30 of the Best Free WordPress Blog Themes in 2023

If you‘ve got an opinion to share, you’ll need a blog to reach the right audience. However, choosing the right free WordPress blog theme can be a challenge. I’ve chosen the wrong theme in the past. That decision left me frustrated, searching for support so I could create the blog of my dreams.

Let’s help you avoid the same mistake.

In this post, you’ll find 30 of the best free WordPress blog themes. Before we dive in, let’s explore what you should expect from free WordPress blog themes.

Table of Contents

• Characteristics of Great WordPress Themes
• The Best Free WordPress Blog Themes
• Benefits of Excellent WordPress Themes

Characteristics of Great WordPress Themes

If you aren’t a coder like me, then you need to choose your WordPress blog theme carefully. Why? Your theme determines the appearance of your website.

However, beautiful design isn’t the only characteristic of the best WordPress themes. When considering a WordPress theme, look out for these properties.

Site Security

Once you’re online, your web property is vulnerable to attack. Brands like Facebook and LinkedIn have had their fair share of data breaches. To combat ongoing threats to your WordPress website, use a theme that is as secure as possible.

While no WordPress theme is 100% secure, choosing one that’s regularly updated ensures your theme code is protected from new security vulnerabilities.

Responsive Design

With 54% of website traffic coming from mobile devices, using WordPress blog themes that are mobile-friendly becomes vital. Mobile-friendly themes improve user experience. They automatically resize your website content to fit different screens.

Flexible Customization

Great WordPress blog themes offer multiple customization options. This makes it easy for non-coders to design a unique site. Some blog themes even have demo sites you can import, edit, and turn into yours.

Detailed Documentation

Choosing a WordPress blog theme that has great documentation is important. Armed with tutorials and resources, you can fix any challenge with the theme without waiting for customer or tech support.

Plugin Compatibility

WordPress plugins prevent you from writing code if you need added website functionalities. That said, some plugins may not be compatible with some themes. A qualitative way to access a theme’s plugin compatibility is by checking the number of theme downloads.

If a blog theme has many downloads, it’s a good sign that it may be compatible with the plugins you aim to use.

Now that you know the characteristics of great WordPress blog themes, let’s look at some themes that fit these criteria.

1. Astra

Astra is a fast and free WordPress blog theme that’s suitable for a variety of use cases. Its lightweight also makes Astra a quality option to consider when building a blog. The theme comes with several ready-to-use blog websites you can import, modify, and use.

Many bloggers are fine with the limited customization options for backgrounds, typography, and spacing in the free version of Astra. Astra’s Pro or Agency plan lets you access features like auto-loading previous posts, adding author sections, and removing featured image padding.

What we like: Astra’s compatibility with major page builders like Elementor, Beaver, and Brizy makes it one of the best WordPress themes for bloggers.

2. Kadence

Kadence is a lightweight WordPress blog theme that makes creating beautiful, fast-loading, and accessible websites a breeze. It features an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop header and footer builder to build any type of header in minutes.

What we like: Kadence stands out because of its clean blog styling, including featured image placements and sticky sidebar options. Plus, Kadence has a deep integration with the core block editor, so your content will match what you see in the admin panel.

3. Blog Way

Blog Way is a simple and professional WordPress blog theme. It’s clean, well-coded, and has a modern layout. Blog Way is especially great for blogs, news sites, and travel sites. It has multiple customizable features and ensures high-quality performance to help boost your site traffic.

What we like: Blog Way comes with an option to change the color of your entire site and offers social links for you to connect your site with your social accounts.

4. OceanWP

OceanWP is a popular multipurpose WordPress theme.

It offers a lightweight, SEO-friendly, and responsive foundation for blog building. Unlike Astra, OceanWP offers more customization options and gives you greater control over your blog’s design. This is one reason for its popularity among users.

OceanWP offers only 15 free responsive pre-made theme demos, which is fewer than what Astra offers. To get more, you’d have to upgrade to the premium version.

What we like: This WordPress blog theme is compatible with popular page builders, including Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi. It also supports several third-party plugins to help extend your site’s functionality.

5. Mesmerize

Mesmerize is a free blog theme that lets you customize your site without hassle. Start with a pre-built homepage and use the five header designs, slideshow capabilities, gradient overlays, and more to make the look and feel your own.

In addition, there are 30 ready-to-use content sections for you to build pages quickly and easily. Not to mention, there are helpful drag-and-drop features.

What we like: Mesmerize is mobile-responsive, and it works well with WooCommerce should you ever need to set up a store.

6. Kale

Kale is a free WordPress blog theme for food bloggers. You can choose from several feed displays to organize your written content and images of the dishes you’re featuring. The built-in social media sidebar menus and icons make it easy for visitors to locate, view, and follow your accounts.

What we like: This theme comes with a special front page that includes featured posts and a large highlight post. You can also show a banner or a post slider in the header.

