Greece Radio Live — Free Online Stations

Only twice in its history has Greece's national radio gone completely silent. The first time was in 1941, when German troops occupied the station in Athens. The second was on the evening of 11 June 2013, when the government announced that the public broadcaster would close by midnight. Between those two moments lies the story of a medium the Greeks have fought over, defended and reinvented. It is that story you hear when you search for Greek radio live or want to listen to Greek radio online.

1938: a studio in the Zappeion

Greek state broadcasting began in 1938, when the Radio Station of Athens went on air from a studio in the Zappeion, the neoclassical exhibition hall beside the National Garden. In those early months it broadcast only at night, for financial and practical reasons. Its musical signature was a traditional clarinet tune, a sound that generations of Greeks came to associate with the radio itself.

28 October 1940: the bulletin that started a war

On the morning of 28 October 1940, the Athens station read the first bulletin of the Greek Army headquarters: Italian troops had attacked Greek positions on the Albanian border before dawn. It is one of the most important broadcasts in modern Greek history. During the months that followed, the station also relayed the BBC and the Cairo broadcaster to keep the population informed, until German forces occupied it in 1941.

1945: EIR, EIRT and ERT

The state radio returned on 16 July 1945 under a new name, EIR, the National Radio Foundation. It became EIRT in 1970, when television was added, and ERT in 1975. Over the decades it built national programmes for news, music and culture, along with the Voice of Greece, a shortwave service for Greeks living abroad.

1987: the mayors who broke the monopoly

For almost fifty years, the airwaves belonged to the state. The change came from an unexpected direction: city halls. On 31 May 1987, Athens 98.4 FM went on air as a municipal station, without a proper licence but with the backing of the mayor of Athens. Thessaloniki and Piraeus followed. The government at first sent riot police to try to close them, but the movement could not be stopped, and a law the same year opened the way for municipal and private radio. Within a few years the Greek dial was one of the busiest in Europe.

2013: screens and speakers go dark

At a quarter to six on 11 June 2013, a government spokesman announced the closure of ERT as an austerity measure. Within hours its transmitters were switched off. Many of its employees refused to leave and kept broadcasting online and by satellite with the support of the European Broadcasting Union. Two years later, on 11 June 2015, ERT returned to the air.

The sound of Greek radio

Today the dial mixes public channels, private networks and countless local stations. Laïko and modern Greek pop dominate, rebetiko and traditional music keep devoted audiences, and talk radio follows politics closely. For the Greek diaspora in Australia, the United States and Germany, streaming makes a station from Athens or Thessaloniki a daily companion. Below you can play the Greek radio stations online we index, free in your browser.