How to listen to BBC Radio outside the UK
If you’re outside the UK, BBC Sounds was closed in July 2025. But it’s still very possible to listen to all BBC Radio stations, wherever you are. Here’s how.
Listen live on the website
You can listen to these stations on the BBC’s international website:
For the rest, even though BBC Sounds has closed, you can still listen to BBC national, nations and local radio, anywhere in the world.
You can find an incomplete list of stations by following the “Audio FAQ” button at the top of the BBC Audio website, and the Audio part of the BBC app.
A more complete list is buried in the BBC’s help pages, which includes new stations from BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 3.
All these links work just fine on your mobile phone as well as on your laptop - no app required.
Tip: you can also just guess based on the old website addresses. bbc.co.uk/radio1 or bbc.co.uk/radioleeds work fine.
Listen live on an app
BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service English are available in the BBC app, which is free for everyone, in the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android.
While the other stations aren’t in the BBC app, you will find them in others.
If you use iPhone or a Mac, you can open the Apple Music app and search for a BBC radio station. You do not need to be a subscriber to listen to live radio on the Apple Music App. (I don’t know whether Apple Music’s Android app works in the same way; the web version appears not to work).
TuneIn also includes all of the BBC’s stations outside the UK. Ignore any suggestion to subscribe to TuneIn - it’s a free app.
The Radiofeeds website is a good place if you want links to play in an online player of your choice (like VLC).
On demand radio
On-demand radio is no longer available outside the UK.
However, most speech programmes are available in podcast form. You can find BBC Podcasts in most podcast apps; like Apple Podcasts or Pocket Casts. These podcasts contain advertising outside the UK. With Apple Podcasts, you can pay a monthly subscription which removes the ads from some BBC podcasts, and gives you early access to some shows too.
Additionally, some flagship BBC Radio 4 programmes are now available for catchup. For shows like PM, the Today Programme, and others that aren’t available as podcasts, you’ll find big play buttons in the BBC Radio 4 programme schedule. These began appearing on the BBC website in late August 2025, and made it to the BBC app in early November 2025.
Do I get more access if I subscribe to the BBC?
Some parts of the BBC’s website are paid-for in the US, and you need a subscription to access it.
That subscription does not include any access to additional radio stations or catch-up radio.
Rights restrictions
Rights deals for sports commentaries, particularly football or the Olympics, means that you may not always have access to some of these radio stations. (When the Olympics are on, those rights even include news reports, so often all BBC radio closes down overseas, with the exception of BBC World Service.)
Going on holiday?
If you’re in the UK, you can ignore all the above. You can still download and install the BBC Sounds app, and it will continue working for you while you’re on holiday anywhere in the world (up to 30 days).
More technically: if your Apple or Google account is set to the UK, then you’ll still be able to download the BBC Sounds app. And if your BBC account has connected to a UK IP address within the last thirty days, you’ll be able to use it. (In my tests, a VPN does the trick).
Why not just use a VPN?
For international users, we can’t download the BBC Sounds app any more. Access to that is done via your Apple or Google account. A VPN doesn’t help with that.
If you still have the BBC Sounds app installed, then it might work if you try it over a VPN to the UK; but you won’t get any updates to the app. It’ll be trivial for the BBC to stop this working in future.
How many people used to use BBC Sounds overseas?
On the BBC’s Feedback programme on Jul 11 2025, BBC Sounds boss Jonathan Wall said:
“There were 320,000 people who listened ex-UK to Sounds last week. The vast majority were listening to Radio 4 live, World Service live, and our music stations live. So the vast majority of people are getting exactly what they’ve had: just on a different digital product.”
This compares to an average of 4.8mn UK users, according to the last BBC Annual Report.
Why did they close the BBC Sounds app?
The BBC hasn’t actually given a reason. But this is my understanding…
Although it doesn’t look like it, the BBC is really two different companies these days - the public service broadcaster for the UK, which is paid-for by the licence fee, and a commercial company tasked with earning revenue for the BBC everywhere else, called BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide).
BBC Sounds was paid-for by the public service broadcaster and really only intended for the UK; but, more importantly, the music rights for radio stations like Radio 2 or Radio 6 Music were also only negotiated for the UK. It costs hundreds of pounds in music rights to play a single record on Radio 2 - but that money only covers music rights in the UK, and not overseas.
The generally accepted rules for music radio’s payment of international music rights are that if your radio station a) is not marketed in a country other than yours, and b) you don’t earn revenue from that country, then you aren’t liable for additional music rights in that country. On the South Coast of England, you can often get radio stations from France - but because they’re not marketed to UK listeners, nor earning money from them, they have no music fees to pay for the UK.
In 2017, TuneIn lost a landmark court ruling, and lost again in the Court of Appeal in 2021. That clarified the law that since TuneIn was marketing radio stations to a new country, and earning money from them, they were liable for music rights payments in that country.
This is clearly something that BBC Studios doesn’t want. Paying for music rights worldwide is prohibitively expensive; and also there’s no guarantee that the terms would be the same, thus causing issues for the domestic broadcasts. (As one example - US music licensing contracts require that you can’t broadcast more than four tracks from the same artist in a three hour period. There’s no such rule in the UK.) That contract also requires accurate reports, both of songs played but also exact listener numbers - something which could add significant work.
It’s easier for BBC Studios to give access to BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service (two stations they own effectively all the rights for), where they are free to monetise these by using ad banners, audio advertising and even subscription.
Why are they still promoting BBC Sounds in podcasts?
There’s no technical reason why overseas listeners should have to listen to promotion for BBC Sounds in podcasts; just as we have ads inserted, so we could have those promotional trails removed. So, I don’t know.
Why aren’t they communicating all this?
A few reasons - first, perhaps one of legal liability (they probably don’t want 25 years of music rights payments), and also because if they do communicate too clearly how to find BBC domestic music radio, then they could be claimed as marketing those stations, and therefore have to pay the music rights fees.
The BBC is, in short, delicately tiptoeing through this issue. It would be easy for them to turn off BBC music radio entirely overseas. It’s lucky for us that they aren’t doing that.