BBC Four (BBC 4) TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On BBC Four Tonight

Published: 12 September 2026

BBC Four is the BBC’s home for arts, culture, history, music and archive documentary, and unlike almost everything else on the electronic programme guide it simply isn’t there during the day. A “programmes start at 7.00pm” holding card fills the schedule from first thing in the morning through the whole afternoon; the channel actually opens two minutes early, at 6:58pm, with the short This is BBC Four ident, and CBeebies takes it back at 6am. It sits on Freeview channel 9, carries no advertising because the licence fee pays for it, and puts more or less everything it broadcasts onto BBC iPlayer afterwards. Tonight, Sunday 13 September 2026, cricket highlights open the evening at 7pm with Today at the Test: England v Pakistan, followed by Unmissable Moments at the Proms 2026 at 8pm, a run through highlights from across the summer’s festival. From 10pm the channel turns to two short “Remembers…” introductions, each paired with the archive film it sets up: Selina Thompson on Salt, then Stephen Tompkinson on The Deep Blue Sea, which carries the channel to nearly 1am. Full breakdown below.

BBC Four Schedule: Sunday 13 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete BBC Four schedule for Sunday 13 September 2026, on Freeview 9.

Overnight

Morning

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

BBC Four tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the BBC Four primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 13 September 2026.

This is BBC Four — BBC Four, 6:58pm

A two-minute ident marking the channel’s nightly return, two minutes ahead of its own 7pm schedule.

Today at the Test: England v Pakistan — BBC Four, 7pm

Highlights from the day’s play in the Test, the channel’s regular evening opener whenever an England series is under way.

Unmissable Moments at the Proms 2026 — BBC Four, 8pm

A compilation drawing on performances from across this year’s festival season, rather than a single concert in full.

Selina Thompson Remembers… Salt, then Salt — BBC Four, 10pm

A brief introduction from Selina Thompson leads straight into her own 2021 television adaptation of Salt, the performance piece built around retracing the transatlantic slave trade route by cargo ship.

Stephen Tompkinson Remembers… The Deep Blue Sea, then The Deep Blue Sea — BBC Four, 11pm

Stephen Tompkinson introduces the 1994 film of Terence Rattigan’s play, which follows straight after. Penelope Wilton, Colin Firth and Ian Holm star, and the film runs to nearly 1am.

What kind of shows are on BBC Four

Documentaries, history and the natural history archive

This is the backbone of the schedule. Attenborough series like Life on Earth sit alongside Natural World instalments and long-running science and history strands. Very little of it is new. Most has already had at least one outing on BBC One or BBC Two, and BBC Four is where it airs again a few years later.

Music archive: Top of the Pops and BBC Four Sessions

On plenty of nights the schedule turns to music once the evening’s main strand is done, with vintage Top of the Pops and Old Grey Whistle Test repeats among the regulars and the odd BBC Four Sessions recording running into the small hours. Some of those performances aren’t shown anywhere else on television. Tonight, the archive turn instead goes to classic sitcom rather than music, covered in full below.

Tonight’s mix: cricket highlights, the Proms, then two archive-film introductions

There’s no BBC Four to speak of before 6:58pm. A “programmes start at 7.00pm” holding card runs in blocks from 5:30am through the entire day, and the channel doesn’t reopen until the two-minute This is BBC Four ident, a little ahead of its own schedule, at 6:58pm. The evening opens with Today at the Test: England v Pakistan highlights at 7pm, then Unmissable Moments at the Proms 2026 takes the 8pm hour with a run through the summer’s festival highlights. From 10pm the schedule turns to archive film, with each one set up by a short “Remembers…” introduction: Selina Thompson on Salt, then Stephen Tompkinson on The Deep Blue Sea, which keeps the channel on air until nearly 1am.

How to watch BBC Four

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find BBC Four across the main UK television platforms:

BBC Four is free to watch on all of the above, though you’ll need a valid UK TV licence to watch it live, the same as any other BBC channel. Virgin Media and Freesat numbers can shift slightly by region, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t quite match.

Streaming online

BBC Four streams live and free through BBC iPlayer, on smart TVs, phones, tablets, games consoles and in a browser at bbc.co.uk/iplayer. You’ll need a free BBC account to sign in. Once you’re in, BBC Four sits with the other BBC channels under the “Channels” tab, and its archive series are browsable separately.

BBC Four and BBC iPlayer

The live broadcast runs on iPlayer in full, so anything between 7pm and closedown can be watched as it goes out or picked up shortly after. The archive is the more useful half, though. It reaches a long way past whatever fits into one evening: full Attenborough box sets, older documentary strands that stopped getting a repeat slot years ago, music collections that only surface on air at two in the morning. If you like the idea of BBC Four more than you like remembering to switch it on at 9pm, that is where to start.

Frequently asked questions

Does BBC Four have adverts?

No. It’s funded by the licence fee, so there are no ad breaks anywhere in the schedule.

Is BBC Four free to watch?

There’s no separate subscription for BBC Four itself, but you do need a TV licence to watch it live, or to watch most of it back on iPlayer, the same as any other BBC channel.

What is the relationship between BBC Four and BBC Three?

Shared history rather than a shared schedule. BBC Three closed as a broadcast channel in 2016 and spent six years online-only before returning to linear TV in February 2022. That return reshuffled channel numbers on some platforms; on Virgin Media, the two now sit next to each other at 107 and 108. Over roughly the same stretch BBC Four stopped commissioning much new original programming and moved towards repeats and archive. The nightly live broadcast never went away.

Verdict

BBC Four is one of the better-value channels on British free television, provided you know what you’re going there for. Most nights, nothing on it is new. What’s on it is a decent share of the best things the BBC has ever made, given a proper repeat run years after it first went out.

Tonight fits that pattern closely: nothing until 6:58pm, then cricket highlights from the Test open the evening before Unmissable Moments at the Proms 2026 takes the 8pm hour. From 10pm the schedule pairs two archive films with a short introduction apiece, Salt and then The Deep Blue Sea, carrying the channel to nearly 1am. Nothing live is being shown, so it suits anyone after a quieter highlights-and-archive-film evening rather than someone chasing a single big event.

Related: What’s On TV Tonight | BBC One TV Guide | Films on TV This Week