The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays. It is politically independent (by mandate of the Agreement providing details of the topics outlined in the BBC Charter),non-profit, and commercial-free.

The English language service broadcasts 24 hours a day. In June 2009 the BBC reported that the World Service's average weekly audience reached 188 million people. The World Service is funded by grant-in-aid through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by the British Government. From 2014, it will be funded by the compulsory BBC licence fee levied on every household in the United Kingdom using a television to watch broadcast programmes.

BBC World Service is a patron of The Radio Academy. The Director of the World Service is Peter Horrocks.

The BBC World Service began as the BBC Empire Service in 1932 as a shortwave service, and celebrated its 80th anniversary on 29 February 2012. Its broadcasts were aimed principally at English speakers in the outposts of the British Empire, or as George V put it in the first-ever Royal Christmas Message, the "men and women, so cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them."