The BBC has revealed more than 500,000 TV licences disappeared in a year as fewer households watched content requiring one.
There were 23.3 million BBC TV licences active by the end of the 2025/2026 financial year, meaning a drop of 540,000 (Image: Getty)
The BBC has admitted the number of households paying for a TV licence is expected to keep falling, warning the decline is only set to accelerate as more people stop watching content that requires one. Its latest annual report shows more than half a million TV licences disappeared over the past year, with the broadcaster saying it now needs reforms to its funding model to protect its future.
By the end of the 2025/26 financial year, there were 23.3 million TV licences in force across the UK, down by 540,000 compared with the previous year. The BBC said the decline was largely driven by more households no longer watching content that legally requires a TV licence. At the same time, the number of homes declaring they do not need one increased by 62,000, taking the total to 3.7 million.
Corporation feared ‘very profound impact’ of maintaining the perk, says director-general (Image: Getty)
The latest figures continue a longer-term trend. At the start of the decade, there were 25.9 million TV licences in force across the UK. That number has now fallen by more than 2.5 million.
Speaking after the report was published, BBC chief financial officer Berangere Michel said: “We’ve got some data behind that, and we’ve done some estimates behind that, and we can see that the large majority of the reason for the decline is people… not consuming licensable content.
“That is a trend that I don’t see changing back. In fact, I see it accelerating, and that is one of the reasons why we would like a reform of the funding.”
The BBC warned that its financial position worsened during the second half of 2025, with falling licence fee income, rising costs and a difficult commercial environment all putting pressure on its finances.
The report states: “A steeper in projection decline of licence fees sales combined with cost inflation and a challenging commercial trading environment has exacerbated the gap between income and costs.”