The number of available themes, both free and premium, here on WordPress.com has been holding steady at 288 since the beginning of 2018. No new themes (at all!) have been introduced since the “Photo Blog” and “Small Business” premium themes were introduced in December 2017 and lots have been retired since then. Most of those have been free themes. As it stands right now, there are 91 free themes and 197 premium available to new sites registered on WordPress.com.
- Retired themes:
- Who’s affected by theme retirement?
- How do I know if my theme is retired?
- Switching Themes
- Thoughts
Retired themes:
Here’s a partial list of more retirees since my last posts in 2013, mostly free themes checked earlier this month. Please note that WordPress.com removed several retired theme showcase pages and, where I was able, I’ve linked to the theme’s demo site instead.
Able*
Academica*
Adaption
Adelle*
Adventure Journal*
Andrea*
Annotum Base*
Annotum Sans*
Ari*
Ascetica*
Autofocus*
Babylog
Balloons*
Basic Maths
Beach*
Big Brother
Blaskan*
Blissful Blog*
Blog Simple
Blogum*
Bold Life*
BonPress*
Book Lite
Bosco
Bouquet*
Brand New Day*
Chalkboard*
Chateau*
Cheer
Choco*
Chunk*
Clean Home*
Comet*
Coraline*
Crafty*
Delicacy*
Dusk To Dawn*
Duster*
Ecto*
Eight
Elegant Grunge*
Esquire*
Eventbright Multi*
Eventbright Single*
Ever After*
Everyday
Expound*
Fanwood Light
Fictive
Fiore*
Flounder
Fontfolio*
Forever*
Fresh and Clean*
Fruit Shake*
Funki
Fusion*
Greyzed*
Grisaille
Harmonic
Hatch*
Hero*
Highwind*
Hum
Ideation and Intent*
Imbalance2*
iTheme2*
Kelly
Koi*
Liquorice*
Lovebirds*
Matala*
Manifest*
McKinley*
Minimalizine*
Minnow
Misty Lake
Mixfolio*
MLB Fan*
MLB Modern*
MLB Retro*
Modularity Lite*
Monster
Motif
Museum
My Life*
Mystique*
Next Saturday*
Newsworthy*
Nishita*
Nuntius*
Oulipo*
Origin*
Oxygen*
Panel
Parament*
Piano Black*
Pilcrow*
Pinboard
Pink Touch 2*
Publish*
Quintus*
Reddle*
Responsive*
Retro-fitted*
Retro Mac OS*
Runo Lite
Rusty Grunge*
San Kloud*
Sandbox*
Selecta*
Sempress
Shaan*
ShineOn
Sidekick
Sight*
Silesia*
Simfo
Skeptical*
Skylark*
Something Fishy
Sorbet
Spectrum*
Spirit
Splendio*
Spun
Strange Little Town*
Stay
Suburbia*
Suits
Sundance*
Sunspot*
Superhero
The Columnist*
The Morning After*
Timepiece*
Toolbox*
Triton Lite*
Truly Minimal
TRVL
Twenty Ten
Typo
Untitled
Vertigo*
Vintage Camera*
Visual
Widely
Writr
Wu Wei*
Yoko*
Zbench*
Zoren
*denotes themes that were added to this list after my initial check.
This list doesn’t include many Premium themes, because, quite frankly, I collapsed. I suspect however that Premium themes are less affected by retirement than free themes.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: On September 1, 2021, WordPress.com retired all 83 available Premium Themes. As with previous theme retirements, you can continue to use your retired Premium theme. However, be careful where you put your cursor. If you activate rather than preview a new theme, the retired Premium theme then becomes unavailable. The only exception is if you purchased the Premium theme as a standalone purchase. In this case, you need to contact Support directly for assistance.
See my latest update at “What the Heck is going on with Themes?“
Who’s affected by theme retirement?
If you are a brand new user here at WordPress.com (welcome!), then theme retirement won’t affect you at the moment, but it will in the future. Longtime users know, I hope, that theme retirement happens regularly. Themes are retired for different reasons including incompatible code, non-responsive width, license agreements and other changes that we users are not privy to.
As before, Support will say you can continue to use your retired theme as long as you wish, the one exception is if you are using a retired Premium theme (see *note above). Regardless, be prepared for some “surprises” as new features are introduced or existing features are updated on WordPress.com which then break your site. WordPress.com generally updates retired themes only for security issues.
How do I know if my theme is retired?
