ITV1 TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On ITV1 Tonight

ITV1 is the UK’s biggest commercial channel: Freeview 3, channel 103 on Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat, free on ITVX if you can stomach the ad breaks. Sunday 16 August 2026 has no soaps at all, but four separate premieres: a new Force of Nature at 7pm, Van Der Valk’s latest Amsterdam case at 8pm, the comedy-drama Sunny Nights arriving at 10:15pm and the documentary 25 Years in Afghanistan closing the night at 11:15pm. Channel numbers are further down the page.

ITV1 Schedule: Sunday 16 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete ITV1 schedule for Sunday 16 August 2026, on Freeview 3.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on ITV1 today — the daytime schedule

It’s Sunday, so the weekday run of Good Morning Britain, This Morning, Tipping Point and The Chase stays off air. Highlights of Saturday’s Football League fixtures open the overnight schedule at 12:10am, followed by the shopping strand Shop on TV from 1:30am. Cold Case Forensics: In the Blood takes the 3am slot, part of the run in which forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop and her team re-examine some of Britain’s most notorious unsolved murders. Unwind with ITV, the channel’s nightly wind-down strand of ambient landscape footage and calming music, fills 3:50am to 5:05am, before a repeat of Fern Britton: Inside the Vet’s closes out the overnight run.

James Martin covers breakfast twice over: his American Adventure airs at 6am, and James Martin’s Saturday Morning — despite the name — is a Sunday repeat of Saturday’s studio show from 7am, with its usual run of celebrity guests and recipes. Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh takes the late-morning slot from 9:30am, ITV’s regular Sunday magazine mix of guests, gardening and human interest.

The early afternoon brings a new episode of Fern Britton: Inside the Vet’s at 11:30am, then Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy at 12:30pm, in which the chef works through Italian dishes and techniques. After the 1pm news, an earlier episode of Force of Nature airs at 1:05pm ahead of tonight’s new instalment, then Roger Moore’s Bond takes the 2:10pm film slot in Octopussy (1983), running through to The Chase Celebrity Special at 4:45pm and The Chase Around the World at 5:45pm.

ITV1 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

No soap tonight — Sunday’s line-up is built around four premieres, headed by a returning wildlife documentary and a new detective case.

The regional news at 6:40pm and 6:50pm sets up the evening as usual.

Force of Nature — ITV1, 7pm

Andrew Lincoln narrates the fourth instalment of this wildlife series, which tracks how storms, drought and vanishing ice are forcing animals to change how they live. Three years of filming carried the crew from Arctic ice floes to the Caribbean, following polar bears, sea otters and flamingos as extreme weather closes in on their habitats.

Van Der Valk — ITV1, 8pm

Marc Warren’s detective gets a new case, “Secrets in Amsterdam”, after a scientist working on a potential cancer breakthrough turns up dead. The investigation unravels into a puzzle with consequences that reach one of the team personally.

Sunny Nights — ITV1, 10:15pm

Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden headline this Australian import as an American brother and sister who set up a mobile spray-tan business in Sydney, only to get dragged into the city’s underworld. It’s a dark comedy about ambition curdling into desperation, and tonight’s opener marks its UK debut.

25 Years in Afghanistan — ITV1, 11:15pm

This film catches up with Mir, who was seven when cameras first found him living among the ruins of the Buddhas of Bamiyan back in 2002. New footage, shot since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, extends a portrait already built across two decades and a BAFTA win for its earlier chapter.

Popular shows on ITV1

Soaps

Coronation Street is the world’s longest-running soap opera, first broadcast in December 1960 and set in fictional Weatherfield in Greater Manchester. Sixty-five years on it’s still one of ITV’s most-watched programmes. The 2026 move to nightly half-hour episodes cut the wandering subplots and the show is better for it. Emmerdale, set in a Yorkshire Dales village, has run since 1972 and leans on long slow-burn storylines, with the odd plane crash or storm when the ratings need a jolt.

