Are you looking for the best magazine WordPress themes? Then you’ve come to the right place. We have searched the web and done the research. If you’re looking to swap themes or just starting, one of these magazine themes should meet your needs.
Choosing the ‘best’ themes for a collection is a subjective task. We’ve followed some guidelines for this article to help with the selection process. All the themes in this article are from trusted developers and marketplaces. They have received positive reviews and ratings and have been kept up to date since their original release.
The design and features of themes have also played a significant role in their selection. However, please bear in mind that what you may deem an attractive design or essential feature in a theme isn’t necessarily what the next person considers stylish or necessary. Hopefully, though, there’s something to suit everyone in this collection.
The Best Magazine WordPress Themes
So now you know how the themes in this collection were chosen, let’s get started!
1. Extra
Extra, one of our themes, is a magazine theme powered by the Divi Builder. Besides the Divi Builder’s extensive features, it also contains additional modules, making it a perfect fit for creating an online magazine.
The new category modules include a post carousel and featured post slider, helping display your content at its best. Extra also lets you monetize your site through its advertisement module. You can also improve ad engagement by placing ads directly into your post feeds.
Additionally, Extra uses the powerful Divi builder, equipping you with drag-and-drop functionality and making creating custom post and category templates for your magazine website easier. Extra also comes with advanced mega menus that show recent posts, favorite posts, and anything you desire! Extra also features a trending article. As a magazine theme, you get the most customization options with Extra.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop dedicated category builder
- Divi Builder powered
- Built-in ratings and reviews system
- eCommerce ready
- Seven different post formats
Pricing: Paid plans start at $89 per year
2. Felt LT
Felt LT is a magazine theme geared towards bloggers by Pixel Grade. All Pixel Grade themes come with a powerful customization tool called Style Manager, which allows you to set the branding for your website. Also, Gutenberg works flawlessly with Felt LT for building your pages and posts. The theme also includes several news-centric widgets to help you display your blog posts aesthetically pleasingly.
For the blogger or media outlet wanting to monetize their site, Felt provides dedicated widgets and widget areas for ad placement. Whether you want to monetize via PPC or want more control over promoting blog posts, Felt allows you to display advertisements on your site simply and effectively.
Key Features:
- Homepage hero carousel and slideshow module
- Customize the homepage with a library of modules to filter and categorize posts
- Use predefined color palettes or create your own
- eCommerce ready with WooCommerce
- Dedicated module and widget for display ad monetization
Pricing: Paid plans start at $75 per year
3. Bucket
Bucket is another magazine WordPress theme from Pixel Grade. This news-focused WordPress theme comes with various homepage layouts so that your best stories can be showcased beautifully to your readers. Bucket comes with a custom review system so that you can quickly write reviews of restaurants, music, and more. It includes a score breakdown pros and cons list, which can be customized to match your branding.
Bucket’s mega menu system is another place to highlight popular articles within your online magazine. Your mega menu can feature cards, sliders, and submenus beautifully. On top of that, Bucket follows good SEO practices, so your articles will rank well in search engines, generating more eyes for your online publication.
Key features:
- Multiple homepage layouts
- Mega menu builder with feature post sliders and cards
- Native drag-and-drop builder with news-centric modules
- Built-in review system with scorecards plus pros and cons lists
- Fast loading, SEO friendly, and mobile responsive
Pricing: Paid plans start at $75 per year
4. Pressbox
Pressbox is a magazine theme flexible to work with online publications, media companies, affiliate marketers, and more. The theme is GDPR friendly as well as mobile responsive. Optimized for performance, this magazine WordPress theme boasts near-perfect scores with GTMetrix, Lighthouse, and Chrome’s Performance Insights tools, which is quite impressive. It has several unique, magazine-specific features like a native affiliate disclaimer, displaying post update dates, and sticky headers, which can help build a standout magazine website for your brand.
Pressbox was built with Gutenberg in mind. As such, it supports and has a few block patterns you can use to make your magazine website. The theme includes several demos, so getting your online magazine up quickly isn’t an issue with Pressbox.
Key features:
- Compact search form
- Multiple styles for blog archive pages
- Display taxonomy descriptions with subsequent HTML for better SEO
- Display featured image captions for photo credit
- Lazy loading
Pricing: Paid plans start at $85 per year
5. MH Magazine
MH Magazine is a well-versed and fast-loading theme designed to impress SEO experts. The code was written with the best SEO practices in mind. The theme is SEO optimized with a strong focus on SEO fundamentals ranking well on search engines at the forefront. The theme is a widgetized template with multiple widget areas and many custom widgets you can place anywhere.
It’s an excellent choice for any magazine, blog, or content SEO-focused agency. MH Magazine is one of the best SEO WordPress themes for those who want to build an online news or media platform focusing on content marketing.
