What is a Blackletter or Gothic Font?
“Blackletter” and “Gothic” are often used interchangeably in reference to a specific style of typeface. These type of fonts are bold, heavily ornate, stylish and edgy, which comes as striking to the eyes.
Before we take you to our researched list of 37 free blackletter or gothic fonts, let’s walk you down the lane of its history.
Evolution of Blackletter/Gothic Font
Blackletter fonts, also referred to as Gothic script or Old English script, are a calligraphic style that originated in the Middle Ages and were commonly used for writing in manuscripts and books in German-speaking countries. The style is heavily influenced by early 17th and 18th century text, particularly from the Victorian era.
While the traditional design of blackletter fonts may make them appear similar, there are also fonts that blend traditional elements with modern design styles to create unique and distinct blackletter and gothic fonts.
In recent times, the blackletter style has gained popularity among new audiences, particularly within subcultures such as punk and heavy metal enthusiasts, and in tattoo art. The style is also often associated with grungy and moody designs. It’s not only used as a traditional calligraphic style but also as an art form in graphic design and typography.
Top Free Blackletter or Gothic Fonts
The following list will provide you with 37 amazing blackletter or gothic fonts that are either free for personal or commercial usage. If only free for personal use, you shall require buying a license for its commercial use.
I have listed their ranks based off on their number of downloads, popularity, trendiness, and font design plus quality. Enjoy reading!
1. Olde English
License: Free for commercial use
Olde English is a highly sought-after blackletter font designed by Dieter Steffmann. This font stands out for its well-crafted design featuring artistic serif letterforms.
The serious yet elegant look of the font makes it ideal for various purposes. It can be used for newspaper headlines, certificates, titles, book covers, presentations and much more. It’s perfect for both personal and commercial use and is available for free.
2. Ancient
License: Free for personal use
The Ancient font, designed by artRAVE Editions, is a bold and stylish typeface that belongs to the Gothic and Display family. With its superbold look reminiscent of Olde English, it adds an interesting and unique touch to headlines, posters, and logos.
Available in both uppercase and lowercase letters, this versatile font offers a wide range of design possibilities. However, it is important to note that this font is only free for personal use and any commercial usage requires buying a license.
3. Barbarian
License: Free for personal use
The Barbarian font by Anthony Robinson is an artistic display font that captures the gothic, rugged spirit of the barbarian age. Each letter is designed with a sharp sword-like edge, giving it a strong and powerful look.
Ideal for video games, comics, animation, packaging, and more, this font adds a touch of toughness to your designs. However, it is only available for personal use and requires a purchase for commercial usage.
4. Royal
License: Free for commercial use
The Royal font by Aldus is a sophisticated gothic/blackletter display font that perfectly complements its name. The letters look like jeweled, engraved swords.
This font is suitable for animation, video games, movies, logos and other elegant purposes. The font has two regular styles, 27 glyphs, and 37 characters. It is available for free download and licensed as freeware.
5. Jailetter
License: Free for personal use
Jailetter is a highly notable font when discussing free Blackletter or Gothic fonts. It boasts a modern and sophisticated design, created by Graptail Type Studio. This font is only available for personal use, and comes with a variety of styles such as regular, inline, and ornament.
It includes a full range of characters, including uppercase and lowercase letters, numerals, and punctuation marks. Additionally, it features variations of each character, such as Opentype alternates, ligatures, and additional swashes, allowing for a high degree of customization in design.
Jailetter is particularly well suited for use in various design projects, including logotypes, letterheads, posters, apparel design, labels, and more. Its versatility makes it an excellent choice for merchandising and labeling applications. However, it is only free for peronal usage.
6. Old Charlotte
License: Free for personal use
Old Charlotte by Nauli creative is a vintage-inspired font that features a unique, bold and strong style. If you are looking for a nostalgic gothic font, this font is perfect for you.
It includes uppercase and lowercase letters, numerals, and punctuation marks. It also includes several alternate characters and ligatures to give you even more options for customization.
