If you’re planning a TV campaign for next year, there’s a change coming that’s worth knowing about now. Subtitles on adverts used to be something the bigger brands did because it was the right thing to do. They’re now becoming something the broadcasters insist on, and it won’t be long before an advert without them can’t run on some of the UK’s biggest channels.
Channel 4 went first
Channel 4 announced in the summer of 2025 that it would require subtitles on all of its advertising, and the rule came into force on 1 March 2026. It covers the whole family of channels, including E4 and More4, as well as its streaming service. It was the first UK broadcaster to make subtitles compulsory for advertisers, and for a while it was the only one.
ITV follows in January 2027
That changed in September 2026, when ITV announced that it’s doing the same. From January 2027, subtitles will be required on advertising across all ITV channels and on ITVX.
ITV has been open about why it took a little longer. It works with a huge number of small, regional advertisers, and asking every one of them to supply subtitles is a bigger job than asking a few hundred national brands.
That matters to us, because regional ITV campaigns are a big part of what we do. If you’re advertising in a single ITV region next year, this applies to you just as much as it does to a national brand.
Why the broadcasters are doing it
The main reason is that a lot of people can’t fully follow an advert without them. ITV’s announcement puts the number of people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or have tinnitus at around 18 million. If your advert relies on a voiceover to explain the offer, that’s a great many people who may be getting the pictures but not the message.
It isn’t only about hearing loss, either, because plenty of people watch with subtitles switched on out of habit, or because the room is noisy, or because someone is asleep upstairs. The habit is strongest among younger viewers, and a YouGov poll in 2023 found that 61% of 18 to 24-year-olds prefer to have subtitles on when they’re watching TV shows and films in their own language. If your advert has no subtitles, the words on their screen just stop when your ad comes on and start again when it ends.
So there’s a commercial case alongside the moral one, because you’ve paid to reach every one of those viewers, and the subtitles are what carry your message to the ones who aren’t listening. ITV made the point itself when it launched the drama Code of Silence with an ad break that ran without any sound at all, in which the adverts were signed or subtitled instead.
How subtitles affect the script and the schedule
Subtitles don’t change the idea behind an advert, but they come out better when they’ve been thought about while the script is being written. A voiceover that races to fit everything in produces subtitles that race as well, so a script with a little room in it is easier to take in whichever way somebody is following it. Subtitles also have to share the lower part of the picture with any small print and web addresses, and keeping them out of each other’s way is part of what a specialist is there for. We’ve written separately about how that small print works.
The timing matters as well, because subtitles are made to match the finished soundtrack, which puts them among the last jobs before an advert is delivered. If a line of the voiceover changes afterwards, the subtitles have to change with it. The same goes for a campaign with several versions carrying different offers or end dates, because each one needs subtitles that match what’s said in it.
It’s not the same as YouTube captions
If you’ve had captions made for a YouTube or social media video, it would be natural to assume they’d do for television as well, but they’re a different thing. The caption file you’d upload to YouTube, usually an SRT file, is a simple text file with timings, and it isn’t what the broadcasters accept.
Broadcast subtitles are built to a different technical standard, with their own rules on timing, positioning and formatting, and they have to be created by a specialist broadcast subtitling service. It’s not something you can export from your editing software or run through an automatic captioning tool and send off. You don’t have to find a service yourself, though, because we can arrange the subtitling for you as part of getting the advert delivered. It’s a small cost compared with everything else in a campaign, and we’ll include it in your quote so there are no surprises later on.
What matters more is remembering to do it, because subtitles are a small job when they’re planned in from the beginning, and an annoying one when you find out the day before your campaign starts that the advert can’t go out without them.
What about the other channels?
At the time of writing, Channel 4 and ITV are the two broadcasters that have announced a requirement. Others haven’t said they’ll follow, but with two of the country’s biggest commercial broadcasters now insisting on subtitles it’s fairly clear which way things are heading, and an advert made with subtitles can run anywhere. Our advice is to treat subtitles as standard on every TV advert from now on, whichever channels you’re planning to use.
What this means if we’re making your advert
If we’re making your advert, there’s very little for you to do. We’ll plan subtitles in from the start, arrange for them to be created by a specialist broadcast subtitling service and make sure they’re delivered with the finished advert, in the same way we look after Clearcast clearance and delivery to the broadcasters. You’ll get to check them before anything goes out, and they deserve as careful a read as the script, especially your brand and product names and anything with a number in it.
If you’ve already got an advert that’s due to run again on ITV in 2027 and it doesn’t have subtitles, it’s worth sorting that out before January. The advert doesn’t have to be remade, because the subtitles are a separate file that’s sent to the broadcasters along with it. Get in touch and we’ll tell you what’s involved.
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