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

Published: 23 August 2026

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 24 August 2026, the evening splits cleanly in two: an hour of archive anthology drama first, then Sky Arts hands over primetime almost entirely to concert and opera. Tales Of The Unexpected runs at 6pm and 6:30pm, Alfred Hitchcock Presents follows at 7pm and 7:30pm, Andre Rieu: The Flying Dutchman then holds 8pm to 10:30pm as a single gala concert split in two, and HMS Pinafore Opera With ENO closes the schedule from 10:30pm through to 12:30am. Full breakdown below.

Sky Arts Schedule: Monday 24 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Sky Arts schedule for Monday 24 August 2026, on Freeview 11.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Sky Arts today

Monday’s overnight and breakfast hours run to Sky Arts’ usual mix of music documentary and archive drama: John Lennon: Classic Albums opens at 1:15am, Eric Clapton: 24 Nights follows at 2:15am, and Lou Reed: Classic Albums closes out the small hours at 5am with the Transformer edition. Musical Masterpieces takes the 6am slot with a look at Bizet’s Carmen, and two half-hour editions of Artist Of The Year: Masterclass run from 8am.

Archive drama fills the late morning and afternoon, with two runs each of Tales Of The Unexpected and Alfred Hitchcock Presents either side of Discovering: Peter Finch at 11am and The Art Of Film at midday. The Nineties and Discovering: Gene Wilder carry the schedule through to 5pm, when Portrait Artist Of The Year 2023 opens the early evening: the sixth heat of the competition, filmed at Battersea Arts Centre, with Josh Widdicombe, Nicky Spence and Shirley Ballas sitting for the competing artists. Full primetime breakdown below.

Sky Arts tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Sky Arts primetime line-up for tonight, Monday 24 August 2026.

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

Two half-hour episodes of the anthology drama open the evening. At 6pm, ‘Vengeance Is Mine Inc’ puts a waspish gossip columnist on the receiving end of a revenge plot cooked up by two out-of-work New York actors. At 6:30pm, ‘A Girl Can’t Always Have Everything’ stars Joan Collins and Pauline Collins as struggling actresses whose luck turns, then sours, once one of them catches the eye of a wealthy widower (series 3, episodes 4 and 5).

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

The Hitchcock strand runs the same double-bill shape. ‘First Class Honeymoon’ at 7pm has Robert Webber, weighed down by child support payments, tempted by an offer involving his ex-wife, with Jeremy Slate co-starring. ‘The Big Kick’ at 7:30pm casts Anne Helm as a woman whose boyfriend pushes her into dating a wealthy university professor to ease her money troubles (series 7, episodes 36 and 37).

André Rieu: The Flying Dutchman — Sky Arts, 8pm to 10:30pm

Sky Arts gives over two and a half hours of primetime to a single André Rieu concert, filmed at the Parkstad Limburg Stadium in Kerkrade in the Netherlands and split into two halves at 8pm and 9:15pm rather than shown as separate broadcasts. Expect the violinist’s usual sweep from film and musical numbers through to opera staples, with equestrian riders and a fireworks display built into the arena staging.

HMS Pinafore Opera With ENO — Sky Arts, 10:30pm

The night closes with a two-hour recording of English National Opera’s staging of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, running to 12:30am. Les Dennis takes a role in a production built around a naval captain’s daughter, the sailor she loves and the class barrier standing between them.

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 Tales Of The Unexpected episodes open the evening at 6pm and 6:30pm, followed by two Alfred Hitchcock Presents at 7pm and 7:30pm. From 8pm, Sky Arts gives over two and a half hours to a single Andre Rieu gala concert broadcast in two parts, before HMS Pinafore Opera With ENO closes the night from 10:30pm. 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 harder on the concert strand than most Sky Arts evenings. Two half-hours each of Tales Of The Unexpected and Alfred Hitchcock Presents clear the way for Andre Rieu, who gets two and a half hours of primetime to himself split across 8pm and 9:15pm, before a full opera recording carries the schedule past midnight. It’s a heavier commitment to two long broadcasts than a varied evening usually asks of a viewer, but a stadium concert and a complete ENO opera are still the kind of programming a subscription channel would charge for.

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