Rajar Q1 2026
Total weekly reach at both Global (-1.3%) and Bauer (-5.5%) stations declined year-on-year in Q1 2026, according to the latest Rajar figures.
A majority of the UK’s largest national brands registered year-on-year contractions, including Global’s Heart (-6.6% to 12.5m), Capital (-6.8% to 8.8m) and Smooth (-5.9% to 7.3m); as well as Bauer’s Hits Radio portfolio (-8.3% to 12.1m) and Greatest Hits Network (9.7% to 6.8m).
There were green shoots of growth for emerging brands, however, such as Global’s LBC, which grew national weekly reach 6.4% year-on-year to 3.6m, a record quarter.
These figures do not include certain regional stations owned by Global but licensed by Communicorp UK.
News Broadcasting’s total portfolio likewise saw a -7.8% year-on-year decline in total weekly reach to 6.3m.
The top BBC stations also saw year-on-year declines in weekly reach, including BBC Radio 2 (-4.1% to 12.6m), BBC Radio 4 (-1.9% to 9.1m) and BBC Radio 1 (-4.9% to 7.0m).
Global remains the largest commercial radio broadcaster by listening share, growing 0.6 percentage points year-on-year to 25.2% share. This is followed by Bauer (-0.4 percentage points year-on-year to 18.8%). Of these groups, their largest respective brands by listening share are Global’s Heart (8.0%) and Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio (6.3%), with Global’s Capital (5.0%) and Smooth (4.8%) just behind.
News Broadcasting stations collectively registered a 4.4% share of listening, the same as this time last year.
BBC Radio 2 remains the largest individual station by listening share (13.2%) despite a 0.3 percentage point decline year-on-year.
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