18 Best Free WordPress Portfolio Themes 2024
This is a hand-picked collection of the finest free WordPress portfolio themes for any website. Portfolio themes offer a functional framework for people, groups, or entities who want to show off their artwork, photography, or anything visual on the web.
If you search for a great free portfolio theme, you come to the right place. Opt for the one that includes features like front-page sliders, engaging slideshows, or well-designed galleries. These features can help you create a site that stands out. All themes listed below are portfolio themes that provide a responsive layout and excellent functionality that you can download and use for free and commercial and personal websites.
While these themes are great for simple portfolio websites, you might also want to look into more advanced premium portfolio themes.
In a hurry?
The best free portfolio WordPress themes are Shapely, Astra and Illdy. These themes are easy to set up, customize and use for any portfolio website.
The Best Free Portfolio Themes Compared
| Active Installs | Rating | Performance (PageSpeed Insights) | |
| Shapely | 80,000+ | 4.9/5 (400 reviews) | 91/100 |
| Astra | 1+ million | 4.95/5 (5,000 reviews) | 87/100 |
| Illdy | 50,000+ | 4.70/5 (300 reviews) | 92/100 |
| Hello Elementor | 1+ million | 4.90/5 (100 reviews) | 95/100 |
Now, look at the best free portfolio WordPress themes in more detail.
Best Free WordPress Themes For Portfolios
1. Shapely Portfolio
An online portfolio can distinguish between securing a deal and losing it. That’s why it’s crucial to ensure that your portfolio is up to par, and using a free portfolio WordPress theme can help achieve that. Shapely is a perfect choice as it is not only compatible with many free and premium WordPress plugins, including Google Analytics, Yoast SEO, Contact form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack, and WooCommerce, but it also offers a fully responsive design and a range of useful features.
Using a free WordPress portfolio theme like Shapely, you can create a practical and visually appealing professional online portfolio. So, don’t miss this opportunity to make a great first impression on potential clients or employers.
More info / Download Demo2. Astra Portfolio
Astra is the most popular and versatile WordPress portfolio theme. It is a freemium theme with Gutenberg and Elementor integration for full site editing. It allows for creating a custom portfolio using a simple drag-and-drop user interface.
Astra is a fast, free, and customizable WordPress theme ideal for creatives such as designers, photographers, illustrators, web designers, and graphic artists seeking to showcase their portfolios online. Its lightweight build ensures that your website loads quickly, keeping visitors engaged with your work without lag, which is especially critical when displaying high-quality images and designs.
The theme offers a range of layout options and allows for deep customization, enabling creatives to tailor their online portfolio to reflect their unique style and brand. Astra’s seamless integration with popular page builders facilitates an intuitive drag-and-drop experience, making it easy to create stunning gallery layouts and project pages highlighting your work effectively.
Astra’s responsive design adapts beautifully to all screen sizes, ensuring that your portfolio looks great and functions smoothly across all devices. This is essential for attracting clients who may view your work on various platforms. With its emphasis on performance, customization, and visual appeal, Astra provides a professional and polished canvas for creatives to display their portfolio to the world.
More info / Download3. Illdy
Illdy is a clean and professional free portfolio WordPress theme. Due to its elegant and easy-to-customize interface, it is a powerful, flexible WordPress theme capable of handling many diverse website archetypes and applications, from personal to corporate, from business to commerce.
Illdy uses the WordPress Live Customizer and several deep customization options and features. These put you in charge of your website’s look and feel, whether you pick one of Illdy’s multiple pre-designed pages and layouts or start from scratch using handsome icons, shortcodes, and widgets to craft the pages you dream of. Illdy truly outshines the competition by providing a beautiful setting to showcase your works. Try Illdy today!
More info / Download Demo4. Hello Elementor
Hello Elementor is a base theme for the most popular page builder for WordPress – Elementor. It is a blank canvas you can use to build any website from a simple personal portfolio to a portfolio site with eCommerce functionality. You can install any of the provided base templates and modify them using the drag and drop user interface provided by Elementor.
More info / Download5. Pixova Lite
Pixova Lite possesses a clean code and tons of customizations. Its general concept makes it multipurpose and versatile with any topic in mind. Pixova Lite is quick and easy to install with its one-click import and is adaptable to all screens and devices. With several pre-built choices for footer, header and blog sidebar, you will get a high-quality tool for great visual impact without any cost. Pixova Lite also features amazing typography from Google Fonts aside from unlimited colors.
