Since the release of the WordPress 5.0 version, WordPress has brought a new editor called Gutenberg. Creating a website with page builders is alright, but many WordPress users find Gutenberg, the default block builder of WordPress, fabulous to use. The usual page builders are gradually becoming obsolete, with this new editor offering an intuitive drag & drop interface.
Creating websites has become incredibly easy since WordPress introduced the use of themes. All one has to do is import a theme complete with pages, headers, footers, and all other site elements, and their website is golden. Theme creators have tried to move with the times by creating Gutenberg-ready themes. The issue is that not all themes are Gutenberg-ready, despite some of them being really high-quality themes.
Gutenberg Compatible vs. Gutenberg-ready
You have to understand that there’s a difference between Gutenberg compatibility and readiness. First off, all WordPress themes are compatible with Gutenberg by default. But Gutenberg-ready themes ensure that all the Gutenberg elements that you employ match the frontend styling.
If you create a website with a Gutenberg-ready theme and I use one that’s not, yours will be more responsive and elegant despite doing the exact same operations. It is also likely for parts of a website to break down when one uses Gutenberg and a theme that’s not Gutenberg-ready. It doesn’t matter whether you want to start using Gutenberg immediately or later; the bottom line is that you should choose a theme that will let you use it when you’re ready.
Free or Premium Gutenberg WordPress Themes
When we go for free themes, it is often because of our budgetary constraints. But this usually means that we miss out on some excellent premium features that premium themes offer. Nonetheless, some free themes offer features that you usually only find in a premium theme. We’ve compiled this list to help you circle down on free themes that are also Gutenberg-ready.
Best Free Gutenberg WordPress Themes Described bellow:
Astra
Astra is one of the most popular options for creating beautiful WordPress websites. Its fully Gutenberg-ready nature and compatibility with all popular page builders make it perfect for all your work, whichever editor you choose. It is arguably the fastest free Gutenberg WordPress theme and has a beautiful and modern layout. The incredible light weight of Astra is significantly responsible for its excellent loading speed.
With its native AMP readiness, your users will easily access your website from mobile devices. Astra also comes with Schema.org code integration so that search engines will rank your website highly. Since it is highly extensible with different addons, you can enhance the SEO of your website using various plugins, such as Yoast SEO.
If you want to use your website for eCommerce purposes, you will be glad to learn that Astra is fully WooCommerce-ready. It has a ready storefront on which you can post your products instantly. Astra has you covered with the necessary layouts if your interest leans more toward blogging, portfolio showcase, entertainment, or any other niche.
You can brand your website easily using Astra because it supports an unlimited range of custom colors. It allows you to bring in a custom logo so that your brand can be recognizable by all your visitors. In case you want to customize it extensively, this Gutenberg WordPress theme comes with the most robust Theme options for customizing every inch of it.
Key Features
- Fully responsive
- AMP ready
- Translation and RTL ready
- SEO friendly
- SEO markup
- WooCommerce ready
- Hooks and Filters
- All page builder support
Kadence
Kadence is a free Gutenberg WordPress theme that offers a wide range of customization options, enabling you to create unique websites. It is a really light theme, which contributes to its high loading speed. You can customize its headers and footers easily with its native drag & drop header and footer builder, but Kadence lets you use Gutenberg for this purpose as well. Although you get some elegant starter templates that are easy to customize, they aren’t as many as you’d hope.
With Kadence, you can quickly stamp your identity on your entire website with an extensive library of fonts and flexible color controls. You get to use the precise colors that you identify with your brand. Since this Gutenberg WordPress theme supports custom backgrounds, you can beautify your pages with solid colors, patterns, or your logo in the background. Kadence supports the creation of custom menus on your website to personalize your site further and enhance its user-friendliness.
Working with sidebars makes your pages less cluttered while giving your users more widgets and content at a moment’s notice. Kadence lets you have right or left sidebars if you don’t want to have both simultaneously. Some people aren’t really into sidebars, which is why this theme offers a full-width template. If you’re working without sidebars, you’ll find the footer’s support for widgets helpful in providing further functionality without your pages looking crowded.
