# Touchline: free WordPress theme URL: https://symelo.com/tools/wordpress-themes/touchline Free WordPress theme. A bold sports news theme: scoreboard strip, diagonal front covers, live match centre, player ratings, standings, section colors and a night-game edition. A bold sports news theme: scoreboard strip, diagonal front covers, live match centre, player ratings, standings, section colors and a night-game edition. - Price: free (GPLv2 or later) - Category: Magazine - Version 1.0.0, 2026-10-22. WordPress 7.0+, PHP 7.4+. GNU General Public License v2 or later. - Style variations: Clay, Ice, Night game - Fonts: Big Shoulders Display, Barlow, System mono - Works with: [Secure Custom Fields](https://wordpress.org/plugins/secure-custom-fields/), a free plugin by WordPress.org, optional ## Description Touchline is built for sport: condensed capitals for headlines, a clean sans for the reading, and a colour for every section. The front page opens with a scoreboard strip of results and fixtures and a diagonal front cover on a flare band; live blogs become a match centre, reviews become player ratings, and opinion becomes The Column with big pull quotes. Light, night-game, Clay and Ice editions, built-in forms, galleries, a lightbox and snappy motion that stops when visitors ask for less. #### Made for newsrooms * **Section colors.** Give every category a color (and an image) and Touchline uses it across cards, kickers, section headings and section pages. * **Breaking and live.** Flag a story as breaking for the ticker band; run live coverage with timestamped entries, key events and a pinned summary. New entries appear for readers without reloading ("Show 3 new updates"), and the story is marked up as a LiveBlogPosting for search engines. * **Reviews.** Score out of 10 or 5, criteria bars, pros and cons, a verdict, an "Editor's choice" badge and score rings on the cards, with Review structured data. * **Story formats.** Standard, feature (a full-height cover), video (the video first), gallery (a full-width carousel) and opinion (the writer leads), each with its own template. * **Bylines that fit a newsroom**: several writers, roles, datelines, reading time, "Updated" times, an author box and author pages with photos, beats and social links. * **Trust**: key points, sources, corrections, image credits, a link to your editorial standards and honestly labelled partner content. * **Filters**: readers narrow any archive or search by section, format, period and score and sort by newest, trending, most discussed or rating. #### Built in * **Patterns**: heroes (matchday scoreboard, front cover, results wall, by the numbers, next up, background video), a fixtures strip, standings, match centre, player ratings, The Column, story grids and lists, video and photo sections, galleries with a lightbox, forms (tips, contact, newsletter), numbers, reader questions, footers and full pages (About, Contact, Videos, Gallery, Landing). * **Templates** for the home page (front page built from story sections, or the blog home), single stories in every format, sections, tags, authors, search and 404, plus Landing page, Wide page and Front page (no title). * **Style variations**: Default (white and signal red), Night desk (dark first), Cobalt, Newsprint (warm paper with serif headlines) and Volt, each with its own light and dark palette. * **Forms, galleries with a lightbox, featured video, gentle motion, reading progress and share buttons**, light and dark schemes. No page builder. ## Frequently Asked Questions #### Do I need a plugin? Live updates, review scores, section colors, sponsors and author profiles are entered with the free Secure Custom Fields plugin; Touchline offers to install it with one click. Without it every page still displays, but the extra fields can't be edited. #### How do I run a live blog? Open the story, set "Live coverage" to Live in the story's details and add entries (time, title, text, key event). Readers on the page see new entries without reloading. Set it to Ended when coverage is over. #### How do I give a section its color? Posts → Categories → edit the category and choose its color (and an optional image). Cards, kickers and the section page use it. #### Where do messages from the forms go? Every message (tips, contact, newsletter) is saved under Messages in the dashboard and emailed to the site's admin email address. Change the recipient under Messages → Settings or in the form block's settings. #### How do I get the demo newsroom? Appearance → Import demo imports "Coastal newsroom": six sections, fourteen stories (live, breaking, reviews, opinion, video, gallery, sponsored), the Home, Reviews, About, Standards and Contact pages and a menu. You can remove it again from the same screen. #### How does dark mode work? The moon/sun button in the header switches between the light and the dark edition and remembers the choice on that device; until then it follows the device setting. The Night desk style variation is dark for everyone. #### Can I turn off the animations? Visitors who ask their device for reduced motion get a calm site automatically (the ticker and the background video stop). To remove an animation from a block, open the block's Motion panel in the editor. ## Downloads - [Touchline 1.0.0](https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/touchline/1.0.0/touchline-1.0.0.zip) (2026-10-22, 2.4 MB, SHA-256 db8ba27e01b61f72bb66a3dda1435edc1aac5143d4b41b6e9847f7d2beaa2810) ## Screenshots - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/touchline/shots/home-1d5c1f4360.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/touchline/shots/category-name-business-942e52d2c4.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/touchline/shots/category-name-climate-e397f137c9.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/touchline/shots/category-name-world-5078c6c3d8.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/touchline/shots/admin-fields-e193d3db29.webp - [All WordPress themes](https://symelo.com/tools/wordpress-themes) ## Related pages - [All tools](https://symelo.com/tools) - [Agent documentation](https://symelo.com/llms.txt)