is a copy rather than a merge. The update guide has the steps.
9. Refunds. Digital goods are rarely refundable once delivered. Read the terms. Ours consider a refund for a duplicate purchase and for a fault support cannot fix, and for nothing else.

Upload the zip in Settings → Design → Change theme, activate it, and your posts, pages and members stay where they are. A theme with custom URLs also ships a routes.yaml, which goes in under Settings → Labs. Custom page templates and theme settings do not carry over from the old theme, so check pages that used one. The steps for our themes are in the installation guide.

Describe your site in the chat on this page. It answers from our documentation, so it can tell you what each of our themes does and does not do. If the chat does not load, write to us. For two of our themes side by side, open a direct comparison. For everything else, the marketplace filters by category and price.