Updated: February 28, 2010!
The internet is a dynamic place where things are always changing and adapting. And just like the internet, the blogosphere is also changing rapidly and seems to be particularly susceptible to trends. One prominent blogger will create a theme and the whole blogosphere will rush to follow.
One of the most recent trends in the blogosphere is the rise in popularity of many magazine-style WordPress themes. Many of them are paid themes, but there are also several free magazine style WordPress themes as well for people to download. This post is our attempt to collect them in one place for your convenience and is being updated monthly (if not more often!):
The following is a collection of the best free and premium Magazine WordPress themes:
Free Magazine WordPress Themes
Scarlett Theme
Hamasaki Theme
Rebel Magazine Theme
Arthemia Free Theme (Premium Version Also Available)
Source | Download | Demo | Premium Version of Arthemia
Jello Wala Mello Theme
Mimbo Theme
WP Gold Theme
Morning After Theme
Forte Theme
Small Magazine Theme
Source | Download | (Unable to Locate a Demo)
Premium News Theme
Premium Magazine WordPress Themes
Lifestyle Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.95), All StudioPress Themes ($199.95)
WP Smooth Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
Magazine Theme Wars
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Zenko Magazine Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($149.00)
Magazine WordPress Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.95), All StudioPress Themes ($199.95)
Moviemaker Theme
Unlimited Websites ($37.00)
WP-Chatter Magazine Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
Fresh News Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
Technologic Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($149.00)
GameNow Video Game Theme
Single-Use ($49.00), Developer’s Pack ($99.00)
Transcript Magazine Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($179.00)
WP Sublime Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
Headline News Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
Hot Gossip Celebrity Theme
Unlimited Use ($35.00)
Showbiz Celebrity Theme
Unlimited Websites ($27.00), Unlimited Websites + Support ($77.00)
Gourmet Cooking Theme
Single-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($99.00)
Maximum Magazine Theme
Unlimited Websites ($35.00)
Backstage Music Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
Gadget Theme
Included with All-Theme Package ($39.95)!
Gameline Theme
Unlimited Websites ($37.00)
ColorMatic Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Magazine Portfolio Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($159.00)
Blog Newspaper Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($179.00)
Boardwalk Travel Theme
Single-Use ($59.00)
Chic Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Monograph Magazine Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($149.00)
Huex Magazine Theme
Single-Use ($29.00), Developer’s Pack ($59.00)
News WordPress Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.95), All StudioPress Themes ($199.95)
WP Launch Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
eNews Theme
Comes with $20.00 subscription to Elegant Themes Club!
Source/Demo | Purchase Membership
Open Air Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
WP Ellie Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
So Apple Theme
Multiple-Use ($34.00)
Lumin Magazine Theme
Comes with $20.00 subscription to Elegant Themes Club!
Source/Demo | Purchase Membership
WP Genius Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
Optimize Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
Imperial Theme
Single-Use ($30.00), Ten Websites ($90.00)
Bold Magazine Theme
Comes with $20.00 subscription to Elegant Themes Club!
Source/Demo | Purchase Membership
Elements Magazine Theme
Single-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($139.00)
WPSN Sports Theme
- Based upon ESPN’s website
- Integrated RSS newsticker
Multiple-Use ($38.00)
Sportstate Theme
Multiple-Use ($38.00)
Arthemia Premium Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.95), Developer’s Pack ($159.95)
Education Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.95), All StudioPress Themes ($199.95)
Newswire Theme
Unlimited Websites ($19.99)
Charisma Theme
Single-Use ($67.00), Developer’s Pack ($149.00)
Yamidoo Magazine Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($149.00)
Destination City Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($159.00)
WP Media Magazine Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
Organic Bold Theme
Multiple-Use ($69.00), Developer’s Pack ($249.00)
Business Solutions Theme
Single-Use ($25.00), Ten Websites ($75.00)
Church Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.95), All StudioPress Themes ($199.95)
Grace Church Theme
Single-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($159.00)
Seduction Theme
Single-Use ($79.95), Developer’s Pack ($179.95)
Celebrity Press Theme
Single-Use ($79.95), Multiple-Use ($149.95), Developer’s Pack ($249.95)
WP Jazz Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
Postcard Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
Bloom Theme
Single-Use ($49.00), Developer’s Pack ($99.00)
Newspaper Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($159.00)
Convergence Theme
Unlimited Websites ($25.00)
Suvi Magazine Theme
Multiple-Use ($59.00), Developer’s Pack ($159.00)
“On The Go” Theme
Comes with $20.00 subscription to Elegant Themes Club!
