Rajar Q1 2026: Weekly reach declines across national radio brands

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 brands with a smaller listenership, however, such as Global’s LBC, which grew its national weekly reach 6.4% year-on-year to 3.6m, a record quarter.

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 figure does not include certain regional stations owned by Global but licensed by Communicorp UK.*

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.

*This article has been corrected to clarify that the only figures that don’t include these stations are the overall Global figures. All the brand numbers published by RAJAR do include the Communicorp UK station numbers.