Twelve daily newspapers and eleven Sunday-only weekly newspapers are distributed in the United Kingdom. Others circulate in Scotland only and still others serve smaller areas.

National daily newspapers publish every day except Sundays and 25 December. Sunday newspapers may be independent; e.g. The Observer was an independent Sunday newspaper from its founding in 1791 until it was acquired by The Guardian in 1993. Many daily newspapers now have Sunday editions, usually with a related name (e.g. The Times and The Sunday Times), but are editorially distinct.

UK newspapers can generally be split into two distinct categories: the more serious and intellectual newspapers, usually referred to as the broadsheets due to their large size, and sometimes known collectively as ’the quality press’, and others, generally known as tabloids, and collectively as ’the popular press’, which have tended to focus more on celebrity coverage and human interest stories rather than political reporting or overseas news. The tabloids in turn have been divided into the more sensationalist mass market titles, or ’red tops’, such as The Sun and the Daily Mirror, and the middle-market papers, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.

The Independent and The Times have changed in recent years to a compact format, the same size as the tabloids. The Guardian moved in September 2005 to what is described as a ’Berliner’ format, slightly larger than a compact. Its Sunday stablemate The Observer followed suit. Both The Guardian and The Observer now use the tabloid format, having done so since January 2018.[1] Despite these format changes, these newspapers are all still considered ’broadsheets’.

Other Sunday broadsheets, including The Sunday Times, which tend to have a large amount of supplementary sections, have kept their larger-sized format. The national Sunday titles usually have a different layout and style from their weekly sister papers, and are produced by separate journalistic and editorial staff.