Source/Demo | Purchase Membership
Daily Edition News Theme
Multiple-Use ($70.00), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Note: WP Hacks readers can now click this link to get 2 premium themes from Woo Themes for the price of 1! When you use our link you will be asked to select the bonus theme when you checkout.
Gamemaker Theme
Unlimited Websites ($37.00)
WP Clear Theme
Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($179.00), Developer’s Pack ($279.00)
bSocial Theme
Multiple-Use ($79.95), Developer’s Pack ($150.00)
Triumph Theme
Single-Use ($55.00), Developer’s Pack ($109.00)
Deviant Magazine Theme
Comes with $20.00 subscription to Elegant Themes Club!
Source/Demo | Purchase Membership
If you know of a good one that you’d like to see added to the list, please let us know!
Kyle Eslick
Kyle Eslick is the founder and primary author of WordPress Hacks. You can learn more about him at KyleEslick.com or you can follow his personal tweets here.
WordPress is just amazing, and was recently honoured as the best open source CMS around. So not just is WordPress ...
Nice share.thanks 
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No Way! That sounds like a great membership! It is definately a nice opportunity. 
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Thanks for posting my theme (Visionary). I haven’t seen the Mimbo Magazine theme yet. Looks like I have a little more competition than I thought.
They’re beautiful themes and I’ve actually toyed with the Morning After theme on a test site. However, I’m still a bit torn about magazine style themes. Do you think they’re more appropriate for one type of blog over another?
Justin – Thanks for stopping by! Yes, the Mimbo theme is nice as well, plus there is always the Revolution (paid) magazine theme to compete with, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You have a great theme there!
Robert – Excellent question, but not an easy one to answer!
It really does depend on the type of blog in my opinion, because its basically replacing the standard blog homepage.
I am using a magazine style look on my personal blog (which is not ready for public consumption yet, so I can’t link to it to show you). This blog will be a page that basically points to everything me, including various sites I admin or author, latest twitters, my personal profiles, etc. The blog portion (single pages) is useful for posting pictures and whatever else I feel like sharing I guess.
If you are in need of a landing page of sorts, I do recommend the magazine style themes to those people. If it is truly a blog, then you might be better off sticking with a standard blog theme.
Hope this helped a little bit!
Thanks for the mention, Kyle. I hadn’t visited HackWP before – lots of good info here.
Recently, I released a magazine style theme called WPortal. You can see a demo here.
Enjoy!
Kyle – Thanks for the response. I’ve toyed with the idea of a magazine style theme for my guitar related site. I cover a number of sub niches which I think would work well with a magazine style theme. My one big concern is making the layout overly busy and confusing the reader.
I’d love to hear from bloggers who have switched over to magazine style themes to see if they’ve seen any impact in terms of visits, pageviews, depth of visits, etc. You haven’t by chance come across anything like that? It might make for an interesting article…
I think Mimbo is one of the best magazine wordpress themes. I use it on my site ( http://www.hoodgrownonline.com ). Originally, I was going to use “The Morning After” until I came across Mimbo in a similiar article. Apart from my Mimbo bias… I’ve found another great FREE magazine theme.. that I might use on another site I’m building….
Structure…
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2007/12/09/structure-wordpress-theme
Hey.. sorry.. didn’t notice Structure was there.. the first one. lol
Hey.. i’m just waking up
I have to say, I’m really loving the trend towards “Magazine”-style themes. It really pushes the bar in terms of creativity, especially since most standard blog themes look far too similar.