Key Features
- Lightweight
- High loading speed
- Elegant premade website templates
- Contemporary professional designs
- RTL language support
- WooCommerce support
- Custom background
- Powerful theme options
GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a multipurpose Gutenberg WordPress theme that you can use with a website of any niche. Since it is fully responsive, your website will be easily accessible by your users via all devices, including tablets, laptops, and mobile phones. The creators really focused on making this free Gutenberg WordPress theme fast and user-friendly. GeneratePress is also really lightweight, which bodes well for your site’s performance and SEO rankings. A fresh installation of this theme amounts to less than 10kb.
Whether you want to use Gutenberg or a traditional page builder, GeneratePress has you covered. You will have more control when working with Gutenberg, but if you prefer Beaver Builder, Elementor, or WPBakery, you will find the theme an excellent partner. Apart from its compatibility with these and other page builder plugins, its high extensibility enables it to work smoothly with all well-coded plugins, such as WooCommerce. GeneratePress comes with a ready installation of the eCommerce platform and a ready shop page.
The excellent CSS and HTML coding that comes with this Gutenberg WordPress theme makes it easy to manipulate all its functions and capabilities. GeneratePress comes with ready translations of over 25 languages. The high customizability of this theme is evident in its 60+ color controls that enable you to brand all elements, pages, and fonts. The variety that GeneratePress boasts doesn’t stop there; it offers 9 widget areas, 5 sidebar layouts, 5 navigation locations, and dropdown menus that appear on hover or click.
Key Features
- 9 widget areas
- 5 sidebar layouts
- Hover and click activated dropdown menus
- Sticky post support
- BuddyPress ready
- Threaded comments
- WooCommerce ready
- Translation ready
Go
Go is an elementary free Gutenberg WordPress theme whose creators are also responsible for GoDaddy, the hosting company and domain registrar. It is crafted for ease of use combined with a minimalist approach, which makes for an appealing user interface. You will love customizing this theme with Gutenberg along with the CoBlocks plugin. This is a plugin that the theme’s author has acquired to help with customization.
With Go, you can create a website that supports threaded comments on any post you publish. Since it is translation ready, your site can support any language you want. The theme supports RTL languages, such as Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew. You can also sell products to people from different nations and regions with the WooCommerce page that Go offers. Its eCommerce functions extend to cover payments and transactional communications.
The theme options that your site receives from Go enable you to customize every inch of the theme so that your site is entirely personalized and branded. Since it supports using a custom logo, you can have a logo that appears on your headers and tabs. You can work with whichever custom colors you want on your pages and sections. Go works smoothly with all browsers since it is cross-browser compatible.
Key Features
- Lightweight and super-fast
- Highly responsive
- CoBlocks plugin (free too)
- Elegant design
- Custom logo
- Robust theme options
- Threaded comments
- Translation ready
Sydney
For a free Gutenberg WordPress theme, Sydney is a surprisingly powerful theme for different business niches. It works just as well for companies as freelancers looking for a reliable theme and a decent web presence. Apart from being Gutenberg-ready, Sydney is also fully compatible with Elementor, so you can choose the one you want to work with. Your customization work will be smoother than you imagine if you choose to use the custom Elementor blocks.
Since Sydney comes with a host of Google Fonts, you will find it easy to pick out readable combinations that will also get associated with your site and brand. You have full color control, so the site will have the appearance and ambiance you want. Sydney has your back if you want to have a full-screen slider on one of your pages. Combine this with sticky navigation, and you have yourself some of the most beautiful and mildly sophisticated pages.
Sydney gives you the smoothest way of uploading your logos so that you can showcase your logo and those of your clients, partners, or sponsors. You can also insert a header image easily to go with the logo. You can utilize Sydney’s support for featured images when you want to call attention to an event, product, or offer. If you’re going to work with sidebar content, this Gutenberg WordPress theme comes with an optional right sidebar.
Key Features
- Live Customizer
- Custom Elementor blocks
- Custom background
- Logo upload
- Cross-browser compatible
- Frequent updates
- Translation ready
Blocksy
Blocksy is yet another lightweight Gutenberg WordPress theme. It’s built with the latest web technologies to balance feature wealth and blazing fast loading speeds. Although it is a really impressive specimen, this theme is also highly extensible and customizable, so you can add functional plugins and customize every inch of it. Blocksy supports other page builders, including Elementor, WPBakery, Beaver Builder, and Brizy.
