TV Licence Cost History: 1946 to 2026
Eighty years of licence-fee changes in one table. From £2 in 1946 (B&W only) to £180 in 2026 (colour). Includes every uplift, every freeze, and every policy milestone.
1946 fee
£2.00
B&W only
2026 fee
£180.00
colour, from 1 April
80-year cash rise
90x
about 46% in real terms (RPI)
How much was a TV licence in past years?
A colour TV licence cost £11 in 1970, £12 in 1971, £18 in 1975, £34 in 1980 (black and white £12), £46 from December 1981, £77 in 1991 and £104 in 2000. The black and white licence, which still exists, ran at roughly a third of the colour rate: £7 in 1971, £25.50 in 1991 and £60.50 today. The colour fee reached £145.50 in 2010 and, after two freezes, stands at £180 from 1 April 2026. Find any individual year in the table below.
Year-by-year table
Milestone years and every fee change from the colour era onward. Where the cell shows "(B&W only)" the colour licence did not yet exist; the colour licence was introduced in 1968 following the start of BBC2 colour broadcasts the previous year.
| Year | Colour | B&W | Policy note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | £2.00 | (B&W only) | First TV-only licence introduced |
| 1954 | £3.00 | (B&W only) | |
| 1957 | £4.00 | (B&W only) | |
| 1965 | £5.00 | (B&W only) | |
| 1968 | £10.00 | £5.00 | Colour licence introduced (BBC2 colour broadcasts) |
| 1969 | £11.00 | £6.00 | |
| 1970 | £11.00 | £6.00 | No change; the January 1969 rate held until July 1971 |
| 1971 | £12.00 | £7.00 | Radio licence abolished, TV licence becomes the only broadcasting fee |
| 1975 | £18.00 | £8.00 | |
| 1977 | £21.00 | £9.00 | |
| 1978 | £25.00 | £10.00 | |
| 1979 | £34.00 | £12.00 | Large inflation-era uplift from 24 November 1979 (SI 1979/1490) |
| 1980 | £34.00 | £12.00 | No change; the November 1979 rate held until December 1981 |
| 1981 | £46.00 | £15.00 | Steep inflation-era uplift from 2 December 1981 (SI 1981/1706) |
| 1985 | £58.00 | £18.00 | |
| 1988 | £62.50 | £21.00 | |
| 1991 | £77.00 | £25.50 | |
| 1996 | £89.50 | £30.00 | |
| 2000 | £104.00 | £34.50 | BBC charter renewal year |
| 2003 | £116.00 | £38.50 | |
| 2007 | £135.50 | £45.50 | |
| 2010 | £145.50 | £49.00 | Start of six-year freeze (Coalition government) |
| 2015 | £145.50 | £49.00 | Final year of the 2010-16 freeze |
| 2016 | £145.50 | £49.00 | Charter renewal, CPI link restored from 2017 |
| 2017 | £147.00 | £49.50 | |
| 2018 | £150.50 | £50.50 | |
| 2019 | £154.50 | £52.00 | |
| 2020 | £157.50 | £53.00 | Universal free over-75 licence ends 1 August 2020 |
| 2021 | £159.00 | £53.50 | |
| 2022 | £159.00 | £53.50 | Start of two-year Dorries freeze |
| 2023 | £159.00 | £53.50 | |
| 2024 | £169.50 | £57.00 | CPI link resumed; £10.50 increase |
| 2025 | £174.50 | £58.50 | CPI uplift; £5 increase |
| 2026 | £180.00 | £60.50 | Current fee from 1 April 2026; £5.50 increase |
Fee levels are set by statutory instrument, and every instrument since 1954 is listed on legislation.gov.uk. Rows checked against the instrument text: 1979 and 1980 (SI 1979/1490), 1981 (SI 1981/1706) and 2026 (SI 2026/104). Years with no row had no change from the row above.
The four eras of TV licence policy
1946 to 1967: monochrome era
A single B&W licence at a low cash rate, rising in line with general inflation and BBC service expansion. The fee rose from £2 to £5 over two decades. TV ownership was small for most of this period but grew rapidly after the 1953 Coronation, the first major television event in the UK.
1968 to 1990: colour transition
Colour licence introduced at £10 in 1968. The 1970s saw rapid uplifts driven by high inflation, with the colour fee rising from £12 in 1971 to £62.50 by 1988. The B&W fee tracked at roughly one-third the colour rate throughout. Colour-set penetration overtook B&W in the mid-1970s.
1991 to 2009: digital expansion
Steady single-digit-percentage annual increases. The licence fee funded significant BBC service expansion in this period: BBC News 24 (1997), BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge (1998), CBeebies and CBBC channels (2002), BBC Three and BBC Four (2003), iPlayer launch (2007). The fee rose from £77 to £142.50 over the period.
2010 to present: freeze, uplift, freeze, uplift
Two distinct freeze episodes (2010-16 and 2022-24) bookending periods of CPI-linked uplifts. The 2010 freeze coincided with austerity-era public-sector spending restraint and the transfer of additional funding obligations to the BBC (World Service, S4C, Local TV). The 2022 freeze was a one-off political decision under different cost-of-living circumstances. CPI restoration in 2024 produced the £169.50, £174.50 and £180 figures of the current Charter period.
Real-terms perspective
Comparing the fee across eight decades needs an inflation index that reaches back that far. The ONS long-run Retail Prices Index (series CDKO, January 1974 = 100) stands at 27.0 for 1946, 65.2 for 1968 and 1,665.2 for September 2026. On that index, £2 in 1946 is about £123 in today's money (2 x 1,665.2 / 27.0), so the £180 colour fee is about 46 per cent more in real terms than the first licence. The 1946 licence was for black and white sets, though. Measured from the colour licence's own start, the picture reverses: £10 in 1968 is about £255 today (10 x 1,665.2 / 65.2), so £180 is about 30 per cent lower in real terms.
The recent fall is clearest on the Consumer Prices Index, the measure the fee has been uprated by since 2024. CPI (series D7BT, 2015 = 100) was 89.2 in April 2010 and 142.1 in April 2026, the months the £145.50 and £180 fees took effect. £145.50 in April 2010 is therefore about £232 at April 2026 prices (145.50 x 142.1 / 89.2), and today's £180 is about 22 per cent lower in real terms. The two freezes, 2010-16 and 2022-24, account for most of that gap. RPI usually runs above CPI, so the long-run RPI figures above lean high.
See our guide to how the fee is set for the policy mechanics behind these movements, and our UK vs Germany comparison for how the UK fee compares with other European public-service broadcasting charges.
Source notes
Each fee level is set by a statutory instrument (under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949 until 2004, the Communications Act 2003 since). Real-terms comparisons use the ONS long-run RPI (CDKO) and CPI (D7BT) series, read on 21 October 2026.