Quizzes and game shows

The Chase is the strongest quiz ITV1 has. Bradley Walsh hosts it, and the six Chasers each have their own following: Anne Hegerty, Paul Sinha, Mark Labbett, Shaun Wallace, Jenny Ryan and Darragh Ennis. Mine’s Hegerty, for the record. The format has also spawned foreign versions and a celebrity edition.

Tipping Point, ITV1’s other daily quiz, is the simpler of the pair: get a question right, drop a counter into the machine, hope it shoves some money off the shelf. Ben Shephard fronts it.

Entertainment

Britain’s Got Talent returns each spring for its auditions, with Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dixon and Bruno Tonioli on the panel. The live shows pull some of the biggest Saturday-night audiences on linear TV.

I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has aired every autumn since 2002. The premise is thin: recognisable faces stuck in a remote camp with nothing to do but bicker and eat insects. It still pulls millions, which says something, though I’m not sure what.

How to watch ITV1 live and on demand

Channel numbers

ITV1 is free-to-air on all of these. The regional version you get is set by the postcode on your account or box setup.

ITVX

ITV1 streams live and free on ITVX at itv.com/watch, and through the ITVX app on smart TVs, iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, the Sky boxes, Virgin Media TV360 and most streaming sticks. You need a free ITVX account, just an email and password, no card details.

Most programmes stay on demand for 30 days after broadcast. Emmerdale and Coronation Street go up at 7am on broadcast day, hours before they air on TV.

To watch the live stream you need a TV Licence, the same as watching any live channel online in the UK. On-demand catch-up doesn’t. ITVX is funded by advertising like the channel itself; an optional ITVX Premium subscription strips the ads from on-demand viewing.

ITV1 regions, STV and UTV

ITV1 isn’t one channel but a network of regional licence holders sharing the national schedule and producing their own local news. The bulletins around the ITV Evening News come from whichever licence holder covers your area: ITV London, Granada, ITV Central, Meridian, Yorkshire, Anglia, Border, Tyne Tees, Wales and West Country.

Scotland is the exception. In the centre and north, STV (Scottish Television) holds the channel-3 licence as an independent broadcaster. It runs most of the ITV1 schedule, including Coronation Street, Emmerdale, The Chase and Britain’s Got Talent. But it makes its own news and some of its own drama and factual output, and runs a separate streaming service, STV Player. STV isn’t owned by ITV.

In Northern Ireland the channel-3 licence belongs to UTV (Ulster Television), which carries the network schedule alongside its own local news. UTV is owned by ITV plc. Both STV and UTV sit on channel 3 on Freeview in their regions.

Frequently asked questions

What time are Emmerdale and Coronation Street on ITV1?

Both soaps keep to their weeknight run, Emmerdale at 8pm and Coronation Street straight after at 8:30pm, Monday to Friday, landing on ITVX from 7am the same morning. Weekend episodes happen occasionally.

What’s on ITV1 tonight?

No soaps tonight, it’s a Sunday. A new Force of Nature opens primetime at 7pm, before Van Der Valk’s latest Amsterdam investigation takes the 8pm slot. Sunny Nights arrives at 10:15pm and 25 Years in Afghanistan closes the night at 11:15pm. Full listings are in the schedule table above.

Is ITV1 the same as STV in Scotland?

No. Across most of Scotland the channel-3 slot is STV, and in Northern Ireland it is UTV.

Verdict

Sunday 16 August is a premieres night rather than a soap night: no Emmerdale, no Coronation Street, just four new arrivals back to back. Force of Nature opens at 7pm with its climate-under-pressure wildlife footage, then Van Der Valk’s new Amsterdam case takes the 8pm slot.

Sunny Nights gets its UK bow at 10:15pm, a darker spin on the fish-out-of-water comedy, before 25 Years in Afghanistan closes the night at 11:15pm with an update on a story ITV has followed for over two decades. Daytime stays busy too, with James Martin’s cooking, Alan Titchmarsh’s Sunday magazine and two runs of The Chase filling the afternoon.

Watch

Related: What’s On TV Tonight | ITV1 Schedule | Films on TV This Week