What Time Is Emmerdale On? ITV1 Times, the 7am ITVX Drop and Catch-Up

Emmerdale is the soap with the least complicated schedule on British television, and the one viewers most often catch by accident. It sits at 8pm on ITV1 from Monday to Friday, half an hour long, and it hands straight over to Coronation Street at half past.

The complication, such as it is, happens thirteen hours earlier. The episode is already on ITVX at 7am, which means the village storyline has often been discussed all day by the time the broadcast version starts.

Short version: 8pm to 8.30pm on ITV1, Monday to Friday. The same episode lands on ITVX at 7am that morning. No weekend editions, and live football on ITV1 is the one thing that reliably knocks the 8pm slot out.

What time is Emmerdale on ITV1?

8pm until 8.30pm. ITV's own guide lists it that way through the current run — Monday 21 September reads 20:00 to 20:30 on the ITV1 row, with Coronation Street taking 20:30 to 21:00 straight afterwards.

Those two half-hours are the fixed point of the soap week. The ITV hour does not move for anything ordinary, and the Corrie and Emmerdale times guide covers what happens on the nights it does move.

Can I watch Emmerdale before it is on television?

Yes, and this is the part newcomers miss. Each episode goes up on ITVX at 7am on the morning of broadcast, free, thirteen hours ahead of the ITV1 showing. TVmaze logs the episodes at that 7am slot rather than at 8pm for exactly this reason.

The BBC does the same thing an hour earlier with its soap: EastEnders drops on iPlayer at 6am. Channel 4 puts Hollyoaks up at 7am too, so a determined viewer can be a full day ahead of the television schedule by lunchtime.

How many episodes are there each week, and how long is one?

Five in an ordinary week, one a night from Monday to Friday. Each runs about 22 minutes of programme inside a 30-minute slot, so an evening of Emmerdale is a shorter commitment than the half-hour in the listings suggests.

Episode numbers run continuously through the series rather than resetting weekly. Series 55 reaches episode 177 on Friday 25 September, which gives you a quick way of spotting a missing night: if the number jumps by two between consecutive broadcasts, something took the slot.

Is Emmerdale on at the weekend?

No. Saturday and Sunday have no episodes of any of the four soaps, and ITV1 gives the 8pm hour to entertainment and sport instead. Our weekend guide sets out what is available to stream across those two days, which is where the week's catch-up usually happens.

Why is Emmerdale not on tonight?

Live football on ITV1, nine times out of ten. A midweek match takes the whole evening rather than pushing the soaps back by half an hour, and the episode is simply not broadcast that day.

It happened on Wednesday 16 September, when the Carabao Cup had ITV1 from 7.30pm and neither Emmerdale nor Coronation Street went out — we wrote up what replaced them and where the episodes went. The ITVX drop is the thing to watch on those days: it sometimes goes ahead at 7am even when the television slot has gone.

For the week ahead, our night-by-night schedule flags any evening where the ITV hour is at risk, and cast updates carry the exits and returns that change who is in those episodes.

What series is Emmerdale on in 2026?

Series 55, numbered by year rather than by run, which is how a soap that started in 1972 keeps its counting straight. The episode numbers inside it are the useful ones for catch-up: ITVX files each episode by number and date, so a gap in your viewing is easy to close.

Questions readers ask

What time does Emmerdale finish?
8.30pm, when Coronation Street begins on the same channel.

Is the ITVX version the same episode?
Yes, the same one, just thirteen hours early and without a broadcast break.

Where do I find the rest of the week?
Under This Week & Next Week, with the programme explainers in our soap guide and teatime quiz times on our sister site's Chase guide.

Sources

• itv.com TV guide, Monday 21 September (ITV1 row: Emmerdale 20:00–20:30, Coronation Street 20:30–21:00 UK time)
• TVmaze: Emmerdale episode list (Series 55, episodes 173–177 on 21–25 September at 07:00 ITVX; no episode listed for Tuesday 29 September)

By the UK Soap On Air desk · Updated 20 September, 9.15am BST