The BBC is closing three broadcast channels: the BBC Three and BBC Scotland TV channels, which will shut in the spring, and the speech radio station Radio 4 Extra.
The BBC announced the closures on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, as part of a plan to save £500m over two years that also includes cutting between 1,800 and 2,000 jobs. BBC Three and BBC Scotland will become online-only. BBC Scotland will remain a channel on iPlayer, with some programmes also shown on BBC One and BBC Two in Scotland, while new BBC Three commissions will appear on iPlayer and on other platforms such as YouTube. Radio 4 Extra, which mostly airs archive comedy, drama and documentaries, will have its programmes on BBC Sounds, and its religious programme The Daily Service will move to Sounds and local radio. The nightly Reporting Scotland: News at Seven will not move online and will end when the BBC Scotland channel closes. This is not BBC Three’s first move online: it went online-only in 2016 before returning as a TV channel in 2022.
Source: BBC News, “BBC Three, BBC Scotland and Radio 4 Extra broadcast channels to close” (October 20, 2026)
Image: BBC Broadcasting House, Paul Gillett, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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