I’m using Kiwi 1.1 on my personal site (http://www.raviudeshi.com), which I think was one of the first themes to push the trend of non-standard presentation of posts. Shame I’ve spent so much time customizing it as some of these new themes definitely give it a run for its money!
Great themes you have here!
Like Ravi, I also customized a WP theme for my e-zine, (www.tinig.com). How I wish I could make it look like the themes here. :p
Thanks for the feature Kyle
Here is an amazing rework of the Quadruple Blue Theme. http://collegian.csufresno.edu They made two columns out of the main column thereby creating a very nice 5 column newspaper style theme with lots of additional media content.
Any chance of getting your esteemed analysis of how all this was accomplished?
Thanks for the mention!
WOW..there are alot of amazing themes here..
polaroids is my choice..
thanks for the sharing
Excellent list of themes! One of the best resources I’ve found for free downloads! Thanks.
An advantage of Justin Tadlock’s Options and Structure themes is that they can be configured as a magazine theme or as a traditional blog.
After some consideration, I decided to switch my site to Structure as a traditional blog. However, I now have the ability to leverage all my current mods and testing and easily move to its magazine layout at some later point in time.
Hi I am using TMA theme on my website http://www.iitdreams.com have a look..
Great Collection! Nice Post. Thanks a lot.
thanks man
A true pleasure to explore your site. Thank you for sharing such great work!
good job. i like this themes.
These themes look great! The Massive, Zeke, and Studio themes would work especially well for “traditional” type blogs.
wow thanks so much for providing these great themes for free. thank you thank you thank you!!!!
lots of great magazine style themes in your list. the one i like from your list is option theme. I will be trying it out on my blog.
You might also want to include a new theme i found.
http://www.gabfire.com/wordpress-magazine-theme-released/
It is great. I use it in one of my blogs and I love it. lot easier that mimbo for customizing.
This is an amazing list. Its really help me to find the best free magazine style theme. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, I am converting “Structure Theme” of Justin Tadlock. It’s not yet finishing but some plugins is work. Maybe 1 to 2 day is needed to complete conversion.
Rebel Magazine Theme is free?
good good thanks very very thanks
I like the themes, the colors, everything… and especially the featured widget
Thanks,
options and Massive news are very good themes.
Thank you for sharing. Those themes are really awesome. I am kind of new in this wordpress thing and I’m really grateful to stumble upon your site.
Cheers!
Thanks for ad my Hamasaki on this list..
i love the themes here! i’ve downloaded most of them for my websites.. a very informational post indeed.
I was searching for some good Wp themes and saw your post . You have collected nice themes.
Thanks Kyle. This list has been really helpful – loads of inspiration!
thanx for the list. you really helped me out. was looking for quite some time for a good magazine style wordpress theme and I found one at last from your collection.
Really amazing, you solved my problem of choosing a magazine theme…
nice themes, thank you
Thanks Kyle for showcasing the guzel magazine. The source site is not correct though. The source is http://customthemedesign.com (Feel free to remove my link from comment..I know this can be against rules)
Many thanks Kyle!
Thanks!amazing!!!
Thanks for the list, a real help for me and my blog.
thanks for the list, i picked one for my blog
Not sure if it qualifies as a ‘magazine style’ but definitely has the graphical elements: I’ve been playing around with The Unstandard theme by Derek at http://5thirtyone.com and tweaking it a bit for a spinoff blog of mine at http://www.30dayloa.com (I’ve put posts up there of the tweaks I’ve done and it’s got me some great traffic results, so I was very happy to discover this one for future tweak reference…)
I love how you’ve previewed all these on this post, though, and you’ve definitely given me a few more themes to test run before I make the final choice on my main blog!
Crystal
Really good and thanks good collection.
Great list, probably the best on the net.
Thanks a lot.
All the great themes for WP! Btw, I like Mimbo as its easy to manage and use …
i love these themes, in mag designs.
Nice Shoot
many thanks my friend
thaks for sharing
bravo, it’s very nice theme list.
Thanks for these wonderful themes. I used one of them in my blog.
Very nice themes. Thanks..