This theme adopts a multipurpose approach to its functions so that you can use it for a blog, portfolio, education, restaurant, corporate, shop, or business website. Blocksy is fully optimized for WooCommerce and comes with a ready shop page. It is also optimized for excellent SEO performance so that your pages and posts will rank highly on search engine results. This theme is fully translatable so you can use your language of choice.
Blocksy has a fully responsive and adaptive layout, so your users can use any device they prefer to access your site. It is also compatible with all modern browsers. Since it comes with BuddyPress, you can use this theme to create small interactive social communities on your site. If you do take the option, you will find its support for threaded comments to be helpful. Blocksy has a grid layout that lets you showcase your posts as elegantly as possible. You can use the theme’s full-width template if you don’t want to use the right and left sidebars.
Key Features
- Live Customizer preview option
- Translation ready
- SEO optimized
- Inbuilt WooCommerce capabilities
- Compatible with modern browsers
- Multipurpose approach
- BuddyPress ready
- Left and right sidebars
Zakra
Zakra is a flexible multipurpose WordPress theme that has more than 10 premade website demos and promises to add more regularly. It sees regular updates, so you’ll always catch up on the latest WordPress trends. You’ll find its lightweight and fast nature excellent for high-performance websites. Besides being Gutenberg-ready, Zakra works with all major page builders like Elementor. It is perfect for eCommerce operations with the necessary pages and functions.
If you have specific brand colors in mind, this free Gutenberg WordPress theme will let you work with those precise colors. It also allows you to add your business logo and edit its color shades. Zakra has a few header styles, which are flexible and highly customizable. Its footer is widget-ready, so it can include different functions on it, including social links. If you have a thing for sidebars, this theme covers you with right and left sidebars.
Working with custom backgrounds allows you to include images, color patterns, or solid colors as the background of your posts and pages. Zakra lets you take comments to your posts and order them well with the threaded comments option. It is fully translatable, even with right-to-left languages, so there’s no limit to who gets to read your posts. Zakra can only take up to two columns, but it is worth a second glance due to its clean and contemporary layout.
Key Features
- 10 comprehensive site demos
- Lightweight and fast
- Custom log support
- Widget-ready footers
- RTL languages support
- SEO ready
- Highly extensible
- WooCommerce support
Inspiro
Inspiro is an artsy but incredibly professional Gutenberg WordPress theme with the most dazzling of designs. Its focus on photo and video content makes it ideal for professional photographers, filmmakers, and artists. You can use its pages to showcase your videography and photography portfolios. Inspiro comes with a full-screen section that supports HTML, Vimeo, and YouTube videos. The header that this theme offers also handles videos and images perfectly.
Inspiro has the slickest layouts that are sure to grab the attention of your visitors. You get to work with blog styles if you want to engage your users with excellent content. If you want to use WooCommerce to sell stuff off your pages, this free Gutenberg WordPress theme has you covered with full compatibility and premade pages. Inspiro has a sticky post function that you can utilize if there’s a post you want everyone to view once they land on a particular page. Your headers will easily support featured images.
This theme comes with some locally hosted fonts so that you won’t have to go looking for additional ones. The GDPR compliance of Inspiro is impeccable, so you won’t encounter any issues with your users’ cookie usage. You are free to use Gutenberg or any of the other popular page builders, including Beaver Builder and Elementor. Inspiro gives you incredible control over all the content, elements, and sections using its powerful theme options. It also supports the display of threaded comments below your posts.
Key Features
- Fullscreen area
- Full GDPR compliance
- Sticky post support
- eCommerce
- Photography or videography portfolio
- Custom logo
- Threaded comments
Getwid Base
Getwid Base is a superb theme that’ll get you to appreciate the advantages of having a minimalist website. This clean and lightweight Gutenberg theme is designed along with the Getwid plugin to work seamlessly with the drag & drop block builder. This plugin is a collection of Gutenberg custom blocks that you can drag and drop onto your pages easily. You also get to use the Gutenberg blocks that the editor offers to customize your pages with no coding skills needed.
Digital agencies, portfolios, and startups will look outstanding with Getwid Base, but it works with all small to midsize businesses. You already have a product landing page to work with if you need it. To yield unique results, you can customize the layouts that the theme offers extensively with the block editor styles. Getwid Base comes with a full custom background with which you can get creative and even use to communicate with informational images.
