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 plenty of archive drama besides. 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. There’s no subscription and no account needed to watch it.

Tonight, Monday 10 August 2026, the evening moves from archive drama into two arts commissions: Andre Rieu’s concert film from Berlin at 8pm, then a recording of the stage musical Billy Elliot from 9:45pm.

Sky Arts Schedule: Monday 10 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Sky Arts schedule for Monday 10 August 2026, on Freeview 11.

What’s on Sky Arts today

Monday’s overnight run is concert film: Deep Purple’s 1984 Melbourne reunion show Perfect Strangers from 12:30am, then Oasis’s There and Then, filmed on the summer leg of their 1996 tour, from 3am. U2’s Joshua Tree gets the Classic Albums treatment at 4:55am, and Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo fills the 6am-to-8am slot. Two Artist Of The Year: Masterclass tutorials, with past contestants talking through painting technique, follow at 8am and 8:30am.

The daytime schedule is largely archive drama. Four Tales Of The Unexpected episodes are spread across the morning and early afternoon (9am, 9:30am, 1pm, 1:30pm), interleaved with two Alfred Hitchcock Presents instalments at 10am and 10:30am and an hour of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour at 2pm. Discovering: Peter Sellers airs at 11am, The Art Of Film looks at Powell and Pressburger at 12pm, The Eighties revisits the birth of the music video at 3pm, and Discovering: Robert Shaw profiles the Jaws actor at 4pm. Portrait Artist Of The Year 2022 closes out the afternoon at 5pm, before the evening schedule takes over.

Sky Arts tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Sky Arts primetime line-up for tonight, Monday 10 August 2026.

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

Two back-to-back episodes open the evening. Edward the Conqueror, at 6pm, follows a husband who’s grown tired of his wife’s attachment to a stray cat, an irritation that comes back to bite him. The 6:30pm follow-up, A Dip in the Pool, has an American gambler on a cruise liner hatching a scheme to slow the ship down and win a bet.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents — Sky Arts, 7pm & 7:30pm

Two more archive half-hours follow. Robert Loggia and Barbara Baxley star in the 7pm episode, Case of M.J.H., where a psychiatrist’s secretary is pressured by a shady suitor into stealing files from her office. Sidney Blackmer takes the lead at 7:30pm in The Faith of Aaron Menefee, playing a garage mechanic talked into becoming a faith healer’s chauffeur after an apparent cure.

Andre Rieu: La Vie Est Belle — Sky Arts, 8pm

Andre Rieu leads his orchestra through an open-air set in Berlin, opening with Ravel before working in the love theme from Doctor Zhivago and ending, as ever, on Auld Lang Syne. It’s the format he’s built a career on: big outdoor venues and a set list of instantly recognisable pieces rather than anything more testing. The concert runs from 8pm, ahead of the night’s second arts commission at 9:45pm.

Billy Elliot: The Musical — Sky Arts, 9:45pm

A filmed capture of the stage musical that has run at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre since 2005, following a mining town boy whose ambition to dance collides with his family’s expectations.

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 two more Alfred Hitchcock Presents follow at 7pm and 7:30pm. Andre Rieu: La Vie Est Belle takes the 8pm slot with a concert filmed in Berlin, and Billy Elliot: The Musical closes the night from 9:45pm. 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 follows the same shape. Two Tales Of The Unexpected repeats and two more Alfred Hitchcock Presents fill the run-in to 8pm, then the evening turns to the channel’s real strengths: Andre Rieu’s Berlin concert at 8pm and a filmed staging of Billy Elliot: The Musical from 9:45pm.

Related: BBC Four TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Films on TV This Week