16 Best Open-source Free Ghost Blog Themes for 2022

Ghost blog is an open-source blogging platform, headless CMS for individuals and enterprise. We have been using it for years since the early version.

Thanks to its developers and the community, Ghost blog came a long way in the recent releases by adding the search, improving the backend, the SEO features and more.

However, the community is still small comparing to WordPress or other competitors, so it may look like there is no enough free open-source themes, but there are many.

Therefore, we write this post as a guide for open-source Ghost themes for anyone who are sticking to the open-source realm.

1- Casper

Casper is the default official minimal blog/ magazine style theme for Ghost. It is simple, easy to modify and configure, and also a reader friendly design with responsive features.

In MEDevel.com, we used Casper for some years with some modifications, which proven reader-friendly and productive.

2- Edition

Edition is an open-source free magazine theme that comes with a large header and subscription form with a mobile-first friendly design.

Edition is a part of a collection of official themes that created and updated by the core Ghost team, so it works with the last versions of Ghost.

3- Simply

Simply is an open-source multipurpose theme that created by Godofredo.ninja. It comes with different home designs and layouts, dozens of customization features, and a user- and developer-friendly documentation.

Simply can work as a magazine, a company or personal portfolio, a newsletter portal, a photographer showcase, or even a simple blog.

4- Dawn

Dawn is yet another official theme by Ghost theme that focuses on simplicity, and it fits for blogging, magazines, and writers.

Dawn works well with the recent versions and update of Ghost.

The primary reason why do we like Dawn is: its clean look with the fancy readable fonts it uses.

5- Massively

Massively is a text-heavy, article-oriented design built around a huge background image and scroll effects powered by Scrollex. Originally created by @ajlkn for HTML5 UP and later ported to Ghost.

6- Journal

Journal is a free journaling and magazine theme for Ghost 4 and 5. It is a minimal, typography-heavy newsletter theme. It is an open-source theme released under the MIT license.

7- Liebling

Liebling is a clean mobile-friendly fancy-looking magazine theme for Ghost 5 and Ghost 4. It is created by Eduardo Gómez, who made sure it has everything you need to run modern magazine website with your Ghost install.

Liebling has a built-in RTL support, NTF card support, custom subscription form, images lightbox viewer, and a dozen of languages options.

8- Mapache

Mapache is yet another fancy magazine and blogging theme by Godofredo.ninja. It comes with dozens of customization options, several home layouts/ designs, and works for Ghost 4 and Ghost 5.

Mapache has several built-in post formats that include: default text post, post with a full header, image post, post with video (YouTube, or Vimeo). It also comes with a custom contact page, and 404 error page.

The developer made sure you have a responsive embedded video for uploaded videos, YouTube, Vimeo, Kickstarter, and the Dailymotion.

Mapache is a developer-friendly theme that any developer can customize its core for his own requirements.

9- Caffeine

Caffeine is a material-design simple free and open-source newsletter theme that works well on the older versions of Ghost as version 4, as well as Ghost 5.

Caffeine allows users to choose between grid and masonry designs layout, add social network links, create custom static pages, and change its colors easily from the core configuration file.

10- Ghost Starter Theme

The Ghost Starter Theme is an official starter theme by Ghost for developers to start building their own themes using any CSS and JS framework they require.

11- Headline

Headline is a simple free magazine theme for Ghost, which is also offered by the Ghost team. It works with Ghost 5, but it is compatible with Ghost 4.

Headline comes with a clean responsive design, nice fonts, built-in search, and frontage subscription buttons.

12- Digest

Yet another official free theme by Ghost, Digest is a minimal newsletter theme, that keeps your homepage dynamic and refreshed.

13- Bulletin

Bulletin is a minimal newsletter theme for Ghost. The theme divides your homepage into two sections.

The left-hand section is optimized for capturing new email subscribers with a punchy background color. The right-hand section shows an excerpt from the latest issue you’ve published.

14- Alto

Alto is a clean minimal photo-rich theme that comes with a built-in dark and light modes.  Alto is a lightweight, responsive and also offered by the Ghost core team.

15- Ease

Ghost is not just for blogging or as a newsletter portal, it can be also used as a documentation hub for your project. With Ease, which a documentation-specific theme, You can create a rich documentation portal in mins.

Ease is also part of the officially released themes by the Ghost team.

16- London

London is a custom, image-centric theme for Ghost. Made for publishers and portfolios with plenty of graphics to show off to the world.

If you know of any other open-source free Ghost theme that we did not mention here, let us know.