Hitradio Ö3 plays contemporary pop and chart hits from the 1980s to today, live from Vienna, and is the most listened-to radio station in Austria. You can stream it live and free right now on Radio Shuffle, wherever you are in the world.
What Ö3 Sounds Like
Ö3 is one of the national stations of Austria's public broadcaster ORF, and since a reform in the late 1990s it has run almost entirely as a contemporary hit radio format, specialising in pop and chart music from the 1980s to the present, as Wikipedia's entry on Hitradio Ö3 explains. Its on-air line is "Eure Musik, Euer Hitradio," or "Your music, your hit radio." Weekdays begin with the Ö3-Wecker morning show, Monday nights carry the Austria Top 40 chart, and Sunday evenings bring Ö3 Solid Gold, a programme of the station's own classics.
Launched on 1 October 1967
ORF started Ö3 on October 1, 1967, when it introduced a numbered system of national channels together with the classical service Österreich 1 and the Ö2 regional stations. That reorganisation followed a 1964 national referendum against tying public broadcasting to the Austrian political proportional system, so the station's birth is bound up with a big moment in the country's media history. Its move to a hit-radio identity came in the 1990s.
Charity and Surprises
Ö3 is known for more than music. The station runs a Christmas charity campaign called Ö3-Weihnachtswunder, a listener surprise programme called Ö3-Wundertüte, and a traffic service that Austrian drivers rely on. According to the German Wikipedia article on the station, it draws a daily audience of around 2.4 million listeners in the 2024 to 2025 survey period, which is why Ö3 holds the biggest share of any Austrian station.
A New Home at Küniglberg
On November 13, 2022, Ö3 moved its studios to the ORF media campus at Küniglberg in Vienna, after twenty-five years at its earlier Heiligenstadt base. The move put the station side by side with the rest of ORF's radio and television operation in one building.
Tune In
From a 1967 launch to the top of the Austrian ratings, Ö3 has spent decades as the country's default hit station. Stream Hitradio Ö3 free on Radio Shuffle to hear it live.