The font is suitable for a wide range of design projects, such as posters, headlines, packaging, book covers and more. And is free for personal use.
7. Bajern
License: Free for commercial use
Bajern is a simplistic, all lowercase Blackletter or Gothic Font by Anton Bolin. It is a light example of black letter fonts that isn’t too bold nor heavy.
Its sharp geometric shapes make it a perfect typeface for titles, headings, books, posters, and other purposes. Your personal or commercial project is sure to make an impression with this all free font.
8. La forest
License: Free for commercial use
La Forest is a vintage black letter or gothic font by Cruzine. This all uppercase letter has beautiful swashes, numerals that can make your project stunning.
The font is creative, elegant font comes in four style variations. You can use this all free font for banners, posters, logos, marketing & branding purposes. It will set an impression like no other fonts.
9. Cambridge
License: Free for personal use
Cambridge is an old English blockletter font with a modern sense of style. It has full uppercase and lowercase characters, including numbers and punctuation to give your design a complete gothic touch.
The strikingly bold, decorative font suits perfectly for logos, movie titles, book covers, headlines, marketing materials. Free for personal use only that means you pay for any commercial usage.
License: Free for personal use
10. Othelie
Othelie is rather a fashionable gothic font by Creative Media Lab. It’s much more round and friendly than other fonts from the blockletter category. It has two versions regular and line.
All are suited for creating the Perfect heading, logo, title, etc. for your clothing, fashion brands or advertisements. You can use it all you want for personal use. But for commercial purposes, you got to pay a fee.
11. Hurscol Gothic Typeface
License: Free for personal use
Another friendly-looking gothic typeface with rounded glyphs. In addition to multilingual support, the font comprises numbers, punctuations, and all capital letters.
You can use this font to create any display project such as book cover, comics, banners, posters, etc. The font is free for personal use and requires payment for its commercial usage.
12. Black Cameo
License: Free for personal use
Black Cameo by Creative Media Lab lives true to its name with a bold set of gothic fonts.
The most attractive feature of the font is that it has over 500 glyphs and ornaments, which makes it definitely worth the pay.
The full version of the font requires purchase fee.
13. Jackster
License: Free for personal use
Jackster by Weape Studio is a moody blackletter font. It has decorated upper and lower cases with numerals and punctuations.
This font looks perfect for titles, posters, book covers, and other uses. The font has a demo version for personal use.
14. Cattedrale
License: Free for personal use
Cattedrale is another gothic blackletter font by the Creative Media Lab with a true Draco aesthetic. Yet it feels modern and is eye-catching.
The font comes with four styles, a full set of upper and lower case, and many special characters. All these comes free for personal use only.
That means for commercial use, you need to pay.
15. Blackletter
License: Free for commercial use
Just as the name suggests, Blackletter font is an authentic blackletter font created by Dieter Steffmann.
The nice and clean gothic look works best for tattoos, heavy metal covers, t-shirts, apparels, and even for engraving jewelry.
The blackletter font is free for commercial use. So you can get creative with both your personal and business work.
16. Flexiletto
License: Free for personal use
Flexiletto by Orca creative is an orchestral mix of old-school and goth elements. The spikey tall typeface with a faded style serves a perfect look for creating a highly rich and pleasing designs, logos, packages, advertisements, etc.
Flexiletto font is free for personal use. That means for full experience and commercial use, you require purchasing a license.
17. Bracker
License: Free for personal use
Bracker by swistblnk is the perfect gothic font with Victorian influences and industrial feel to it. It’s best for posters, banners, logos, and other large-scale display designs.
The font is licensed as freeware for non-commercial purposes only that means you can use it free for personal work and pay for commercial.
18. Citrus Gothic
License: Free for commercial use
Citrus Gothic is a distinctive blackletter font by Adam Ladd. which offers a classic gothic appearance.
