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, Wednesday 5 August 2026, the archive drama runs into primetime as usual before Voices Of The Valleys returns with a new episode at 8pm. Bryn Terfel: Celtic Beethoven follows at 9pm, with the bass-baritone joined by the Galician piper Carlos Núñez for a set of Beethoven’s folk song arrangements, and Riverdance: 25th Anniversary Show closes the night from 10:25pm. Times and channel numbers for every platform are in the tables below.

Sky Arts Schedule: Wednesday 5 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Sky Arts schedule for Wednesday 5 August 2026, on Freeview 11.

What’s on Sky Arts today

Wednesday’s overnight hours open with a profile of Steve McQueen at 12:15am, drawing on his son and former wives for the fuller picture behind the racing and the film roles. Voices Of The Valleys gets an early airing of its new episode at 2am, hours ahead of its primetime slot, following three Welsh male-voice choirs through their own particular struggles. World War II & Cinema looks at the industry’s entanglement with Nazism at 3am, and the Sky Arts Book Club brings Natasha Brown and Marian Keyes together with Bernardine Evaristo as a guest at 4am. Wonderland continues its four-part run through classic authors at 5am, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra plays film themes from the Royal Albert Hall at 6am, and 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: Richard Harris gets a full hour at 11am, and Wonderland’s third episode takes the midday slot. The same rotation runs on into the afternoon until The Seventies looks at the crime wave of the decade at 3pm and Discovering: James Coburn profiles the Magnificent Seven actor at 4pm, before a Best Of compilation closes the Portrait Artist Of The Year daytime run at 5pm with highlights from its eighth series.

Sky Arts tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Sky Arts primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 5 August 2026.

The Man from the South — Sky Arts, 6pm

The archive run opens with a young American couple on a Caribbean holiday, cornered by a courteous old stranger who proposes a bet neither of them should take seriously. He does. The story is Roald Dahl’s, and it set the tone for the whole Tales Of The Unexpected run: pleasant surroundings, an unpleasant proposition.

Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat — Sky Arts, 6:30pm

A second Dahl adaptation follows straight after. Mrs Bixby can’t tell her dentist husband where an expensive fur coat came from, so she invents a story to cover for her lover’s gift. Cyril, as it turns out, notices things for a living.

Services Rendered — Sky Arts, 7pm

A man comes round with no idea who he is, holding nothing but a large bill and a doctor’s address. Stephen Dunne and Hugh Marlowe carry the search for his own past, which turns out to be worth forgetting.

Right Kind of Medicine — Sky Arts, 7:30pm

A gunman who has just shot a police officer needs his prescription filled before the wound finishes him off, and picks entirely the wrong pharmacy to rush it through. A young Robert Redford stars, several years before he was a household name.

Voices Of The Valleys — Sky Arts, 8pm

New tonight: the first episode of a three-part series following Welsh male-voice choirs in different parts of the country, each with its own numbers problem or funding worry to solve before the next competition. It’s a gentler hour than the drama either side of it, and a change of pace the schedule needs.

Bryn Terfel: Celtic Beethoven — Sky Arts, 9pm

Bryn Terfel is joined by the Galician piper Carlos Núñez and the Orchestre National de Bretagne for an hour built around Beethoven’s own arrangements of Scottish, Irish and Welsh folk songs, an unexpected corner of the composer’s output for a bass-baritone better known for opera.

Riverdance: 25th Anniversary Show — Sky Arts, 10:25pm

A reworked staging marks a quarter of a century since Riverdance first opened, with the same claim to a mass audience it had in 1994: an interval act that outgrew the show it interrupted. Two hours closes out the night.

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. A new episode of Voices Of The Valleys takes the 8pm slot, Bryn Terfel: Celtic Beethoven brings in guest musician Carlos Núñez at 9pm, and Riverdance: 25th Anniversary Show closes the night from 10:25pm. 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 a new Voices Of The Valleys takes the softer 8pm slot. Bryn Terfel: Celtic Beethoven is the stronger pull of the two commissions, an hour of Beethoven’s folk arrangements with Carlos Núñez’s piping running through it, before Riverdance: 25th Anniversary Show closes out the night from 10:25pm.

Related: BBC Four TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide