Tunisia Radio Live — Free Online Stations

No North African country shows how closely radio follows politics as clearly as Tunisia. For decades the dial was narrow and controlled; after 2011 it opened almost overnight. The story of Tunisian radio is really the story of who is allowed to speak, and it explains the lively stations people now find when they search for radio Tunisie en direct.

From Sfax and Bizerte to Radio Tunis

Small private stations broadcast from Sfax and Bizerte in the mid-1930s and from Tunis a little later, but official broadcasting began in 1938 as part of the French postal and telegraph service. Radio Tunis, the national Arabic station, dates from that year, as does the station that became Radio Tunis Chaîne Internationale, nationalised in 1960 and still broadcasting mainly in French. The youth station followed in 1995 and Radio Culture in 2006.

2003: private radio, but not free radio

Mosaïque FM went on air on 7 November 2003 as Tunisia's first private station and quickly became the most popular voice in Greater Tunis. Before 2011, however, only a handful of private stations existed, including Jawhara FM, Shems FM, Express FM and Zitouna FM, and their owners were close to the ruling family. The format was modern; the editorial line was not.

After 2011: the dial explodes

The revolution changed everything. A new regulator, the HAICA, began licensing stations, and the number of private broadcasters rose to more than twenty. For the first time, community radio was recognised in law, and around ten local, non-profit stations won licences, giving a microphone to towns in the interior that had never heard their own voices on air. Radio 6 Tunis, which had broadcast online since 2009, received its FM licence in 2011.

Talk, satire and Tunisian Darija

Today Tunisian radio is known for morning debates, political satire and phone-in shows in Tunisian Arabic, mixed with French. Football talk around Espérance, Club Africain and Étoile du Sahel can fill entire evenings. Competition is intense and advertising budgets are limited, so stations increasingly stream video from the studio and build audiences on social media.

Listening from anywhere

Streaming has made Tunisian stations a daily companion for the diaspora in France, Italy and Germany. Below you can play the Tunisian radio stations live that we index, from national channels to private and regional ones, free and without an app.