Get Tender With Tubi: 14 Best Romantic Movies Streaming Free for Valentine’s Day 2026

There is simply a ridiculous stockpile of movies that can be streamed free on Tubi; the real challenge is sorting through all of them, which can be more challenging than some of the curated video stores of old. For example, browsing the “Romance” section of Tubi yields terrific movies like Jesus’ Son (not a romance; a movie about heroin addiction), Whatever Works (Woody Allen movie where Larry David marries someone in her early 20s), and Permanent Midnight (also about heroin addiction). Someone in the tagging department is really in love with heroin!Luckily, Decider is here to help. There’s no shortage of bona fide romantic classics on The People’s Streaming Service; there are also plenty of less-vaunted rom-coms and rom-drams for your Valentine’s Day needs. So feel free to splurge on dinner and the good chocolates; if there’s a movie from this list that your significant other hasn’t seen yet, they’re in for a treat. So let’s travel through time and take a look at picks from every decade of the past century or so of romance cinema. Photo: Everett Collection Let’s start with an easy layup: It Happened One Night might be the best romantic comedy ever made. It was so undeniable, in fact, that it’s one of just three movies to win the “big five” awards at the Oscars: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay. If you’ve never seen it, you’ll recognize the story of an ill-fated-until-it’s-not roadtrip with a slick journalist (Clark Gable) and a spoiled heiress (Claudette Colbert) from countless of other movies that knocked it off. Trust us, though: This version is better. Also, no joke: Clark Gable munching on a carrot here is supposedly the inspiration behind Bugs Bunny’s similar gesture. Stream It Happened One Night on Tubi Everett Collection Honestly, even allowing for the limitation that this is only drawing from a single streaming service, these top two might look the same on a list encompassing all of American cinema. His Girl Friday, a journalism-based screwball comedy of remarriage with mile-a-minute banter between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, is the ur-text of movies where the heat is generated by bickering. Most modern movies bastardize this concept into annoying, often witless sniping. The back-and-forth in this movie, however, is one of cinema’s purest marvels. Stream His Girl Friday on Tubi Everett Collection Moving in a less overtly comedic direction as the golden age of screwball fades into the 1950s, we have Audrey Hepburn, in one of her earliest starring roles, playing a princess who has a brief, ultimately bittersweet rendezvous with a journalist played by Gregory Peck. Hepburn would go on to do other great things (including multiple classic romances over the course of her mere 15 years or so of regularly taking leading roles), but there’s something especially magical about what this Italy-set movie is able to capture — and how it’s allowed to slip away. Stream Roman Holiday on Tubi Another classic Hollywood star with multiple great romances to his name, James Stewart was getting a bit long in the tooth when this proto-Bewitched rom-com came out. It was the same year as Vertigo, where his advancing age is more a part of the subtext — and where he also romances Kim Novak! The enchantment here is less destructive and more farcical, as a witchy Novak casts a spell on the unwitting Stewart. It’s silly stuff and, at times, supernaturally charming. Stream Bell, Book & Candle on Tubi Photo: Everett Collection / Everett Collection A big-city morality tale that accommodates both satirical comedy and a sweet-and-tart love story, The Apartment may be the crowning achievement of writer-director Billy Wilder, who casts a young Jack Lemmon as a corporate go-getter who lends out his bachelor pad to philandering executives — and falls in love with elevator operator played by an effervescent Shirley MacLaine. There’s a kind of neo-screwball spin to the whole thing; it’s got a farcical setup but its concerns are rooted in something more serious (which doesn’t stop Wilder from dealing a perfect ending). It’s understandable if you feel like you can’t stomach a Woody Allen movie, especially in this context, but he did make a definitive and highly influential (and surprisingly freewheeling, given its Oscar win) urban-neuroses rom-com. Moreover, the late Diane Keaton won an Oscar for one of her best performances at the title character, a flighty but sharp young woman who catches the eye of Allen’s Alvy Singer. After decades of softening and slackening, the movie brought some real wit (and emotional heft) back to the mainstream romantic comedy. Stream Annie Hall on Tubi Photo: ©Atlantic Releasing Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection It doesn’t seem right to put together this list without a classic teenage romance; it also doesn’t seem right to default to John