Usually WordPress.com does not let users know that a theme has been retired unless an updated version of the same theme has been released, like Forever being updated to Toujours. If that happens, there should be a notice in your WP Admin Dashboard about it. Even when updating to a newer version of the same theme, keep in mind that this is the same as changing themes, so keep an eye on your custom menus and widgets and if you have either the Premium or Business plans, any CSS changes you made, which is usually theme-specific and may not be compatible with your new theme.
Not sure if you are using a retired theme? You can check by typing the name of your theme in the My Sites theme dashboard search box. If no theme by that name is found, then your theme has been retired and you might want to begin the hunt for a new one. If you recall what features attracted you to your original theme, you can use the filters in the Theme Showcase to search for a new one.
Personally I can’t help but wonder why it isn’t possible to suggest other themes to users based on the one currently in use on their site or at the very least leave the feature tags on the retired theme page to make it easier to search for a new theme. If you’re really stumped for a new theme, contact Support or add a new thread to the Community Forums for suggestions.
Switching Themes
Theme selection usually involves a lot of forethought and attention to what you feel is a good fit for your content. Then after finding and activating your chosen theme you spend a lot of time setting up your site to take advantage of your theme’s special features and widgets.
Here’s a Pro Tip: Content comes first. Don’t let choosing a theme sidetrack you from creating great content for your site. People are interested in what you have to say and less in how it’s presented, especially since many of your followers may use utilities like the WordPress.com Reader, Mozilla’s Reader and other RSS feed readers which strip away your design to present your content in a bare-boned view. And, of course, there’s AMP. Depressing, isn’t it?
If you are new to WordPress.com, you might be wondering what all the noise is about “retired themes.” At the moment it’s about limited theme choice. Sites on WordPress.com that have been around for a long time have access to retired themes in their WP Admin Themes dashboard that are not available to newly set up sites.
UPDATE January 2022: Sometime towards the end of 2021, WordPress.com quietly removed all retired themes that were previously available in the WP Admin Appearance > Themes dashboard. This means there are now the same number of available themes in both the WP Admin and the default WordPress.com Appearance > Theme dashboards.
You might be asking “how do I get one of those retired themes?” You can try posting to the Community Forums to see if someone still has an older site that they are not using and are willing to transfer ownership to you. Just keep in mind all the caveats I mentioned above about using retired themes.
Thoughts
Themes are like doctors and hairdressers; you don’t want to change them if you’ve got a good working relationship going. (And in an act of cosmic serendipity, two days before this post was published, my family doctor of nearly 40 years retired.)
Given that the majority of current themes on WordPress.com are Premium rather than free, I’m not sure where this is headed.
As always, the information in this post is correct as of publication date. Changes are inevitable.
This post was published originally in July 2017 and was updated in August 2022.
Featured Photo by Monica Silvestre on Pexels.com
WPcomMaven 
Good article.
Do new users have an Admin dashboard? Can they write in html format? (I am not a fan of the new and improved editor.)
Thanks for reading. 🙂 New accounts don’t have a direct link from the MySites/New Dash/Calypso dashboard like older accounts do. I mentioned this in my post on Remembering WP Admin. Anyone with a new account who wants to access the WP Admin Dashboard needs to add /wp-admin to their site address; As far as retired themes there, new accounts don’t have any. New accounts get to choose from the same 288 themes offered in the Theme Showcase.
The MySites Editor does have an HTML tab so it’s possible to write strictly HTML or add things to your post created in the Visual Editor, like “Call to Action” buttons or columns.
Coincidentally, I read on another site that WP is taking away the Admin interface for everyone. Have you heard that?
Not a whisper. There have been rumors in the past and The Powers That Be have already rerouted many of the links/functions formerly available in WP Admin to the MySites/New Dash/Calypso dashboard. *shrugs*
I feel like WP.org is a bolthole to which I can go if WP.com become unpleasant to use. Not that I expect that will be the case, but it’s a feeling I get when I hear of ‘another’ change to the framework.
I was surprised recently to find my free theme had been retired, never noticed that it mentioned that anywhere in my dashboard. It only became apparent when I contacted support because the mobile version seemed weird.
They were nice enough to suggest a few similar themes, but as you mentioned – everything seems perfect with my current theme, so why would I want to change it. I guess I’ll have to at some point, but nice as the suggested themes looked, each had some feature that didn’t work for me and my blog that I had filed and polished over the years to be what it is now.
I truly hope they’ll never take away the old editor as I’ve experienced problems with the new one that I haven’t read anything about so far.
Yes, no notice is given. It’s up to us, the users, to notify our hosts if something breaks or looks odd. I guess with millions of sites to shepherd, that’s their preferred modus operandi.