The Times Death Notices: UK Obituaries & Irish Times Guide

Confusion between The Times (UK) and The Irish Times often leads researchers to dead ends. Each publication operates distinct obituary and death-notice platforms with different access requirements, content types, and submission processes. This guide maps both ecosystems and points you toward the right source for your specific need.

Top UK Source: www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries · Irish Notices Hub: notices.irishtimes.com · Aggregator Site: rip.ie

The key facts table below consolidates verified data from primary and secondary sources including official civil registration records, newspaper archives, and genealogical databases.

Sunday Times death notices

The Sunday Times and its weekday counterpart, The Times, share an obituaries section at thetimes.com/uk/obituaries. Both publications are part of the same parent company, News Corp, and the page aggregates listings under a single heading: “The latest obituaries from The Times and The Sunday Times.” The page self-describes the content as covering “the great, the good and sometimes the bad” (The Times)—a signal that this section focuses on public figures, notable lives, and deaths that warrant editorial space.

Latest listings

The obituaries page updates with each publication cycle. Recent entries include figures from British public life, the arts, academia, and business. The Times editorial team writes or commissions each obituary, so the depth varies: some entries are full biographical essays; others are brief paragraphs noting a death and survives-survived line.

Access instructions

The full obituaries archive requires a Times subscription. Some recent entries show a brief preview in search results or shared links, but readers hitting the paywall see a prompt to subscribe. The Sunday Times specifically runs its obituaries through the same digital hub as the weekday paper, so a single subscription covers both.

The catch: if you’re looking for a private individual or a death not involving a public figure, The Times obituaries page won’t help. That content is reserved for deaths the editorial team deems noteworthy enough to write up.

Latest death notices Irish Times

The Irish Times runs a separate, dedicated death-notices platform at notices.irishtimes.com/death-notices. Unlike the UK Times’ paywalled editorial obituaries, this section functions as a community notice board—anyone can submit a notice for a deceased person, and the site publishes them with family details, service times, and funeral arrangements.

Recent examples

Recent entries on notices.irishtimes.com show notices dated into April 2026, including Fiona Prendergast of Clonee and other Dublin-area notices. Each notice typically includes the deceased’s name, death date, surviving family members, and service information. The Irish Times describes this section as covering “family notices”—the publication’s term for death announcements, memorials, and related family notices.

Dublin area notices

The site allows location filtering, so searching “Dublin” returns notices specifically for the greater Dublin area. This is useful for anyone tracking recent deaths in a particular neighborhood or parish. FamilySearch also indexes Irish funeral notices through its historical records collection (FamilySearch).

What this means: Irish Times death notices serve a different purpose than UK Times obituaries. They function as practical announcements for friends, family, and community members—not editorial profiles. If you’re tracing a family death in Ireland, this is the first place to check.

The Times announcements

Beyond obituaries, The Times publishes a broader “Births, Marriages and Deaths” section at thetimes.com/uk/article/births-marriages-and-deaths-b06slc6zv. This page consolidates all three categories—birth announcements, marriage notices, and death notices—under one archive. The format for death entries is similar to the Irish Times notices: name, dates, family information, and service details.

Births marriages deaths

One verified example from this section is the notice for Gordon James PACK, published on 22nd March 2021 (The Times). The entry lists the deceased’s name, any surviving family, and sometimes a brief note on burial or cremation arrangements. Unlike the editorial obituaries page, these notices are submitted by families or funeral directors and published verbatim.

Archive access

The announcements archive requires the same Times subscription as the obituaries section. Search functionality allows filtering by date range, and the site indexes entries by name. For anyone looking for a specific person who died in England or Wales between roughly 2020 and the present, this page is worth checking—provided you have a subscription.

The pattern: The Times treats births, marriages, and deaths announcements as a community service for subscribers, not a revenue line. The paywall exists because the broader Times subscription gates all content, not because these specific notices carry a separate charge.

London Times death notices

The term “London Times” typically refers to The Times based in London, as opposed to The Irish Times based in Dublin. The London-based Times publishes death-related content through two channels: the editorial obituaries section and the births-marriages-deaths announcements page. There is no separate “London Times death notices” platform—the same thetimes.com URLs serve readers regardless of whether they search from London or elsewhere.

UK focus

Because The Times (London) is a UK publication, its obituaries and announcements skew toward British public figures and UK-based deaths. The FamilySearch United Kingdom Funeral Notices collection (FamilySearch) covers England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland from 1914 to 2023, which provides broader historical coverage than any single newspaper. Funeral Notices UK, the self-described “No.1 site for UK funeral notices” (Funeral Notices UK), indexes over 5,195,022 notices across national and local UK coverage.

Obituaries section

For anyone looking for a London-based obituary, thetimes.com/uk/obituaries remains the primary source. The page aggregates obituaries from The Times and The Sunday Times, and readers can sort by most recent. Funeral-notices.co.uk offers a secondary search option with name, location, and date filtering (Funeral Notices Blog).

The implication: searching for “London Times death notices” will likely land you on thetimes.com/uk/obituaries or the births-marriages-deaths page. If you don’t have a subscription, Funeral Notices UK and FamilySearch provide free or low-cost alternatives for UK death notices.

Irish Times death notices contact

The Irish Times maintains its death-notices and obituaries through the notices.irishtimes.com hub. For all memorials—including death notices, obituaries, and family notices—the primary platform is notices.irishtimes.com/obituaries-and-death-notices. This section also hosts the family announcements search function, allowing readers to filter by category and date.

Family notices

Family notices is the Irish Times’ term for death announcements, birth announcements, wedding notices, and memorial tributes. The site publishes these as submitted, with minimal editorial intervention beyond formatting checks. Recent examples include entries for individuals like Fiona Prendergast from Clonee, listing death dates, funeral arrangements, and surviving family members.

All memorials

The broader notices.irishtimes.com platform covers all memorial types—obituaries, death notices, and in-memoriam entries. The Irish Times editorial team writes some obituaries (for notable figures like Moya Brennan, an award-winning singer and harpist, and Dr Niall Tierney), while death notices are family-submitted entries published verbatim. FamilySearch indexes a subset of these notices through its historical records collection.

The implication: Irish Times death notices function as community announcements rather than editorial pieces. The site publishes submitted information with minimal changes beyond formatting. For a complete picture, use both sources.

Researching an ancestor’s death can reveal a lot about their family, community and circumstances (FindMyPast).

The latest obituaries from The Times and The Sunday Times. Find out about the lives and deaths of the great, the good and sometimes the bad.
— The Times, obituaries section

Ireland has civil registration from mid-19th century, with obituaries in publications like The Irish Times (FindMyPast).

Obituaries · Moya Brennan obituary: Award-winning singer and harpist whose career spanned five decades.
— The Irish Times, obituaries page

For anyone searching death notices across the UK and Ireland, the path forward is straightforward: identify whether you’re looking for a UK or Irish death, check the appropriate Times platform first for recent entries, then cross-reference with Funeral Notices UK or FamilySearch for broader coverage. GRO certificates offer the most authoritative verification if you need a legal record.

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Alongside Irish Times announcements and Dublin archives, Rip.ie Dublin death notices offer timely funeral details from local sources.

Frequently asked questions

Below are answers to the most common questions about accessing death notices from The Times and Irish Times platforms.