Pixova Lite is WooCommerce ready; thus, you can create your virtual shop. It is a versatile creation from Colorlib that makes you review budget choices. Get Pixova Lite with constant free updates and lots of dedicated specialized support! You will even find a pro-version to upgrade to! You will think twice before judging them before seeing them truly for yourself.
More info / Download Demo6. Kadence
Kadence is a contemporary and free WordPress theme impeccably suited for individuals looking to showcase their portfolio, be it photographers, illustrators, designers, or creative professionals. Its clean and minimalist design ensures that your work stands at the forefront, allowing your visuals to capture the viewer’s attention without distraction.
The theme’s deep level of customization enables creatives to express their personal brand through various layout options, color palettes, and typography settings. Kadence’s grid layouts are ideal for displaying portfolio pieces in an organized and aesthetically pleasing manner. Hover effects and lightbox features provide an interactive experience, allowing visitors to engage with your work in detail.
Kadence is designed with performance in mind, ensuring that high-resolution images and galleries load quickly and smoothly, delivering a seamless browsing experience. Its responsive design adapts flawlessly to different screen sizes, from desktop monitors to mobile phones, making your portfolio accessible to a broad audience.
For professionals looking to expand their reach, Kadence is SEO-friendly, helping your website rank higher in search engine results. The theme also supports various post formats, making it easy to include video portfolios, audio tracks, and other multimedia content. With Kadence, creatives can build a powerful and professional online portfolio representing their talent and skill set.
Demo7. Sparkling
Sparkling is a modern and well-designed free portfolio theme developed using Bootstrap. Its full-screen slider allows you to highlight your splendid photos and other exceptional creative content. A theme with an outstanding theme options panel allows you to customize the color scheme, font, layouts, header, and background. This theme also supports Gravity Forms, SEO by Yoast, Contact Form 7, and W3 Total Cache. Furthermore, this spectacular theme is retina-ready and supports Load More and Infinite scroll to give users unequaled usability. This theme is best for health and fitness, travel, education, marketing, and business blogging.
More info / Download Demo8. Activello
Activello is a serious and professional responsive WordPress multipurpose portfolio and blog theme. A theme decked out with a full set of well-developed features that can empower webmasters of any background to easily and effortlessly produce gorgeous and amazing websites. Moreover, Activello is uniquely powerful when deployed as a modern, sophisticated theme for portfolio websites.
Show your work’s worth in the best of lights with Activello! Show your work’s worth in the best of lights, with Activello!
More info / Download Demo9. Portum Material
Portum Material is a free WordPress portfolio theme for agencies, freelancers, and other professional individuals. With its user-friendly structure, everyone can promote their skills, services, and outstanding works with a worldwide audience.
In short, Portum Material is a versatile site skin that will get you going in little to no time. With the full-width slideshow, you can instantly capture their attention and spark their interest. Portum Material includes call-to-actions, back-to-top buttons, animated statistics, and video content support. Implement your signature style and shine online like a pro from the get-go.
More info / Download Demo10. Portum Clean
For a simple, neat, and stunning online portfolio, all you need is Portum Clean. You only really need one tool to create the desired website and start spreading the word out. Portum Clean is an excellent alternative for building resume pages but works best for agencies and freelancers. Use your imagination and make a difference with Portum Clean.
With the out-of-the-box version of Portum Clean, you can already strike the online space with a bang. Of course, you can alter it further and adjust the layout to your taste. Moreover, Portum Clean also sports a mobile-ready and browser-compatible layout that is SEO and speed optimized. Start the process now and witness a fast launch of a refreshing, minimalistic-looking portfolio page with the banging Portum Clean theme.
More info / Download Demo11. Newspaper X
Newspaper X is a WordPress theme dedicated to news and magazines. Newspaper X comes with clear, flexible and clean concept. You will find a header, a footer, a search bar and topbar! You will get an integrated banner (AdSense or others) ads management tool for ads divided across the page to get publicity.
Furthermore, Newspaper X is Bootstrap-based and uses an intuitive menu. The main page divides posts into 4 sections according to the type of news. You get world news, the latest news, editorial, and events. Like magazines or journals! Have fun setting up this easy, quick theme. Use Newspaper X!
