The Best Vim Color Schemes in 2026, Ranked

Quick answer: Gruvbox Material is the Vim color scheme to install first in 2026: committed to in April 2026, with 9 open issues against the original Gruvbox's 125. Pick Everforest from the same maintainer, Dracula or Catppuccin for the most recent commits, and skip Solarized: the original stopped in 2011 and the Solarized8 fork is archived.

Most of what ranks for this query is old. On 19 October 2026, three of the top 10 results were Stack Overflow threads from 2010 to 2014, and their favourites are Solarized and Molokai. We read 15 colorscheme repositories through the GitHub API on 5 November 2026 to see which of those picks still ship. Every star count, commit date and issue count below comes from that read.

How did we rank them?

A scheme makes the ranking only if its repository has a commit in the 12 months before 5 November 2026 and is not archived. Within that set, the order weighs three signals:

• Recent commits: how long ago the default branch last changed.
• Open issues: issues only, pull requests excluded. A low count relative to stars suggests someone is triaging.
• Stars: adoption, which means more people have already hit the bugs you would hit.

We did not rank palettes by taste. Screenshots on each project's README show the colours better than any adjective.

Which Vim color schemes are worth using?

Eight of the 15 schemes pass the maintenance test. Here they are, ranked.

1. Gruvbox Material

sainnhe/gruvbox-material reworks the Gruvbox palette and is the better-kept of the two Gruvbox repositories: 2,660 stars, last commit on 15 April 2026, and 9 open issues. It publishes no GitHub releases, so you track the default branch.

Verdict: the safest first install if you like the Gruvbox palette.

2. Everforest

sainnhe/everforest comes from the same maintainer as Gruvbox Material and has more stars (4,272) with fewer open issues (6). Its last commit landed on 8 June 2026.

Verdict: the most-adopted scheme in the ranking with a tidy issue tracker.

3. Dracula

dracula/vim is the Vim port of the Dracula theme, maintained under the Dracula organisation. It had the most recent commit of any scheme here, on 30 October 2026, with 7 open issues and 1,395 stars. Its last tagged release, v2.0.0, dates from 2 June 2019, so the branch matters more than the tag. It is the only colorscheme in our directory, with its own Dracula theme listing.

Verdict: pick it if you want one palette across Vim and the rest of your tools.

4. Catppuccin

catppuccin/vim had zero open issues and a commit on 2 October 2026. Like Dracula, it is one port under a theme organisation. It is the smallest repository in the ranking at 374 stars, so fewer people have tested it in Vim.

Verdict: the other strong choice for a palette shared with your terminal and other apps.

5. Gruvbox

morhetz/gruvbox is the most-starred scheme in our data at 15,830. It is not abandoned: the last commit came on 18 September 2026. But it carries 125 open issues, and its latest release is v2.0.0 from 4 September 2015.

Verdict: works fine, but Gruvbox Material is the better-kept version of the same idea.

6. Moonfly

bluz71/vim-moonfly-colors had zero open issues and a commit on 3 September 2026, with 1,350 stars.

Verdict: a small project with the cleanest issue tracker in the set.

7. OneDark

joshdick/onedark.vim has the second-highest star count in the ranking (4,003), but 17 open issues and a last commit on 14 January 2026, the oldest among the eight.

Verdict: still inside the 12-month window, though closer to its edge than the rest.

8. Sonokai

sainnhe/sonokai is the third sainnhe scheme in the ranking: 1,949 stars, 1 open issue, last commit on 21 January 2026.

Verdict: worth a look if you already like the other two sainnhe schemes' upkeep.

Vim itself sits in our editor category, and Vim's listing has the download links. If you are also picking a typeface, our coding fonts ranking covers that half of the setup.

Which old favorites stopped being maintained?

