Why Wordpress.com themes marked accessibility ready are of interest
I would always recommend making accessible websites so the availability of accessibility ready themes on Wordpress.com is of interest. They are liable to avoid common mistakes like low contrast ratios and include basic features like “Skip to content” links (so those using screen readers do not have to hear your site menu every time they load a page). This page is to both make it easy to find the individual themes (as of early 2026 and to have notes on them that might aid someone choosing a theme).
A note on style variations
One can style/colour variations in the free tier of Wordpress.com - but one needs to upgrade to the Personal plan to actually customise the fonts and colours.
Choosing a theme
Apart from the fonts and colours used (a key consideration on free tier) and RTL language support (very important if you need using a right to left language) a key difference between themes is the number and style of templates available. Some themes may be more designed for blogs, others for image heavy sites.
In self-hosted Wordpress.org sites you can author a child theme with a custom template if you need to extend an existing template - but that isn’t available on Wordpress.com (as the cheaper tiers used shared infrastructure not allowing that ensures shared security). So having decided on the page types one wants - see if the theme has suitable templates.
Automattic default themes - on free tier
The following themes name by year are often the Wordpress default theme for the year of their release and all by Automattic (the company behind Wordpress) - as the default theme these themes are likely to have a variety of templates to suit different content types:
Other themes on free tier
assembler - by Automattic - a nice minimalist theme that has 42 colour variations (a lot of styles in other words)
alter - by Automattic - has no colour variations and uses fairly old fashioned serif font.
creatio-2 - by Automattic - very minimalist theme with no colour variations.
luce - by Automattic - simple theme, not variations but clean and modern and colourful.
Slightly specialist free tier themes
archivist - by Automattic - a text heavy retro theme, various colour variations.
message - by Automattic - done is style of a mobile message thread, various colour variations
partygurl - by Automattic - very simple (very green) theme. Very minimalist.
hola - by Automattic - a blogging theme (nice set of colour variations)