How to Listen to Nepali Radio Online

Published 12 September 2026

You can stream Nepali radio live in any browser, with no download and no account: open 72FM's Nepal page, choose a station and press play. Radio matters in Nepal more than almost anywhere — in a country of mountains and valleys where roads and television arrived late, the FM dial is how news, music and emergency warnings reach people, in Nepali and in dozens of local languages.

Radio Nepal and the FM boom

Radio Nepal, the state broadcaster, has been on air since 1951 and still carries national news, public information and Nepali music across the country. For decades it was the only station most Nepalis could hear.

That changed in 1997, when Radio Sagarmatha in the Kathmandu Valley became the first independent community radio station in South Asia. Commercial and community FM stations followed in their hundreds, and today almost every district has stations of its own. When the 2015 earthquake cut roads and power, local FM stations were among the few sources of information many communities had.

The big names on the dial

• Kantipur FM (Radio Kantipur) — from the Kantipur media group in Kathmandu, and by a wide margin the most-voted Nepali station in the directory.
• Kalika FM — one of the most popular stations outside the capital, and second in the directory's votes.
• Ujyaalo 90 Network — news and current affairs shared across a network of partner stations.
• Capital FM 92.4 — music and entertainment for Kathmandu.
• Radio Himalaya — Nepali music, including an evergreen stream of classic songs.
• CIN Khabar — news and talk.
• BBC Nepali — the BBC's Nepali-language news service, heard on FM partners across the country.

The sounds that come from here

Lok geet and dohori. Nepali folk songs, and especially dohori — a sung back-and-forth between a man and a woman, often improvised and often teasing — are the sound of the hills. Dohori has its own restaurants in Kathmandu, and its own radio audience everywhere.

Adhunik geet and the evergreens. The modern Nepali song, from Narayan Gopal onwards, is the country's great popular tradition. Stations such as Radio Himalaya keep an evergreen stream for listeners who want nothing else.

Nepali pop, rock and hip-hop. Kathmandu's bands and rappers fill the FM stations' playlists for younger listeners, alongside Hindi film songs from across the border.

Festival music. Around Dashain and Tihar in the autumn, the radio fills with festival songs — including the deusi and bhailo songs sung house to house during Tihar.

Radio in many languages

Nepali is the national language, but the country speaks well over a hundred. Community stations broadcast in Maithili, Newar (Nepal Bhasa), Bhojpuri, Tharu and many other languages, often as the only media in those languages at all. Local stations are where you hear that Nepal.

Listening from abroad

Millions of Nepalis work abroad — in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan — and many more live in India, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. For them, a Kathmandu morning show or the evening news from their home district is a daily connection with family. BFBS Gurkha Radio, the British Forces station for Gurkha soldiers and their families, is in the directory too. Everything streams internationally in the ordinary way; expat radio covers this habit.

Sound quality

Most Nepali stations in the directory stream at 128kbps, which sounds good on nearly anything, while BBC Nepali and some news streams use lower bitrates that suit speech. Check each station card for the bitrate; radio audio quality and bitrate explains what the numbers mean.

A route in

1. Radio Nepal or Ujyaalo 90 in the morning, for the news.
2. Kantipur FM or Kalika FM, for the stations most Nepalis in the directory vote for.
3. A dohori or folk programme, for the sound of the hills.
4. Radio Himalaya's evergreen stream at night.

All of them are on the Nepal page, free, an hour a day without an account. For the rest of South Asia, Indian radio online is next door.

Listen now: All stations from Nepal