12. ePortfolio
If you want to share your masterpieces with the world and promote your services, build a website with ePortfolio. EPortfolio is this creative and impactful free WordPress portfolio theme that will make an instant difference in your life. It suits any freelancer and professional out there, like designers, photographers, artists, even agencies, to name a few. The tool is very engaging out of the box, but you can personalize it, too. Thanks to Gutenberg and Elementor compatibility, editing ePortfolio happens in just a few clicks.
Other features of ePortfolio are responsiveness, full-width layout, breadcrumbs, preloader, and footer widgets, amongst the rest. You can also translate it to any language you want and expand it with WooCommerce and an online store section. Even if it is a free theme, ePortfolio offers all its users support, so you never feel lonely.
More info / Download Demo13. Portfolio Lite
If you are particularly searching for a free WordPress portfolio theme with a minimalist look, you better investigate Portfolio Lite. This remarkable alternative will display all your content, so visitors enjoy it through the roof. Thanks to device and browser compatibility, Portfolio Lite ensures the experience is first-class at all times – and it will be. You can witness the amazing Portfolio Lite first-hand and see what it has in store. But this, you can also A-test by heading over to the live demo preview.
The home page is pretty much just a slider with sidebar navigation. You can cruise to different website sections, which offers excellent navigability. Portfolio Lite’s cleanness ensures that your online portfolio puts all your content on display distraction-free. Impress everyone and raise your potential now with Portfolio Lite.
More info / Download Demo14. Draft Portfolio
Every creative individual, as well as agency, can profit from the terrific Draft Portfolio. This free WordPress theme is an excellent starting point for establishing a top-notch business site. Due to its neat design, everything you plan to publish on your website will come into view beautifully. You won’t even want to change anything, as Draft Portfolio already appears very eye-catchy out of the box. But do not feel limited in any way, shape, or form – customizations are possible, too.
I urge you to visit the live preview of Draft Portfolio. This will help you understand your true potential if you go with this thrilling web design. The tool is free of charge and comes with heaps of features to take to your benefit. Why wait? Download and install Draft Portfolio now and have an end product ready to go live in minutes.
More info / Download15. Make
Make enables you to set up a professional portfolio site without touching a line of code. It has a responsive and mobile-friendly design makes your website look spectacular across all screens, tablets, and mobile devices. This ‘freemium’ theme is designed to help artists, collectors, curators, and other creative individuals create their websites with basic WordPress skills. Foundry, the team behind this fantastic theme, integrated an intuitive page builder.
This flexible minimalist theme allows you to create a magazine, travel, and e-commerce site. Whenever you have to add in a new page, you will be presented with options to add text, blank, banner, and gallery sections as building blocks for your page. The drag and drop page builder lets you easily organize your website’s basic elements. It is fully compatible with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, and Jetpack.
The people behind this easy-to-use theme aim to provide artists with a free theme with premium features. The theme’s homepage offers several live demos of different sites built using the drag-and-drop page builder.
More info / Download16. evolve
evolve is a fully responsive and Retina-ready theme suitable for crafting a clean and beautiful portfolio. It makes your website accessible and viewable on any computer and mobile device. A slick Bootstrap and Parallax slider allows you to welcome your visitors with spectacular images, sliders, and animated effects.
This simple theme includes over 500 Google web fonts for your headings, sub-headings, and web copy. evolve is built on Bootstrap framework, enabling you to change designs without much effort. Multiple blog layouts include a single column, two or 3 columns in a grid, or a post with a featured image.
To help you make a buzz online, this theme allows for social media accounts or profile integration to your website. 12 widget areas are available in this website template. These are where you can insert your custom widgets to include new functionality, such as an improved opt-in box, featured posts, archives, etc. Two widgets are integrated into the theme: Tabs and the Carousel slider.
Moreover, navigation elements are included in this theme. These include a revolving main menu, categories, tags, “back to top” functionality on each page, and breadcrumb navigation. Evolve also supports up to 10 social networking sites. Lastly, evolve includes a contact page template with Google Map integration.
More info / Download17. Multipurpose Portfolio
As the name suggests, you can expect Multipurpose Portfolio to be highly adaptive, and perfect for different projects and purposes. Agencies, freelancers, artists, designers, and other creative individuals can now build an online portfolio without hassle. This free WordPress portfolio theme has a clean and simple look, which keeps your online presence at the highest degree. It is so pretty, and you would not even want to adjust the design much, stuff it with your creative works and details. If that is the case, be ready as your page will be up and running soon.