The font comes in six different styles:
- Solid
- Texture
- Inline
- Shadow
- Rough
- Italic
Each of them create the perfect style for any commercial or personal project. Create the most popping font posters, banners, billboards, slides, including any advertising and presentation work. The most amazing part, it’s free for both commercial and personal project.
19.Brut
License: Free for commercial use
Brut font by Jacob Rabinowitz brings a stylish street twist to the gothic fonts formula. However, it maintains the distinctive bold look of blackletter typeface and features many characters.
You can create attractive posters, book covers, banners, web graphics, etc. easily with Brut. This font is sure to make your personal and commercial project alluring with its clean, captivating look. To top it off, it’s completely free.
20. Medusa Gothic Font
License: Free for personal use
Slightly inspired by Greek artistry, Medusa Gothic is a minimalistic gothic font. The letters resemble serpents in a very mysterious way. It is a very elegant font that has unique designed serifs.
Using medusa font will no doubt make your project a head turner everywhere. You can use it to design your book cover, billboard, poster, brochure, video games, and many other applications.
Medusa font comes in free for personal use only. You need to pay for full version and commercial use.
21. Incognito
License: Free for personal use
Inspired by tattoos, Incognito font is a modern gothic font by Twicolabs Design. The font is available free for personal use only. Business and commercial purposes require paying.
The font is popularly used for tattoo artworks and designs. The spikey letters and the designed serifs make it an ideal font for book cover, video games, titles, and other display purposes.
22. Haext Regular
License: Free for personal use
Haext Regular font is rather known as “Neo-Goth rustic Art Nouveau”. The font provides a gothic feel with striking thin handwritten letters and crosses.
You can use it on posters, magazines, books, billboards, including branding & marketing materials. You have to pay to use the font commercially.
23. Rozex
License: Free for personal use
Rozex by Maulana Creative is a bold-lettered decorative font that is both pleasing to look at and functional. Its heavy gothic design makes it pop instantly.
The font is very good for books, games events, invitations and more. You need to pay a minimal purchase fee for using it commercially.
24. Vrugoth Font
License: Free for personal use
Vrugoth font is a very stylish blackletter script font created by Micromove. The letters look like they are brushed and is great for typographic design.
You may use this font for creating attractive logos, quotes, banners, music album cover, YouTube thumbnails and many other purposes.
It’s free as long as you’re using it for personal use. For its commercial use, you need to buy the license.
25. Blackey Bold Decorative Gothic Blackletter Font
License: Free for personal use
One of the classiest free blackletter or gothic fonts of 2020 that looks like it came straight out from the 1800s. So it carries a mix of the best of two worlds—medieval and modern.
Maulana Creative’s Blackey is perfect for movie posters, titles, book covers, banners, etc. Its bold, decorative, and strong presence is enough to captivate its audience’s attention right away. You need to purchase this font for commercial use.
26. Osgard Pro
License: Free for personal use
Before using Osgard Pro, one should take time and look at it and appreciate the artistry. Osgard pro is professionally designed by talented typeface artist Anthony James with utmost care, and it shows in its well crafted design.
This luxury blackletter font is perfect for designing high-end products, promotions, and branding materials. You can enjoy its demo version free for personal use. But, for utilizing its beauty for business, you need to pay the license fee.
27. Blade Brotherhood
License: Free for personal use
Blade brotherhood is a classy exotic gothic calligraphic font brought to you by the UI Creative. The font creates its uniqueness with piercing sharp serifs which gives it the perfect—quirky yet legible look— for book covers, movie titles and posters.
You can download and use it for free for any personal purpose. But for commercial usage, you need to pay the purchase fee.
28. Rademos
License: Free for personal use
Rademos font by String Labs is a decorative blackletter font with a desi feel. It comes with unique lowercase, uppercase, alternates, ligatures, and much more for creating a fabulous design.
You can use this to give your project—movie or book posters, covers, titles, graphics, and many more—a foreign flavor. It comes free for personal usage, Buy a commercial license for business purposes.
29. Huntly
License: Free for personal use
Huntly is the real rockstar of a Blackletter or Gothic font. It just oozes the rock and punk attitude without being visually chaotic.