Very Nice themes .It is unfortunate,I am using Blogger,any of the theme in Blogger??
thank you very much.
i like Revolution Lifestyle Theme it is wonderful also option them nice really
thanks
nice themes, thanks to share with us…
great list of wordpress newspaper style. we have just released another one with these kind of layout, and we give it away free too for the community.
You’ll definitely want to check out the News CMS WordPress Theme from Bust A Theme.
Man, such a lovely list of lots of amazing wordpress templates, l loved many of them and l am using many of them in my blogs too. l mean, l love guzell theme and l love http://deluxethemes.com/ themes, l am using all of theirs free templates. You can also check this amazing camfy template l use here http://www.artdir.co.cc thats amazing. You can download it from here : http://deluxethemes.com/counter/click.php?id=8
thanks for this amazing list. l bookmarked.
I’m using a magazine style wordpress template however I’m not sure if it give the site the right look and feel. what you you think?
http://www.square-mag.co.uk/
Great collection of quality WordPress themes. I started designing WordPress themes and releasing them free to the public this year.
Thanks a lot .
Came looking for a blog for our site, shall try one of these. Thanks.
Options, Structure and Visionary Themes are no longer available. Please remove them.
@ Navjot – THanks for the info. I have updated our post!
i need a magazine theme in 3 column,may be who can suggest me change to 2 column .thanks
thanks for the theme,this is what i was looking for
It doesn’t appear that any of these are free.
@ rjjrdq – All of the themes under the free section should all be free! The ones in the premium section will have a price associated with them, but in most cases, they are significantly better.
This is by far the best collection of wordpress theme that i have seen all over the internet.
I would like to learn how to combine various themes to get the max out of them all..
Thanks for sharing mate !:D
best list ever thanx!
i want to use wordpress in my web page. Joomla is very hard. And your themes ar so good. Thanks fo share
i love these themes, in mag designs.
This has to be one of the biggest collection of free magazine style wordpress theme in one place. Even though I was little bit disappointed to see many of these themes at end were paid theme. But many thanks for sharing this.
Cheers
Winson
The best themes. its very coll.
I’m using the Celebrity Press Theme for my site and I love it. And the customer service is phenomenal.
These are really cool looking themes! I like the magazine style layout. Makes it look more new-age, if that’s possible. Its definitely more eye-catching, which is really important. There are so many themes, definitely a nice assortment.
Till then,
Jean
Wow.. Thanks for the list.. very nice
I hope Fresh News Theme was available for free ..really liked it
oh beautifull theme it’s fre right..thanks….
There are many high quality Magazine/News style themes for wordpress recently released for FREE at ThemeLabs official site.
You can take a look and download at: http://themelabs.com
Thanks for providing complete list of great WP theme! Scarlet is my favorite theme.
Very cool themes, really impressive as I have idea to change skin of my blog every day))))
Very Nice Themes.Thank you so much.
in free themes there is some good designs but in paid designs i think most are wonderful designs .
Wow.. Great gallery.
Thanks,
Sumit.
Kick ass collection of themes on display here!! Thanks for the tips.
I will be very thankful to kyle because I actually search these type of themes from many months and I got it from here. I also need some Automotive wp themes like cars, bikes, RVS, ATVs & trucks.
Suzzy
Great huge collections here man. WP themes listed are very much good enough to be used by most of webmasters like me.
lots of cool theme .
great magazine style theme thanks
I’m still a bit torn about magazine style themes. Do you think they’re more appropriate for one type of blog over another?
thanx for the list. you really helped me out. was looking for quite some time for a good magazine style wordpress theme and I found one at last from your collection.
Best Free Magazine Wordpress Themes? Best yes…. Free Where??
I change all 1-2 years th etheme of my site, so I am glad that I found your collection, thank you very much.
such a great list! Thanks for organizing and posting.
Nice templates thnx i might use one of them on my site.
I’m using arthemia free.
It is a great base to work from…I need to do a fair bit of customization though. But it is pretty easy to use and has a brilliant support forum.
style themes. Do you think they’re more appropriate for one type of blog over another?
Thanks guy for collection info