Ghost RTL Support: Arabic, Hebrew and More

Ghost’s built-in right-to-left (RTL) support is limited. RTL languages include Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu. This guide explains how to choose and set up an RTL theme.

Which Themes Support RTL?

Nine of my themes include full RTL layout support and Arabic translation:

Easy setup (admin toggle — no code editing):

• Arish — Enable Right to left in the theme settings.
• Tripoli — Enable via Settings → Site → Design & branding → Customize → Theme → Site wide → Enable right to left layout
• Hakone — Enable via the admin design settings

Manual setup (one small file edit):

• Beirut
• Petra
• Ubud
• Krabi
• Penang
• Hue

For manual setup themes, change the stylesheet reference from LTR to RTL. Ubud and Krabi use partials/head.hbs. Beirut and Petra use partials/structure/head.hbs. Penang and Hue use default.hbs. Each theme’s documentation has the exact steps. For example, see the Ubud RTL documentation.

Themes without RTL support: Marsa, Moshi, Nubia, and Sinai. These themes do not include RTL layout stylesheets.

Built-in Translations

Most RTL-supported themes come with an Arabic (ar) translation file out of the box. Ubud also includes a Hebrew (he) translation.

For other languages like Hebrew, Persian, or Urdu, you can add your own translation file. Create a file such as he.json in the theme’s /locales/ folder. Copy the structure from en.json. Replace the values with your translations. After adding the file, re-upload the theme.

How to Enable RTL

Step 1: Set the Publication Language

Open Settings → General → Publication language. Set Publication Language to your language code. Examples include ar for Arabic, he for Hebrew, and fa for Persian.

This tells Ghost (and search engines) what language your site uses.

Step 2: Enable the RTL Layout

For Arish, Tripoli, and Hakone, turn on the RTL option in the theme settings. No code changes are needed.

For the other six themes, open the file listed above in a code editor. Change the stylesheet reference to the RTL version. Each theme’s documentation page has the exact line to change. After editing, re-upload the theme zip to Ghost.

Ghost Admin RTL

The Ghost admin editor itself does not have built-in RTL support. When writing content in an RTL language, the editor input will still be left-to-right. Turn on the theme’s RTL layout to display published content right to left.

Multi-language Sites

Each Ghost publication has one publication language. It controls the theme and Ghost’s public interface. For different content in each language, Ghost recommends separate installations. To translate the same content, it recommends services such as Weglot or Transifex. See Translation in Ghost for the current options.

RTL Themes in Action

Here are examples of live sites using my themes with RTL:

• Ahmed Shamrani — using Ubud
• amoshrif — using Krabi

Conclusion

For the easiest RTL setup, choose Arish, Tripoli, or Hakone. Each has a toggle in Ghost Admin. No code editing is needed. All nine themes include RTL layout styles.

If you have any questions about RTL support, feel free to contact me.

Last updated: November 6, 2026