Other amenities of Multipurpose Portfolio are a custom logo, social media icons, slideshow, filterable portfolio, and animated statistics. There are also working contact forms, hover effects, complete documentation, testimonials, and Google Maps.
More info / Download Demo18. Portfolio Web
If you want to establish a solid web appearance for your business, Portfolio Web is the free WordPress portfolio theme. Portfolio Web gives you all the necessary to express yourself with your signature style as a freelancer, professional individual, or job seeker. Show yourself, market your outstanding skills and talents, and share an extraordinary portfolio with everyone. Let them further study your work before contacting you for the next project.
Portfolio Web is responsive, flexible, and extendable, working on all devices and platforms like a dream. It includes call-to-action buttons, neat animations, hover effects, a full-blown contact form, and loads content on scroll. You can also use a blog section to tell your story, your work process, and more.
More info / Download DemoFrequently Asked Questions
The best portfolio themes you can download and use for free are Illdy, Shapely, Antreas, Pixova Lite, and Sparkling.
A portfolio theme is a WordPress theme designed to showcase your work online. It can be artwork, photography, design work, interior design, etc.
WordPress can handle many different post and content types, including portfolios. It helps to manage your creative content with ease.
There are thousands of portfolio themes for WordPress, but one that stands out from the rest is Jevelin.
All WordPress themes listed above are licensed under GPL, meaning you can use them for free for private and commercial use.
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Sorry, but many of them are not FREE as announced on the title of the post. Check it, thanks.
Isaac,
All themes are free but some of themes have Lite and Pro version, so you might have to pay to get some of the functionality but in most cases you won’t need it and you can live with a Lite version.
Hello, Gridly Theme is not available. Do you know where it can be found, or is it gone forever?
Thank you.
Anastacia,
I think their website is just experiencing some issues and should return back shortly. If it will not return in few days we will remove it from this collection as well. If so, you can assume that it is gone forever.
This theme haven’t been updated since it was released few years ago, so it is also not the best theme on this list.
Gridly is still unavailable. Seems the whole website is out of business.
Ray,
Thank you for reporting it. I guess it is safe to assume they are completely out of business. Therefore I have removed Gridly theme from the list.
That’s sad, I liked Gridly and still use it on my portfolio site.
How do u get full width text on Illustrious? I have the free version.
Figured it out 🙂
The Pictorico Theme got my attention. I adore the design and the ability to customize it with multiple images. Awesome blog by you. Thank you Aigars!
This theme is designed and developed by Automattic which is the same team behind WordPress Core itself, so you can expect outstanding quality for this theme from code and design perspective.
thanks i liked each and every theme except a few which is not as per my taste.. thanks for a wonderful collection.. please keep sharing the same
Gaurav,
Thank you for your feedback! Which of these themes are not as per your taste and which ones are, so I can update this theme collection to include some awesome examples.
Hi there,
I just wanted to let you know that the Widely theme is not responsive. I just got an email from Themes Kingdom that confirmed it. Thanks!
Thank you for reporting it!
THanks I liked each and every theme, Hope this will impress my clients to use in their website
Pretty cool mate, you gave me more inspiration of what theme to placed on my sites, thanks mate.
I wonder if you could help me. I am looking for a fully responsive template to showcase several child artists work, with the possibility of each child having their own profile page and gallery, and the main page being a beautiful gallery of all pictures from all the artists. I want it very sleek to really show off the children’s amazing artwork. Do you know of anything that fits the bill at all?
Forgot to say, it needs to be free. I can CSS style it up if it’s not quite what I’m looking for and I am happy to use either Joomla templates or WordPress. Thanks
There aren’t any free or premium WordPress that are capable of this kind of functionality by default. One thing that you can try is to use some WordPress theme in combination with BuddyPress but still have to get your hands dirty coding.
BuddyPress will allow to create profile pages and handle other social features but it doesn’t have portfolio built in. There is a media gallery for each user but it doesn’t look as good as most premium themes out there.
Hi,
I am looking for a theme with a Homepage having multiple Rows of Album with their images that are scrollable horizontally.
And the Menu similar to Phogra and Gridster Lite. So It will look like masonry portfolio with titles and horizontal scroll.
I hope there is theme for it.
Thanks
Unfortunately, there are no free portfolio themes like you described above but there are plenty of premium themes that does have this functionality. I have created several portfolio theme collection and you can find them here.