If you want to work with a different menu from the one this free Gutenberg WordPress theme offers, you can create a custom one easily. Getwid Base lets you import a custom logo and work with the custom colors of the theme to yield your dream results. The featured image element is ideal for drawing your audience’s attention to any piece of content you want. You can also use the sticky post feature in a similar fashion. Getwid Base lets you work with API for different purposes, such as Google Maps, with its support for microformats.
Key Features
- Many premade block patterns
- Highly customizable
- Custom background
- Translation ready
- Sticky post
- Custom menu
- Custom logo
- Block editor
Mission News
As the name would suggest, Mission News is a Gutenberg WordPress theme designed for magazine and newspaper websites. It boasts premium-caliber layout designs that make the content you publish feel more credible. Since the theme is fully responsive, your users will find it easy to read your news pieces from all sorts and sizes of devices. Mission News comes with elegant and readable fonts so that your users can easily read your content.
This theme’s layout is clean and minimal so that your pages draw the readers’ focus onto your essential content. You can still customize these layouts using Gutenberg or your preferred page builder plugin. Mission News has such a great design that whatever you end up with will still be optimized for speed and excellent SEO performance. It is compatible with all modern browsers, so your users will have the best reading experience.
Mission News is fully compatible with WooCommerce, enabling you to create a store in no time. Because this theme is fully translatable, you can make your content and eCommerce products for users of different locations. It also supports right-to-left languages. Mission News has robust theme options that enable you to work with all its layouts and elements and create whatever you have in mind. Since you want your posts to have as little clutter as possible, you can use the right and left sidebars to avail widgets, links, ads, and other secondary elements.
Key Features
- Fully responsive
- Powerful theme options
- Premium-level layout designs
- Rigorously tested
- Threaded comments
- Translation and RTL language ready
- Featured images
- Sticky posts
Portfolio Lite
As you may have guessed, Portfolio Lite is a professional portfolio theme for different creative purposes. It has a minimal layout that’s perfect for artists, photographers, and designers who need to showcase their content. You receive an entire page template for nothing but slideshows so that you can showcase your photos elegantly with different animation effects. This slideshow will form automatically the moment you add content to your image gallery. The placement of this slideshow is perfectly centered vertically and horizontally.
A photography website needs to have a decent loading speed; Portfolio Lite remains true to its name by being lightweight and lightning-fast. The editor style that this free Gutenberg WordPress theme offers is ideal for working on your website. Its theme options are also robust enough to work on your entire site from one central location. Portfolio Lite has the most flexible header, which enables you to showcase your brand and a little of its content. You can insert a featured image header to communicate whatever you want.
Portfolio Lite is translation ready so that you can work with any number of languages you want. If you don’t want to work with sidebars, this theme lets you showcase your pages in a full-width template. Alternatively, you can enable the right sidebar and showcase whatever content you want. With Portfolio Lite, you can place an image or inscription on the background of your website that sets the tone for all your visitors. A featured image can also play a similar role or call attention to specific parts of your content.
Key Features
- Slideshow page template
- Image gallery
- Sticky post
- Custom background
- Flexible header
- Image header
- Right sidebar
Final Verdict
All the themes we’ve listed here are of high quality, and we recommend them for almost any purpose. Any of them you choose will help you create an amazing website with Gutenberg. Do you already know the one you’re going with? If you want a hand with that, we advise that you go with the one that resonated most with you as you read.
If you’re looking for the single best free Gutenberg theme, that’s a tall order; each one of all these themes is great in its own right. However, we may have a way out if you still need help choosing one for your website.
If you need a theme for a news or magazine website, you can work with Mission News, which is specifically created for that purpose. Similarly, some other themes are focused on a single niche.
However, if your niche isn’t particularly mentioned, you can match it with the closest possible theme. For instance, if your niche is in the creative space, Portfolio Lite and Inspiro are perfect for it. Alternatively, you can go with one of the multipurpose ones while choosing the one that has most of the features that you can’t do without. For instance, Go, and Getwid are themes with plugins tailored to make their customization experiences smoother than they would usually be.
We understand that the features of all these themes are pretty attractive. The luck with this list is that all the items are free, so you can try one out and come back for another if you are still looking for something. I know you will be happy with the final results once you settle on one theme.