Seven of the 15 repositories have no commit in 12 months or are archived. That is 46.7%, higher than the 31.9% we measured across 1,411 repositories on the awesome-neovim list on 30 September 2026 for our Neovim plugins ranking.

| Scheme | Repository | Stars | Last commit | Status (5 November 2026) | |---|---|---|---|---| | Solarized | altercation/vim-colors-solarized | 6,587 | 9 May 2011 | 75 open issues, no commits since 2011 | | Solarized8 | lifepillar/vim-solarized8 | 1,044 | 11 March 2026 | archived | | Molokai | tomasr/molokai | 3,622 | 11 November 2015 | 21 open issues | | Tokyo Night | ghifarit53/tokyonight-vim | 601 | 23 April 2021 | archived | | OneHalf | sonph/onehalf | 1,906 | 2 August 2022 | 50 open issues | | Nord | nordtheme/vim | 2,583 | 3 May 2023 | last release v0.19.0, 14 May 2022 | | PaperColor | NLKNguyen/papercolor-theme | 2,845 | 12 March 2024 | 42 open issues |

Solarized is the clearest case. The original has not changed since 2011, and the usual advice to switch to Solarized8 no longer holds, because that fork was archived after its last commit in March 2026. None of the 15 repositories we read is a maintained Solarized port, and the same holds for Molokai and Tokyo Night.

An archived or quiet scheme still loads. A colorscheme is a file of highlight commands, so it breaks only when Vim adds highlight groups the scheme never defines.

Which colorschemes come with Vim?

The schemes bundled with Vim are developed in vim/colorschemes, which had 341 stars, 24 open issues and a commit on 2 October 2026. We did not confirm the bundled list for this post, so we do not reproduce it. Your own build is the reliable source: type :colorscheme followed by a space and press Tab to cycle through every scheme Vim can find, bundled ones included.

The collection rafi/awesome-vim-colorschemes (2,912 stars) bundles many third-party schemes into one plugin, but its last commit was on 18 May 2024. Installing schemes individually gets you their fixes directly.

How do you install and set a colorscheme?

Vim loads anything under ~/.vim/pack/*/start/ at startup, so no plugin manager is needed. Clone the scheme there:

git clone https://github.com/sainnhe/gruvbox-material ~/.vim/pack/colors/start/gruvbox-material

Then set it in ~/.vimrc:

if has('termguicolors')
  set termguicolors
endif
set background=dark
colorscheme gruvbox-material

termguicolors switches Vim to 24-bit colour, which most modern schemes are designed for; leave it out if your terminal only shows 256 colours. background tells the scheme whether to load its dark or light variant, where it has one. Put colorscheme after both, or the scheme loads before the settings it reads. If you manage plugins with a manager instead, our Vim plugins ranking covers which ones still ship.

Do these work in Neovim too?

Yes. Neovim runs Vimscript, so every scheme in this ranking loads there with the same colorscheme command. Neovim also has schemes written in Lua that do not run in Vim; those are ranked in our Neovim themes roundup.

FAQ

How do I set the default Vim colorscheme?

Add a colorscheme name line to ~/.vimrc, after any set termguicolors and set background= lines. Vim reads the file at every start, so the scheme becomes the default. To try one without saving it, run :colorscheme name inside Vim.

Is Solarized still maintained for Vim?

Not in the repositories we read. altercation/vim-colors-solarized was last committed to on 9 May 2011, and lifepillar/vim-solarized8 is archived, last committed on 11 March 2026. Both still install and load.

Is there a maintained Tokyo Night for Vim?

The Vim port we read, ghifarit53/tokyonight-vim, is archived with a last commit on 23 April 2021. It still loads, but no fixes will come. If that matters, pick from the eight maintained schemes ranked above.

Which colorschemes work in terminal Vim with 256 colours?

Without termguicolors, Vim uses the 256-colour values a scheme defines for terminals, and not every scheme defines them well. Check the scheme's README for terminal support before you commit to it, then compare it with termguicolors on and off in your own terminal.