7. Avant

The Avant blog theme comes with seven different header styles, three footer styles, five blog layout templates, full site color settings, and much more built into the WordPress Customizer. Avant integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce and page builders like Elementor and SiteOrigin.

What we like: Avant comes with seven header layouts, five blog layouts, three footer layouts, and full-site color settings.

8. Blossom Feminine

Blossom Feminine is a free WordPress theme for creating a fashion, lifestyle, journal, travel, beauty, or food blog. The blog theme is mobile-friendly, search engine optimized, and fast. In addition, the theme is WooCommerce compatible, translation-ready, and comes with regular updates.

What we like: Have a newsletter you want to promote? The well-placed Newsletter section can help you to grow your email list. Keeping in touch with your visitors is a breeze.

9. Blossom Fashion

Blossom Fashion is perfect for building a stylish blog without spending a penny. While free, the theme offers premium features like WooCommerce compatibility, font options, an advertisement widget, an Instagram section, and more.

What we like: The theme is easy to use and comes with extensive documentation. There’s also support if you need help.

10. Blossom Travel

Blossom Travel is a fast-loading and mobile-friendly WordPress theme for travel blogs. The free blog theme blends accessible design with extensive features like social media integrations, theme color options, and lightbox image styling.

Blossom Travel has an Instagram section, email subscription section, and social media widgets so visitors can easily connect with you.

What we like: Blossom Travel’s HTML map section lets your visitors visualize where you’ve traveled.

11. Blossom Pin

The Blossom Pin theme features a Pinterest-style design, using a vibrant masonry layout with three posts/page layout options. Its infinite scroll lets visitors browse without distraction. The free WordPress blog theme is SEO-optimized and easily customizable.

What we like: You can choose from its different colors and hundreds of Google fonts.

12. Elegant Pink by Rara Business

Another dynamic Pinterest-like layout, Elegant Pink is a free and beautifully designed WordPress theme that combines soft colors with a clean layout to present your blog to the world. Elegant Pink also has a slider section above the masonry-design post on the homepage.

What we like: Elegant Pink is a responsive theme, so it’ll look great on every device.

13. Writee

Writee is WordPress theme for photography or image-heavy blogs — the theme has a slider hero image feature, which allows you to include several full-width images. Writee also makes managing an online store simple with its WooCommerce integration.

What we like: If you have beautiful images on your site, Writee can help you showcase them. There are full-width or boxed sliders that can show off your images with style.

14. Hemingway

Hemingway is a simple two-column blogging theme that keeps your content organized and easy to read. It includes a parallax scrolling feature, which adds an interactive, video-like experience to your blog pages.

Hemingway’s translation-ready feature comes with pre-made language files. Your website can be automatically translated into several other languages with just a click.

Best for: Bloggers who want a minimalist theme. If you want to upload images, change accent colors, and start writing, this theme is for you.

15. Ashe

Title: Ashe

Ashe is an elegant, customizable, and beginner-friendly WordPress theme built specifically for bloggers. It provides 14 image-heavy pre-made templates, and you can adapt it to any blog niche.

Its default shop page is one of its notable features. Pair this with the compatible WooCommerce integration, and you’ll have an ecommerce store running easily. The featured content slider and Instagram slider widget are other notable features. These help you showcase recent or popular content from your blog or Instagram page.

What we like: Ashe has a “promo boxes” feature for displaying ads and linked images. This WordPress theme is translation-ready, SEO-optimized, and works well with page builders such as Elementor and Beaver.

16. Neve

Neve is a powerful, free WordPress blog theme from ThemeIsle. It offers a fully responsive mobile-first design and extensive customization options to tailor your blog to your brand image.

What we like: Neve frequently updates its theme to guarantee the best security and access to new features. Its theme options panel will help you get started quickly.

17. GeneratePress

GeneratePress is an optimized, super lightweight theme that focuses on speed and usability. By using only 30KB of resources, this theme gives you a quick-loading site.

The WordPress blog theme is also customizable. It’s compatible with page builders, such as the Gutenberg block editor, Beaver, and Elementor.

Unfortunately, you do not get starter sites on the free version of this theme. So you’ll have to build from scratch.

What we like: GeneratePress is famous for its over-the-top customer service — even the theme’s developer, Tom Usborne, would sometimes answer questions in the support forum.

18. Total

Total is a blogging theme with a masonry-style layout, which places your latest three, six, or nine blog posts in a grid format. There’s also a portfolio section if you want to share some of your artistic work.

What we like: Total is SEO-friendly, compatible with the most popular page builder plugins, and has a one-click demo import to get you up and running fast.

19. Spacious

Spacious offers four page layouts, two templates, four blog layouts, and several custom widgets and widget areas to choose from. Building your site with Spacious is easy because their downloadable demo sites are available for inspiration and support.

What we like: Spacious is built with speed in mind. Sites built with spacious load in one second.