Features include:
- Clean code with valid HTML5, CSS3 and PH
- SEO optimized
- A solid foundation for SEO rankings
- Mobile responsive
- Strong navigational aid tools
Pricing: $49 per year
6. Public Opinion
Public Opinion is another CSS Igniter Theme, similar to Neuton. It is a flexible magazine WordPress theme with areas for ads, a breaking news ticker, and multiple homepage options. Public Opinion is powerful enough to work with most online publishing needs. It has a mobile-focused design, with support for translations and WooCommerce. Additionally, you can create custom archive pages. When used in tandem with its custom posts block, you can create different looks and layouts for the various tags, categories, or archives used on your media site.
Noozbeat is an alternate style included in the Public Opinion theme. It is a fully responsive, beautiful skin for news and magazine websites. Easy to use, this theme provides unique layout options, helping you publish articles that will stand out. Multiple category layouts, custom widgets, and unlimited color variations are some other features offered with this skin.
Key Features:
- Theme Options Control Panel
- 2 Theme styles included
- Advertising Space
- Numerous Layouts
- Flexible Widgets
- Unlimited Color Options
Price: Paid plans start at $49
7. Newspaper
Newspaper is among the highest-rated magazine and blog themes on the Themeforest marketplace. It is jam-packed with all you need to build a high-performing, visually appealing online news or magazine site. From its native opt-in builder to more than 25 WooCommerce-specific modules, this powerful theme is rightfully named one of the best magazine themes on Themeforest for a reason.
Boost lead generation, enhance conversion rates, and attract subscribers by leveraging opt-in content lockers and subscription lists. With the Newspaper theme, you can utilize its native Opt-In Builder to effortlessly craft enticing content lockers, providing your visitors with a compelling incentive to unlock valuable content. This can help you easily monetize your website without using additional plugins on your magazine website.
Key Features:
- 120+ one-click pre-built websites
- Monetize content through paywalls, subscriptions, and more
- Custom field support
- Native form builder system
- Directory and listing system
Pricing: $118 per year
8. JNews
JNews is another Themeforest theme, one of the best magazine themes in its marketplace. Aside from building a feature-rich online magazine site, you can create sites for your podcast or even a video-focused website similar to YouTube or Vimeo. You can do all this while efficiently monetizing your written, audio, and video content with JNew’s native tools. Indeed, JNews is one of the best magazine WordPress themes for those who want to do more than have an online magazine.
For those looking to build their media empire on WordPress, consider using JNews, especially if you plan on hiring a team of writers for your site. Give your writers the ability to submit articles, posts, and media to your site without logging into the WordPress backend. Your admins or editors can then approve the status of submitted posts, and you can protect your site while making it easy for your team to contribute to your blog.
Key Features:
- 250+ homepage demos to download
- AI writing assistant JegAI Assistant
- Integrates with Google Web Stories
- Payment tracking and relationship management for blog writers
- Custom podcasting and video management system
Pricing: $118 per year
9. Magazine Pro
Magazine Pro from StudioPress has an up-to-the-minute look and feel. This professional yet sleek design will wow your viewers without detracting from your content. The theme’s versatility will enable you to display articles at their best. Magazine Pro’s ease of use will ensure your website is created and up and running within no time. It comes with three homepage widget areas that you can use to showcase your latest articles and more.
Magazine Pro also has six unique post layouts, allowing you to customize how your articles are displayed fully. Additionally, the sidebars in this theme make it easy to showcase various widgets like your latest categories, comments, searches, and more.
Key Features:
- Three custom page templates
- Three homepage widget areas
- Six unique blog post layouts
- Theme Customizer with customizable header
- Includes the Genesis Framework
Pricing: $360 per year
10. Sydney (News)
News is a starter site for the Sydney theme by aThemes. With the pro version of Sydney, you get access to powerful features and 17+ starter sites, including News — a newspaper site with clean serif fonts and beautiful typography. You can quickly redesign your site’s header and footer with the Customizer. There are also several flexible layouts that you can use for your blog posts and archive pages. Sydney also integrates well with Elementor and WPForms, amongst other popular WordPress plugins.
The News starter site for Sydney is built with Elementor, which makes constructing your magazine site a breeze. It also has a set of magazine-specific widgets that make your news site come, including a news ticket, related post layouts, and much more.
Key Features:
- Latest news widget
- Announcement bar widget
- Lightweight and optimized for performance
- Built-in social sharing
- Showcase reading progress time to users
Pricing: Paid plans start at $69 per year
11. Tribune
Tribune is a powerful WordPress magazine theme from WPZoom. Its magazine features make it an excellent choice for online news or another editorial site. Tribune can display featured posts on the homepage in a slider or carousel, helping grab the attention of your visitors. It can also embed videos from other websites, showing the news as it happens.
Tribune has a prominent homepage section that you can use to showcase your latest posts or hand-picked individual posts in a dynamic slider. Videos can also use the slider. Next to the slider, you can use the widget area to seamlessly incorporate a selection of different widgets or use it as prime real estate for advertisements.
Key Features:
- Visual Customizer
- Featured Content Area on the Homepage
- Breaking News Ticker
- Infinite Scroll
- Ad Ready Theme
Price: Paid plans start at $59 per year
12. Compass
Compass is a sophisticated magazine theme that lets you show off your content in style. This customizable theme, with an easily configurable homepage, will let you create a unique website. It also includes a draggable slideshow with touch support.
Build and customize your homepage layout with custom magazine-specific widgets by WPZOOM. The homepage has multiple widget areas, so you can create enticing and engaging homepages to promote and showcase your website’s most exciting blog posts.
Key Features:
- One Click Demo Import
- Homepage Builder
- Visual Customizer
- Touch Slider
- Logo Input
Price: Paid plans start at $69 per year
13. Neuton
Neuton, from CSSIgniter, is a responsive news and magazine theme. This original and sleek design makes Neuton one of the best magazine WordPress themes. Neuton also boasts powerful features, with page builder support, flexible widgets, and multiple homepage templates.
For news-based websites, the trending ticker widget is an excellent feature of the Neuton theme. This widget can showcase trending topics, tags, categories, or posts from within your blog. Use this to engage readers and draw more attention to news-worthy information on your website.
Key Features:
- Flexible layout options
- Multiple homepage templates
- Page builder support through Gutenberg and Elementor
- Custom category widgets
- Seven different category layouts, with slideshows
Price: Paid plans start at $49 per year
14. Insight
Insight is a beautiful theme that deserves a place in this collection of best magazine WordPress themes. Minimal and distraction-free, this is an ideal theme for an online magazine where viewers can concentrate solely on the content. Create a stunning homepage with built-in tools to attract visitors and grow your audience.
While a simple theme, Insight allows you to change your homepage’s layout. You can choose a two-column layout, mimicking the columns in physical newspapers. Or, you can choose to go for its default blog view. Either way, your featured images and titles will be displayed vividly on your website.
Key Features:
- Homepage Builder with magazine-focused widgets
- Theme Options Panel
- Visual Customizer
- Homepage post slideshow
- Numerous Color Schemes
Price: Paid plans start at $69 per year
15. Ultra (Magazine)
Ultra is a flexible theme from the Themify family. It has 60+ pre-designed layouts to help you build your magazine site faster. Also, Ultra is powered by Themify Builder, one of many great WordPress page builders, making it easy to create the perfect online magazine for your needs.
The Magazine skin of Ultra allows you to build a beautiful multi-columned blog focusing on news and magazine-style content. Made with users in mind, the layouts provided put your top headlines at the forefront of your readers. Also, monetize your news site using the Magazine skin and Ultra for your new media project today.
Key Features:
- 15+ header styles
- Five single post layouts
- Five header background options
- Six archive layouts
- Preset colors and typography for fast branding
Pricing: Paid plans start at $59 per year
What is the Best WordPress Magazine Theme?
You can build beautiful custom magazine sites with Extra and its Theme Builder. The power of the Divi and dedicated category builder will help you create a robust, fully customized magazine website for your publication. If branding and blogging are your strong suits, you’ll love the layouts and styling options that Felt LT offers. Finally, if you want a robust magazine theme with a dedicated and brandable reviews system, Bucket is your best magazine WordPress theme.
| Themes | Price | Free Version | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Extra | $89/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 🥈 | Felt LT | $75/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 🥉 | Bucket | $75/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 4 | Pressbox | $85/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 5 | MH Magazine | $49/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 6 | Public Opinion | $49/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 7 | Newspaper | $118/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 8 | JNews | $118/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 9 | Magazine Pro | $360/year | ✔️ | Visit |
| 10 | Sydney | $69/year | ✔️ | Visit |
| 9 | Tribune | $59/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 9 | Compass | $69/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 10 | Neuton | $49/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 11 | Insight | $69/year | ❌ | Visit |
| 6 | Ultra | $59/year | ❌ | Visit |
And don’t forget to check out our multi-purpose Divi theme. Although Divi wasn’t explicitly created as a magazine theme, its flexible and powerful features make it an excellent fit for an online news or editorial website. If you want more WordPress theme recommendations, check out our main post on the best WordPress themes!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Before we wrap up, let’s answer some of your most common questions about magazine themes. Did we miss one? Leave a question below, and we will respond!
What is the best magazine WordPress theme?
What is the best free magazine WordPress theme?
What is a magazine WordPress theme?
How can I create a magazine-style website with WordPress?
How can I customize my magazine WordPress theme?
What is the fastest magazine WordPress theme?
Are magazine WordPress themes good for SEO?
Are premium WordPress magazine themes better than free ones?
What is the best magazine WordPress theme for blogging?
What features should I look for in a magazine theme?
What is your favorite magazine theme? Please share the reasons for the selection in the comments below.
Article thumbnail image by Firuz Salamzadeh / shutterstock.com
Extra
Felt LT
Bucket
Interesting read. As a non-designer/developer, I have slowly put 2 websites together using the Newspaper and Extra themes. Steep learning curve. They won’t win design awards but are functional and are ok. So can’t vouch for the other themes.
The only thing I can comment on is the way the pricing of these themes is displayed, not sure if they are all per year. Extra is, but worth it. Newspaper I think is a one off payment but additional yearly payment for support, again worth it.