The font offers many amazing features and a wide range of compatibility which makes it a great fit for different projects—album covers to posters, banners, apparels, etc.
You may download the font for free for personal use. However, you require paying for the commercial usage.
30. Strong Monsters
License: Free for personal use
Teguh Pranata, the designer of the Strong Monsters font, undoubtedly did an amazing job creating the font. Its distinct style—spikey square gothic letterforms—is a reminiscent of the old Castlevania games.
Strong Monsters can deliver a unique look to your poster work, banner, video games, thumbnails, and many more. This can also be a great option for Halloween designs and T-shirts.
This cool blackletter font is free for personal usage. For any business purpose, you need to buy a license.
31. Klostro
License: Free for personal use
Klostro font, another one of 2020s popular free blackletter or gothic fonts created by Ciarán Brandin. This beautifully bold, crafted, condensed font perfectly gives a sinister gothic look to work.
This would be a great fit for movie poster, comics, album cover, titles, t-shirts and bandana print, and many other projects. You can also try this font for free for any personal use. And pay a small license fee for its commercial use.
32. Lordish
License: Free for personal use
Lordish is a great experiment on the typical goth look by Kadek Mahardika. It’s sleek and shiny appearance of the font gives your work a unique flair.
This type of blackletter font is perfect for marketing luxury brand materials, such as logos of expensive wine, automobiles, and watch.
Although you can use it free for personal use, the commercial usage requires paying a license fee.
33. Blackink
License: Free for personal use
Blacking is a creative approach towards blackletter fonts with a Caribbean influence by Hendra Maulia. The font offers a unique faded handwritten style with multilingual support.
This font would look great on t-shirts, apparels, book cover, merchandise, titles to many more purpose. You may use it for free for personal use but pay for any commercial usage.
34. Glaive
License: Free for personal use
Glaive font design by Tugcu Co. was influenced by heavy metal and rock music. Glaive font is sharp-edged and has a thick personality.
Perfect for large-scale uses like T-shirts, posters, packaging, logo, including branding & marketing purposes.
You can try it free for personal purposes. However, it requires payment for commercial license.
35. Inumocca
License: Free for personal use
Inumocca font was created by the designer Inu Mocca. It has an unusual, gothic, bolting design that stands out from the crowd.
This type of look is ideal for marketing campaigns and branding purposes. You can create eye striking logos, titles, banners, music & book cover designs, and many more.
You can avail it for free but for personal usage only. For commercial purpose, buy the license.
36. inuTattoo Script
License: Free for personal use
Inu Tattoo Script font is heavily Influenced by tattoo art and thus carries a very distinctive look. This beautiful type design is a product of inumoccatype.
It comes with upper and lower cases, numerals, symbols and beautiful tattoo like swirls to make your design stand out from the crowd. You can use it for signature, logo, tattoo, titles, apparels, and etc. other purposes.
However, this free font is for personal use only. And requires license fee for commercial use.
37. Ozymandias
License: Free for personal use
This font is named after the great pharaoh. Ozymandias font creator Sebastian Fermin says that Ozymandias is a blackletter font composed of diamonds, 30° angel taper, and lines that connect them all.
This imaginative, beautiful and free font is perfect for onscreen projects like movie, series or animation titles, logo and graphics for brands and marketing campaigns.
You can utilize its magic for free for personal purposes. Business and commercial purposes include paying a license fee.
Final Words
In conclusion, we’ve presented you with a comprehensive list of 37 free Blackletter or Gothic fonts that are sure to be a treasure trove for graphic designers. These fonts are available for easy download and can be used for personal projects. However, for commercial projects, it’s important to note that you’ll need to contact the designers and purchase a license from them.
We hope this article was informative and easy to read, and that it’s helped you in choosing the right font for your next project. Whether you’re working on a personal project or a commercial one, these free Blackletter or Gothic fonts are sure to elevate your designs and make them stand out.
