BBC World Service
The BBC is the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster – committed to providing accurate, impartial, and independent news to audiences across the UK and around the world. The BBC World Service is the BBC’s international broadcaster, delivering a wide range of programmes and services on radio, TV, and digitally, globally.
It reaches a weekly audience of around 318 million people (BBC Global Audience Measure 2023) and is one of the UK’s most important cultural exports – informing and inspiring the lives of people across the globe, helping them make sense of the world we live in.
The BBC World Service operates in 42 languages, including English, and has the global insight and expertise to give audiences a truly international news service with BBC News journalists and supporting staff in 73 cities across 59 countries.
BBC World Service is funded primarily from the UK licence fee. In 2016 the UK Government awarded it a £291 million grant administered by UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), for a four-year programme of modernisation. In 2021, the FCDO provided £94.4m to help the BBC World Service build on its work upholding global democratic values through accurate, impartial and independent news reporting. This included £8 million in additional investment to tackle disinformation and further improve the BBC’s digital offer to audiences. In 2023, the UK government awarded the BBC World Service a one-off grant of £20m over two years (2023/24 and 2024/25) to further support the language services.
