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

Sky Arts is the UK’s only dedicated arts channel: live concerts, gallery and biography documentaries, its own painting competitions, and a great deal of archive drama holding the gaps together. It has been free-to-air since 17 September 2020, when it arrived on Freeview and Freesat alongside its existing Sky and Virgin Media carriage. No subscription, no account, no catch.

Tonight, Tuesday 4 August 2026, the archive drama runs on into primetime as usual, but the 8pm slot swaps a concert for something odder: The World In A Painting spends an hour and a quarter tracing a single chili pepper through a Velazquez canvas. Beyond The Brush pairs Botticelli and Da Vinci either side of 9pm, and the second Wonderland instalment turns to Gothic literature at 10:15pm. Times and channel numbers for every platform are in the tables below.

Sky Arts Schedule: Tuesday 4 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Sky Arts schedule for Tuesday 4 August 2026, on Freeview 11.

What’s on Sky Arts today

Tuesday’s overnight hours stay in the concert hall: the first half of Nicola Benedetti’s Edinburgh International Festival set opens at 12:40am, Miriam Margolyes narrates Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at 2:15am, and the closing part of Opera North’s Resonance follows at 3:45am. The Sky Arts Book Club sits down with novelist Caleb Azumah Nelson at 4am, then the four-part Wonderland opens its run through authors from J.M. Barrie to J.R.R. Tolkien at 5am. Julian Lloyd Webber picks his choices for Classic FM’s Rising Stars at 6am, and Bagpipes – A Celebration takes the 7am hour before Bob Ross settles in for The Joy Of Painting at 8am and 8:30am.

From 9am the anthology strands take over for most of the day. Tales Of The Unexpected and Alfred Hitchcock Presents trade half-hour slots through the morning, Discovering: Joan Fontaine gets a full hour at 11am, and Wonderland’s second episode takes the midday slot. The same rotation runs on into the afternoon until The Seventies at 3pm and Discovering: Richard Harris at 4pm break it up, before Portrait Artist Of The Year closes the daytime run at 5pm with its finale, in which one of the competition’s artists gets to paint the violinist Nicola Benedetti.

Sky Arts tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Sky Arts primetime line-up for tonight, Tuesday 4 August 2026.

Tales Of The Unexpected — Sky Arts, 6pm

“A Time To Die” (series 9, episode 9) catches Yves mid-affair: his marriage has gone flat, his mistress has just announced she’s pregnant, and the episode follows the decision he makes rather than judging it.

Tales Of The Unexpected — Sky Arts, 6:30pm

“Mr Know-All” (series 9, episode 10) turns on a hotel worker charmed by a guest who claims rather too much expertise. Archaeologist Max Kelada isn’t quite who he says he is, and the episode gets there without much fuss.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents — Sky Arts, 7pm

“You Can’t Be a Little Girl All Your Life” (series 7, episode 7) puts a woman who has survived an attack under fresh pressure from her husband and the police to name a suspect. It’s a quieter episode than the title suggests, more concerned with the aftermath than the crime.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents — Sky Arts, 7:30pm

Richard Conte and Sara Shane lead “The Old Pro” (series 7, episode 8), in which a retired hitman finds retirement doesn’t stick. He has to start killing again to protect his wife and stay alive himself.

The World In A Painting: Velazquez’s Chili Pepper — Sky Arts, 8pm

Tonight’s longest documentary takes an unusual route into 17th-century Spanish art. Rather than starting with brushwork, it follows a single chili pepper through trade routes and conquest to the moment it turns up on Velazquez’s canvas. The film runs an hour and a quarter, in the slot usually reserved for a concert.

Beyond The Brush — Sky Arts, 9:15pm

Beyond The Brush turns to Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” (series 1, episode 5), working through the myth behind the image and the technique that has kept it in circulation for more than five centuries.

Beyond The Brush — Sky Arts, 9:45pm

Half an hour later the same strand moves to Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (series 1, episode 6), looking at the perspective trick that pulls the eye to the centre of the mural and the theories that have grown up around it since.