Hughes, whose love stories were often a bit thinner than they first appeared. Martha Coolidge, however, directed a little firecracker of a teen romance (and a pretty neat time capsule) with Valley Girl, starring Deborah Foreman and a young Nicolas Cage as a valley girl and a punk kid who fall in love. Tubi protip: The service also has the 2020 musical remake, and it’s actually pretty great! Stream Valley Girl on Tubi OK, it’s not quite on the level of Cameron Crowe’s near-perfect Say Anything. But Crowe’s more adult-focused follow-up o his writer-director breakthrough is able to portray a greater scope of characters in grunge-era Seattle, where twentysomethings are pairing off, breaking up, and freaking out. Stream Singles on Tubi If you’re in the mood for something a bit more quietly devastating, try this multi-Oscar-nominated period piece from the Merchant/Ivory filmmaking team. Anthony Hopkins stars as a reserved butler, serving his English family of employ in the years leading up to World War II. He falls in love with a fellow servant played by Emma Thompson, but steadfastly keeps his feelings at a remove, out of a misguided sense of duty. Hopkins and Thompson, both Oscar-nominated, are terrific, and rather than appearing mismatched, they have exactly the right note of unfulfilled yearning to break your heart. Stream The Remains of the Day on Tubi Photo: Everett Collection Speaking of Oscar-nominated 1993-released period pieces about repressed feelings…! Martin Scorsese took an unexpected turn for romantic tragedy with The Age of Innocence, his adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel about New York society in the 1870s. A lawyer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is drawn to the unconventional cousin (Michelle Pfeiffer) of his potential bride (Winona Ryder), and Scorsese is spectacularly attuned to the mores and emotional constrictions this partially unspoken love triangle entails. It’s a deeply sad movie, but a passionately rewarding one in its way. Stream The Age of Innocence on Tubi Brendan Fraser has never really been especially acclaimed for his abilities as a romantic leading man, but this sweetly daft 1999 comedy suggests that he should have done (and should still do) more rom-coms. He plays a 1960s kid whose crackpot dad (Christopher Walken), in a nuclear-war panic, traps the whole family in a bomb shelter for over 30 years. He emerges as a strapping, gee-whiz gentleman agog at the turn-of-the-century world he now inhabits, and courts a more cynical woman played by Alicia Silverstone. Like Fraser, the movie is a goofy charmer. Stream Blast from the Past on Tubi Everett Collection Some of its aggrieved-friendzoned-guy gender politics are a little dicey now, but if you can overlook a little bit of understandable twentysomething underachiever hostility, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! is a dual throwback to both 2000s-era romantic comedies (the artificiality of which is basked into this one’s premise) and 1950s-era sweetness. A small-town girl (Kate Bosworth) wins a contest to meet her image-challenged favorite actor (Josh Duhamel), much to the delight of her best friend (Ginnifer Goodwin) and consternation of the coworker (Topher Grace) who nurses a secret crush on her. None of the four central performers became big movie stars after this one, but they’re all quite charming here. Stream Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! on tubi Photo: Netflix Indie filmmaker Joe Swanberg made a somewhat more mainstream attempt at hangout/relationship comedy with this loose but ultimately quite affecting look at an intense friendship between two coworkers (Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson) that threatens to turn into something more despite the presence of their respective partners (Ron Livingston and Anna Kendrick), who share a weird flirtation of their own. Close friends who don’t admit they’re actually in love with each other is a tired rom-com trope that Swanberg and his actors breathe a lot of life into here, taking careful stock of what those kinds of relationships actually mean. For a movie about hanging out, goofing around, and drinking beer, it’s surprisingly affecting. Stream Drinking Buddies on tubi Photo: 20th Century Studios Steven Spielberg isn’t particularly known for his screen-melting romantic stories, but his remake of the classic musical West Side Story pretty much sets the screen on fire with a riot of color, flying bodies, and equally well-choreographed camera movements. It doesn’t even matter that this version’s Tony, Ansel Elgort, is kind of a drip; in the moment, his love story with Maria (a radiant Rachel Zegler) positively glows. It’s arguably even better than the already-great 1961 film version — but if you prefer that one, or want to check it out for the first time, Tubi has you covered there, too! Stream West Side Story on Tubi

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