ITV3 TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On ITV3 Tonight

Published: 25 August 2026

ITV3 is ITV’s drama channel, launched on 1 November 2004 as a home for the broadcaster’s back catalogue of detective series, period drama and classic sitcoms. Midsomer Murders, Vera, Wycliffe, Inspector Morse: if it involves a body in a village and a detective who doesn’t much like being interrupted, it has probably run here. Today, Wednesday 26 August 2026, eleven programme titles cover the day’s 23 scheduled slots, with George and Mildred, Classic Emmerdale, Classic Coronation Street, Poirot and Heartbeat each airing in pairs through the morning and afternoon. Primetime opens early with a second Heartbeat double from 5:50pm, before Midsomer Murders takes the full two-hour 8pm slot, Lewis follows at 10pm and Inspector Morse closes out at 11:50pm. There’s no film on ITV3 tonight, and Vera and Wycliffe are both off the schedule; Trial and Retribution, which closed out last night, is gone too.

ITV3 Schedule: Wednesday 26 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete ITV3 schedule for Wednesday 26 August 2026, on Freeview 10.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on ITV3 today

Wednesday’s daytime line-up leans heavily on doubled-up archive strands. Overnight closes out last night’s final Trial and Retribution instalment just before 1am, then a George and Mildred repeat at 1:50am and a short Unwind with ITV segment at 2:15am, before three and a half hours of teleshopping through to 6am.

Breakfast runs a George and Mildred double from 6am, then two archive strands back to back: Classic Emmerdale from 7:05am and Classic Coronation Street from 8:05am, both 2009 vintage episodes and a deliberate throwback next to the current Emmerdale and Coronation Street, both of which are on ITV1 this evening. Agatha Christie’s Poirot takes the late morning with a double from 9:10am, before a Heartbeat double from 11:30am carries the channel to 1:35pm. The afternoon has a single Midsomer Murders case at 1:35pm, then repeats the same Classic Emmerdale and Classic Coronation Street pairing from 3:35pm before Heartbeat’s evening double opens at 5:50pm.

ITV3 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the ITV3 primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 26 August 2026.

Heartbeat — ITV3, 5:50pm

ITV3’s evening effectively starts more than two hours before the billed primetime slot. This first Heartbeat case sends Aidensfield’s police after a group of teenagers staging an illicit “chicken run” with stolen cars, with Sergeant Merton caught in the middle of the fallout.

Heartbeat — ITV3, 6:55pm

A second episode runs straight on, this time built around a fire at Peter Pyke’s warehouse and what PC Steve Crane finds when he starts digging into how it started. Between them the two episodes hold the 6pm hour and run to 8pm.

Midsomer Murders — ITV3, 8pm

The night’s main event is A Dying Art, a feature-length case set around the opening of a sculpture park in the village of Angel’s Rise, where the launch exhibition turns into a murder inquiry. Two hours, no other programme on the channel gets close to that kind of commitment tonight.

Lewis — ITV3, 10pm

Lewis returns for the first half of a two-parter, Entry Wounds, which pulls the retired detective back into work to help investigate a neurosurgeon’s murder. It runs to 11:50pm, with the second half presumably following on a future date.

Inspector Morse — ITV3, 11:50pm

The night closes on the original, as ITV3 evenings usually do. Promised Land sends Morse and Lewis out to the Australian outback chasing a former supergrass, one of the rare cases that takes the pair outside Oxford altogether. It runs through to around 2am.

What kind of shows are on ITV3

Detective drama and cosy crime

The backbone. Midsomer Murders, Vera, Inspector Morse, Endeavour and Wycliffe cover roughly four decades of British detective television between them, and ITV3 works through them in long runs rather than one-off repeats. You can usually pick a series up mid-week and stay with it.

Period and literary adaptation

The Darling Buds of May, and Agatha Christie’s Poirot when it comes round. David Suchet played the part across thirteen series for ITV between 1989 and 2013. These tend to be scheduled in full-series blocks.

Classic sitcom

George and Mildred and its ITV contemporaries fill the overnight and early-morning slots. Nobody’s setting an alarm for these; they’re on while the day gets going.

How to watch ITV3

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find ITV3 across the main UK television platforms:

Free on all of them, no subscription. Numbers shift regionally, so check your on-screen guide if one doesn’t match.

Streaming online

ITV3 streams live and free through ITVX, at itv.com/watch and via the ITVX app on smart TVs, mobiles, tablets and most games consoles. A free account is all that’s needed, no payment details. The ITVX library also carries individual episodes and full boxsets from the channel, Vera and Poirot included, if you’d rather not wait for a repeat to come round.

ITV3 +1 and sister channels

The +1 channel is less useful than it used to be. Since November 2023 it has broadcast only a reduced overnight window rather than a full hour-behind simulcast, so if you’ve missed the start of something, ITVX catch-up is the better bet.

ITV3 sits alongside ITV1, home to Coronation Street, Emmerdale and the network’s biggest primetime shows, and ITV4, which handles sport, action films and older action series.

Frequently asked questions

What channel is ITV3 on Freeview?

Channel 10, free to air.

What’s on ITV3 tonight?

A Heartbeat double opens the evening at 5:50pm and 6:55pm, then Midsomer Murders takes the full two-hour 8pm slot, Lewis follows at 10pm and Inspector Morse closes the night at 11:50pm. Vera is off the schedule today. Times are in the rundown above.

Can I watch ITV3 online for free?

Yes, live through ITVX on the website, the app, and most smart TVs and consoles.

Is ITV3 free to watch?

Yes, and it has been since 2004. There’s advertising, but no subscription fee on any platform.

Verdict

ITV3 has never pretended to be about new television, and today’s eleven titles across 23 slots is a fairly typical spread for the channel, with a run of doubled-up archive strands carrying the morning and afternoon before Heartbeat opens the evening more than two hours early. There’s no film on the schedule today, and Midsomer Murders gets both an afternoon case and the full two-hour evening slot, with Vera and Wycliffe both absent altogether. The evening still runs five slots from 5:50pm through to around 2am — Heartbeat twice, then Midsomer Murders, Lewis and Inspector Morse in succession — which suits a channel built on depth rather than variety. It’s a schedule for dipping in and out of rather than sitting through start to finish, and one of the easier ways into British detective and country drama on Freeview, since you can land in almost any slot from late morning onwards and still follow what’s going on.

Related: ITV1 TV Guide | ITV4 TV Guide | What’s On TV Tonight | Films on TV This Week