Let me know if you need any further assistance.
good themes – good job – good luck
These themes are beautiful 🙂
Nabtron,
Thank you for your feedback! Which of these free portfolio themes you like the most and why?
Also if you need any suggestion for your website please let me know.
Wow pretty cool..Really helpful for my existing website as people nowadays seek innovative pictures these days.
I would also recommend to visit this for some new bootstrap HTMl & CSS templates.
Grace,
Thank you for your feedback!
Bootstrap templates are really great and we also use for our free WordPress themes. Also we have made a huge collection with other free Bootstrap template that you can find here.
I don’t understand why anyone would design a theme for a photographer where the photographer’s images are on display in enormous size and easily stolen and used by others. I don’t understand this full-screen image display craze. I never put my work on the web larger than 800px.
Phil,
On other hand I would never hire a photographer who is showcasing its images in 800px size. Those images are way too small to see an actual quality. I am using an 5K iMac with 5120 x 2880 resolution. Which means that I can barely find 800px images on my screen. Even instagram updated its image size to 1080px by 1080px. Still those images are small on 5k resolution but 800px is a complete joke.
@phil, you could always use watermarks or some branding like shutterstock does. It is very important that one can see your pictures at the very least in 2k resolutions. 800px can only be suitable for a meme or a troll.
I am looking for a template for a personal website as a business coach, including several services that I offer, some consultancy, a blog and a photo gallery. It should also support quotes from clients. Do you have any suggestions?
Arnaud,
Using a free theme for business consulting won’t look professional at all. You might want to consider these themes instead and all of theme have photo gallery, blog, service pages, testimonials and much more.
Thanks for sharing. Really love Pinbin theme.
Wow, Sparkling WordPress theme is completely free! It is also responsive and intuitive controls, lots of attractive. That’s my favorite theme!
I was planning to change theme of my blog and I was searching. Although I have been using zerif for a year now I think i would change it to Evolve.
thanks for the amazing list. You narrowed it down to find the best portfolio theme . . .
Hello Install Fullby On my site Its looking great on Single post. but In Home page all are mixed like Four coloumn in mobile view but Dekstop in Dekstop fine good. I know its not a support form but as expert please give some suggesion.
Thanks
Best Regards
We are not developers behind Fullby theme. You will have to contact developers for further assistance. Sorry for inconvenience.
Hello
I Install Fullby On my site Its looking great on Single post. but In Home page all are mixed like Four column in mobile view but Desktop in Desktop fine good. I know its not a support form but as expert please give some suggesion.
Thanks
Best Regards
Unfortunately, we are not the developers behind Fullby therefore we can’t help much wit this theme. If you are looking for some free WordPress themes that are well supported you might want to check this list.
Its Great Collection Aigars,
Illdy Is the best WordPress theme. thank you for Provide.
To make a portfolio the necessity of this theme is very essential but the matter is that many want to get free theme for justifying or another case. These themes are very much cross browser compatible. Many of others would like to use plugins in this case, this may be one of the best source. Thank you!
I’m using the Portfolio theme and I’m pretty pleased with it. I just have one question.
On the bottom of the portfolio pages there is a section for similar work. How is this utilized? I would like to either use it so it’s not just hanging there with nothing in it or possibly remove it. Any suggestions?
I am an oil painter. I want, for the first time ever, to gallerize my work online. I want it to be quiet and august—like the walls of an art museum.
(Some of the most famous artists are starkly simple online: smallish painting images floating alone in a sea of black. Understated title and medium and year to the side or below. No other distractions on page, or minimal ones.)
Can something like this be done with WordPress?
Thank you very much.
Rebecca-Eloise
This is very good admin panel template. it’s a user friendly Admin panel. I Like it
All template is helpfully & admin template very nice. Thank u
Thank you for these great selections. Can you recommend one for a complete website-building novice? I’m an artist/blogger and have beautiful things to share with the world 🙂
Thankyou for sharing this post.this informations are very helpfull for me.
I have used enclosed theme to make my wordpress blog more creative. This Free themes are so great. It is well designed SEO & portfolio.
Thanks for sharing these free themes here on your website.
I have one question for you.
Can you please tell, how can I make my site faster with installing your theme?
I have chosen “Brilliance”
Make sure to use a good hosting such as Kinsta or WP Engine and also use CDN. Those are the main things that will help to load any website very fast.