One of the ultimate goals of the ESA Ariel space mission is to shed light on the formation pathways and evolution of planetary systems in the Solar neighbourhood. Such an endeavour is only possible by performing a large chemical survey of not only the planets, but also their host stars, inasmuch as stellar elemental abundances are the cipher key to decode the planetary compositional signatures. This work aims at providing homogeneous chemical abundances of C, N, and O of a sample of 181 stars belonging to the Tier 1 of the Ariel Mission Candidate Sample. We applied the spectral synthesis and the equivalent width methods to a variety of atomic and molecular indicators (the CI lines at 5052 and 5380.3{AA}, the [OI] forbidden line at 6300.3{AA}, the C_2_ bands at 5128 and 5165{AA}, and the CN band at 4215{AA}using high-resolution and high signal-to-noise spectra collected with several spectrographs. We provide carbon abundances for 180 stars, nitrogen abundances for 105 stars, and oxygen abundances for 89 stars. We analyse the results in the light of the Galactic chemical evolution, and in terms of the planetary companions properties. Our sample basically follows the typical trends with metallicity expected for the [C/Fe], [N/Fe], and [O/Fe] abundance ratios. The fraction between carbon and oxygen abundances, both yields of primary production, is consistent with a constant ratio as [O/H] increases, whereas the abundance of nitrogen tends to increase with the increasing of the oxygen abundance, supporting the theoretical assumption of a secondary production of nitrogen. The [C/N], [C/O], and [N/O] abundance ratios are also correlated with [Fe/H], which might introduce biases in the interpretation of the planetary compositions and formation histories if host stars of different metallicity are compared. We provide relations that can be used to qualitatively estimate whether the atmospheric composition of planets is enriched or not with respect to the host stars.