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 nominal rise
90x
~80% real-terms
Year-by-year table
Selected milestone years. 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) |
| 1971 | £12.00 | £7.00 | Radio licence abolished, TV licence becomes the only broadcasting fee |
| 1975 | £18.00 | £8.00 | |
| 1979 | £25.00 | £10.00 | |
| 1981 | £46.00 | £15.00 | Steep inflation-era uplift |
| 1985 | £58.00 | £18.00 | |
| 1988 | £62.50 | £21.00 | |
| 1991 | £77.00 | £26.00 | |
| 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 | £169.50 | £57.00 | |
| 2026 | £180.00 | £60.50 | Current fee from 1 April 2026 |
Sources: TV Licensing historical fee schedules, BBC Annual Reports and Accounts, DCMS funding settlement publications. Pre-1968 figures from the General Post Office records cited in the BBC's online archive.
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 and £180 figures of the current Charter period.
Real-terms perspective
Comparing the licence fee across eight decades requires inflation adjustment. The ONS CPI series, extended backwards using the long-run RPI-equivalent series for pre-1988 years, gives a rough order of magnitude. £2 in 1946 has the same purchasing power as roughly £100 in 2026 prices (the long-run series is uncertain at the edges, so estimates vary). The 2026 fee of £180 therefore represents a real-terms increase of around 80 per cent over 80 years.
Most of that real-terms growth happened during the colour-TV era between 1968 and 2000. From 2000 to 2026 the fee has roughly tracked CPI, with the 2010-16 and 2022-24 freezes representing real-terms cuts that were partially restored on resumption. The cumulative real-terms position in 2026 is broadly similar to the real-terms position in 2010, despite the considerable cash rise from £145.50 to £180.
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
Pre-1968 fees from the General Post Office historical records (cited in BBC online archive). 1968-2024 from TV Licensing official fee schedules and the annual Statutory Instruments under the Communications Act 2003. Real-terms comparisons use ONS CPI data spliced with the long-run cost-of-living index for pre-1988 years.