20. Blog Diary

Blog Diary is a lightweight and minimalistic WordPress theme for trendy food or travel blogs. It comes with slider functionality and color-picking options, and it is easy to get up and running on the fly. In addition, it’s mobile-responsive and compatible with the Gutenberg editor.

Best for: Writers who want to focus on content. This theme is designed to be set up quickly, without trial and error or experimentation.

21. Zakra

Zakra is another fast and lightweight multipurpose theme. It includes 10+ free starter sites, some of which are designed specifically for blogs. The designs are clean and pleasing to the eyes.

This theme’s Gutenberg compatibility is one of its selling points. It also works well with other page builders, including Elementor and Brizy. So the templates are easy to customize.

What we like: This theme is also SEO-friendly, translation-ready, and frequently updated to ensure your site is as secure as humanly possible.

22. Editorial

The Editorial blog theme is visually engaging, simple to use, and flexible enough to organize large amounts of editorial content in a way that won’t overwhelm readers. Editorial also comes with a variety of convenient widgets that let you easily customize your page sections, no coding needed.

What we like: Editorial comes with a customizer that allows you to change most of the theme settings easily with live previews.

23. Brilliant

Brilliant is a blog and online magazine theme that allows you to artistically pair your blog posts with photo or video content. You can add or edit your own custom logo on your homepage, as well as customize your theme’s accent colors to match your branding.

What we like: Brilliant is translation-ready, so visitors can read your content in different languages.

24. Poseidon

If you’re looking to include large, professional-looking photographs on your blog, Poseidon is the WordPress theme for you — this theme offers a full-width image slideshow on the homepage. The layout is mainly white to create a spacious, organized look.

What we like: Poseidon includes completely customizable navigation bars to enhance user experience and improve your site’s configuration.

25. Author

Author is a straightforward theme suitable for all blog types, from business to photography to ecommerce. Its minimalist look helps readers to focus on your content easily. What’s unique about this theme is its design, which is not just for readability but for accessibility.

What we like: Author comes with WooCommerce support for eCommerce stores.

26. ColorMag

ColorMag is an elegant WordPress theme that suits news blogs and magazine sites. Its 8+ free pre-built demos are neatly ordered, visually appealing, and have a professional feel.

Each demo includes multiple ad spaces, so you can monetize your site. Additionally, ColorMag supports the sticky menus. This makes it easy for users to navigate your site, especially on pages with long-form content.

What we like: ColorMag is compatible with major page builders, such as Elementor, Gutenberg, and Beaver Builder. It works seamlessly with WooCommerce, too.

27. Go

Go is a WordPress blog theme that’s minimalist and compatible with the Gutenberg builder. Its simple interface makes it suitable for code-averse people who want to set up their websites quickly.

What we like: This WordPress theme also has great fonts, making your web content readable and offering users a great experience.

28. SiteOrigin Unwind

SiteOrigin Unwind is a free WordPress blog theme that’s customizable with its page builder plugin. This WordPress theme is excellent if you want a website with a simplified blogging layout.

What we like: Unwind also has great code, which means your website loads faster. Your chances of ranking high in search engines increase with load time. Plus, this theme lets you build custom headers and backgrounds.

29. Sydney

Whether you are a business owner or freelancer, the Sydney WordPress blog theme lets you create an awesome website with drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor. Its free version has six starter websites that you can import and modify to fit your brand.

What we like: Design and customizing this WordPress theme is easy. You can use its sticky navigation menu, upload your logo, access all Google Fonts, set your header, and more.

30. Maxwell

If you need a WordPress blog theme that’s simple yet elegant, Maxwell might be a good fit. This WordPress theme has great typography and a magazine-style layout that’s easy to customize.

What we like: Maxwell has several post layouts and features like a dropdown menu, post slider, full width, content styles, social share buttons, and more. This blog theme is also responsive, and you can update it from your WordPress dashboard with just one click.

Benefits of Excellent WordPress Themes

Great WordPress themes offer a lot of benefits. Here are three of them.

You can set up your site quickly.

Free WordPress blog themes with demo sites will help you design a unique website in a few hours. Even if you don’t like the demo websites, you can use them to get design inspiration.

Themes are easy to use.

Every good WordPress blog theme is easy to use. Most of them have their own in-built website builders. But if you prefer another builder, you can use Gutenberg, Elementor, Beaver, etc.

You’ll have improved website visibility

A good WordPress theme ensures your site is responsive, easy to navigate, and compatible with multiple browsers. These features make your site load fast. And fast loading time is a positive signal that improves your site’s SEO.

Using a Free WordPress Blog Theme

A free blogging WordPress theme will help you create a unique, functional, and eye-catching place for your content. Each theme offers features, layouts, and styling that set them apart. So consider the overall blog design you’re going for when picking your ideal theme.

Afterward, install your theme, add content, and customize your site to create a great user experience that keeps readers returning for more.

Editor’s note: We originally published this post in December 2018 and we’ve updated it for comprehensiveness.