LaTeX Beamer Themes: All 29 Built-in Themes, With Previews

Beamer ships 29 presentation themes, chosen with one line, \usetheme{Madrid}, and they differ mainly in one thing: how they show where you are in the talk. Some show nothing, some a footer, some a row of dots per slide, some a sidebar outline. Colour themes and font themes are separate, so any layout can take any palette. Below: previews of 16 themes you can open as a ready deck, every built-in theme by group, and how to switch.

Switch a theme in three lines

A complete 16:9 deck. Change the theme name, compile, and the whole presentation changes; the colour and font lines are optional and independent of it.

\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}
\usetheme{Madrid}          % the layout: header, footer, sidebar, blocks
\usecolortheme{beaver}     % the colours, independent of the layout
\usefonttheme{professionalfonts}

\title{Your Talk Title}
\author{Your Name}
\institute{Your University}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}

\frame{\titlepage}

\begin{frame}{One slide}
  \begin{itemize}
    \item Change \texttt{Madrid} to any theme below and compile again.
    \item Colour and font themes change independently of the layout.
  \end{itemize}
  \begin{block}{A block}
    Blocks take the theme's colours.
  \end{block}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

The themes, as ready decks

Each preview is a short talk built on that theme. Open one and it compiles in your browser, nothing to install.

Madrid

No navigation bar; a footer with author, title and slide number. The safe choice for most talks.

\usetheme{Madrid}

Open in LetX →

Metropolisadd-on

Flat and minimal, with a thin progress bar. An add-on theme; Moloch is its maintained fork.

\usetheme{metropolis}

Open in LetX →

CambridgeUS

Madrid’s layout in deep red: the user guide calls it Boadilla in MIT’s colours.

\usetheme{CambridgeUS}

Open in LetX →

AnnArbor

The same layout in the University of Michigan’s blue and maize.

\usetheme{AnnArbor}

Open in LetX →

Rochester

A bold title bar and no navigation at all.

\usetheme{Rochester}

Open in LetX →

Warsaw

Section and subsection at the top, title and author at the bottom, with shading.

\usetheme{Warsaw}

Open in LetX →

Copenhagen

Warsaw’s structure, flatter and quieter, with no shadows.

\usetheme{Copenhagen}

Open in LetX →

Berlin

A header of section names with a dot for every slide, so the audience sees where you are.

\usetheme{Berlin}

Open in LetX →

Frankfurt

Mini-frame dots like Berlin, without the subsection line: the user guide’s less cluttered Darmstadt.

\usetheme{Frankfurt}

Open in LetX →

Singapore

Navigation dots that stay out of the way, on a light header.

\usetheme{Singapore}

Open in LetX →

Szeged

Sober, built from horizontal rules, with navigation in the header.

\usetheme{Szeged}

Open in LetX →

Antibes

A tree of title, section and subsection across the top.

\usetheme{Antibes}

Open in LetX →

Hannover

A table-of-contents sidebar on the left, for long talks in many parts.

\usetheme{Hannover}

Open in LetX →

Focusadd-on

Minimal, with dark title and section slides. An add-on theme.

\usetheme{focus}

Open in LetX →

Trigonadd-on

Geometric title and section slides on a clean body. An add-on theme.

\usetheme{trigon}

Open in LetX →

Aurigaadd-on

Very plain and typographic. An add-on theme with its own colour theme.

\usetheme{Auriga}

Open in LetX →

Every built-in theme, by layout

The grouping is the Beamer user guide’s own (beamer 3.78, August 2026).

Nine older names (bars, classic, compatibility, lined, plain, shadow, sidebar, split, tree) still load for old documents; use the themes above for anything new.

Colour themes and font themes

A colour theme recolours any layout; put it after \usetheme.

• Complete palettes: albatross, beaver, beetle, crane, dove, fly, monarca, seagull, spruce, wolverine.
• Only the blocks and inner elements: lily, orchid, rose.
• Only the header, footer and sidebar: whale, seahorse, dolphin.
• Special: default, structure (set one colour, \usecolortheme[named=Blue]{structure}), sidebartab.

Font themes: default, professionalfonts (leave maths fonts to your packages), serif, structurebold, structureitalicserif and structuresmallcapsserif, with \usefonttheme{serif}.

Metropolis and Moloch

Metropolis is the add-on theme most modern-looking LaTeX decks use: flat, a thin progress bar, very little furniture. It still works and is in TeX Live, but CTAN lists version 1.2 from January 2017 and its repository has had no commit since 2018. Moloch is a fork made to fix the issues that stayed open, without Metropolis’s special handling of the Fira fonts; it has been on CTAN since January 2024, is in TeX Live, and is still updated (2.3.1, October 2026). It is not a drop-in replacement in every detail, so check a deck after switching from \usetheme{metropolis} to \usetheme{moloch}.

Picking one

• A conference talk of 15 minutes: Madrid, or Metropolis or Moloch for a flatter look.
• A thesis defence or a long lecture: a sidebar theme (Hannover, Berkeley) or Berlin’s dots, so the outline is always on screen.
• A talk for a department with house colours: Madrid’s layout with \usecolortheme[named=...]{structure}.
• Projectors still at 4:3: leave out aspectratio; everywhere else use aspectratio=169.

For whole decks rather than themes (defences, lectures, pitch decks), see the best LaTeX Beamer templates, and for writing slides from scratch, how to make Beamer slides.