Wonderland: Gothic — Sky Arts, 10:15pm

The second of Wonderland’s four episodes turns from children’s authors to Gothic fiction, running from Bram Stoker’s Dracula through Oscar Wilde and Jane Austen. Vampires and werewolves get a mention along the way.

The Movies — Sky Arts, 11:15pm

The strand’s opening episode, “The Golden Age Pt 1” (series 1, episode 1), covers American cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s, the decades that made Marilyn Monroe a household name and produced The Wizard of Oz.

What kind of shows are on Sky Arts

Live concerts and music documentaries

Concerts get the money and the camera crews, from arena nights with Andre Rieu down to something as small as Nicola Benedetti & Friends. Classic Albums goes through a record’s studio history track by track, usually with someone who was there at the mixing desk soloing the parts. The Discovering strand does the same job for careers rather than records.

Its own arts competitions

Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year are the channel’s best-known commissions: amateur and professional painters working against the clock on a real sitter or a real view, judged by a rotating panel that has included Kate Bryan, Kathleen Soriano and Tai-Shan Schierenberg, with Stephen Mangan hosting. The jeopardy is real because the deadline is real, which is more than most competition formats can say. Watercolour Challenge, now running as an archive repeat, is the lighter version: three amateurs, one scene, four hours.

Archive drama and classic film

The two Hitchcock strands and Tales of the Unexpected are anthology drama, built on twist endings rather than continuing storylines, which is exactly why they survive being shown out of order at half past one on a midweek afternoon. The Movies puts short introductions in front of older features so daytime viewers get some context first.

How to watch Sky Arts

Channel numbers

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

Virgin Media, Sky and Freely channel numbers can vary slightly by region and box, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t match.

Streaming online

There’s no free standalone web player for Sky Arts in the way some other free-to-air channels offer one. Existing Sky TV customers can stream it through the Sky Go app at no extra cost, while anyone can add a NOW Entertainment Membership to watch Sky Arts live plus its substantial on-demand library, though that membership carries its own monthly cost.

Sky Arts streaming and catch-up

The linear schedule is the catch-up service. Sky Arts repeats its concert specials and music documentaries often, usually around an anniversary or whenever an artist is back in the news, so a missed broadcast tends to come round again within a few months. Worth checking the listings rather than assuming it has gone.

Frequently asked questions

What channel is Sky Arts on Freeview?

Sky Arts is on Freeview channel 11, with no subscription or account needed to watch it.

Is Sky Arts free to watch?

Yes. It’s been free-to-air since 17 September 2020, when it launched on Freeview and Freesat. There’s advertising during programmes, but no fee to watch the live channel on any platform.

What’s on Sky Arts tonight?

Two episodes of Tales Of The Unexpected open the evening at 6pm and 6:30pm, then Alfred Hitchcock Presents doubles up at 7pm and 7:30pm. The World In A Painting: Velazquez’s Chili Pepper takes the 8pm slot, Beyond The Brush covers Botticelli and Da Vinci from 9:15pm, and Wonderland: Gothic and The Movies close the night at 10:15pm and 11:15pm. Full times are in the schedule table above.

Can I watch Sky Arts online for free?

Only through an aerial, dish or existing Sky/Virgin box. There’s no free web stream for a phone or laptop. Existing Sky customers get Sky Go at no extra cost; everyone else would need a paid NOW Entertainment Membership for Sky Arts live plus its on-demand catalogue.

Verdict

Sky Arts earns its keep, mostly. Nothing else on free-to-air British television commissions arts programming at this scale, and the concert strand is the sort of thing a subscription service would happily charge for. The archive drama filling the daytime is comfortable rather than essential, and there is an awful lot of it.

Tonight leans on the archive drama again before the schedule turns to original commissions after 8pm. Two more Tales Of The Unexpected repeats and two more Alfred Hitchcock Presents fill the run-in, then The World In A Painting takes an unusual angle on art history, tracing a chili pepper rather than a brushstroke. Beyond The Brush’s look at Botticelli and Da Vinci either side of 9pm is the stronger pairing, working through technique rather than trivia, before Wonderland and The Movies close out the night after 10pm.

Related: BBC Four TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide