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 17 August 2026, primetime runs archive drama into live music: two episodes of Tales Of The Unexpected and two of Alfred Hitchcock Presents lead into a three-hour Andre Rieu concert film, before the Academy of Ancient Music close the night with Vivaldi. Full breakdown below.

Sky Arts Schedule: Monday 17 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Sky Arts schedule for Monday 17 August 2026, on Freeview 11.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Sky Arts today

Monday’s overnight hours stay in music-documentary territory: Johnson & Knopfler’s Music Legends plays from 12:25am, a Brendan Gleeson stage show follows at 1:25am, then The Chieftains: Down The Old Plank Road – The Nashville Sessions, the Irish band’s collaboration with a run of Nashville country names, airs from 2:45am. A Classic Albums edition on Elvis Presley closes out the night at 5am. Breakfast turns to a compilation strand, Musical Masterpieces, at 6am, then Battle Of The Irish Dancers at 7am, before two half-hour editions of Artist Of The Year: Masterclass run back to back from 8am.

Archive drama takes over the late morning: two episodes of Tales Of The Unexpected run from 9am, followed straight away by two of Alfred Hitchcock Presents from 10am. A Discovering profile of Janet Leigh follows at 11am, then The Art Of Film opens the afternoon at midday. A further pair of Tales Of The Unexpected episodes airs from 1pm, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour takes the 2pm slot, The Eighties looks back at the decade from 3pm, and a Discovering profile of Rod Steiger runs at 4pm. Portrait Artist Of The Year 2023 closes out the early evening from 5pm, before two more editions of Tales Of The Unexpected lead into primetime from 6pm.

Sky Arts tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Sky Arts primetime line-up for tonight, Monday 17 August 2026.

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

Two more instalments of the Roald Dahl-rooted anthology open the evening back to back. Each half hour is a self-contained story building to its own twist, so there’s no thread to pick up between the two, just a change of cast and setting.

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

Hitchcock’s own anthology strand takes over straight after, a pair of season-seven episodes running at 7pm and 7:30pm. The format has aged surprisingly well: a short set-up, a sting in the tail, and Hitchcock’s own dry introductions bookending each one.

Andre Rieu: Shall We Dance? — Sky Arts, 8pm

The evening’s centrepiece is a three-hour concert film running through to 11pm. Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra perform outdoors in Maastricht, his home city and the usual stage for these events, backed by soloists, dancers and a choir.

Academy Of Ancient Music: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons — Sky Arts, 11pm

The night closes with a change of register. Violinist Rachel Podger leads the Academy of Ancient Music through Vivaldi’s best-known work on period instruments, a smaller-scale, indoor booking after three hours of open-air spectacle.

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 primetime at 6pm and 6:30pm, followed by two of Alfred Hitchcock Presents at 7pm and 7:30pm. Andre Rieu: Shall We Dance? then runs from 8pm to 11pm, when the Academy of Ancient Music close the night with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. 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 archive drama into concert rather than film: four half-hour anthology episodes clear the ground before Andre Rieu’s three-hour concert takes over the back half of the evening, with the Academy of Ancient Music offering a quieter classical close after. It’s a heavier dose of repeats than usual before the main event arrives, but none of it costs anything to watch.

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