The New Yorker is celebrating its centenary with a full year of editorial projects and events that honor the magazine’s distinguished past and its place in society today. Among the highlights are four special issues, new anthologies of fiction and poetry, the digitization of The New Yorker’s archive, a landmark exhibition at the New York Public Library, and a Netflix documentary on the magazine.
The New Yorker of 1925 was a “fifteen-cent comic paper,” as its founding editor, Harold Ross, put it, with a focus on fiction, criticism, cartoons, and humor. In the hundred years since, The New Yorker has become a multi-platform enterprise renowned for its definitive reporting and commentary on politics, culture, and the arts, along with its award-winning audio and film divisions and the annual New Yorker Festival. Today, The New Yorker continues to stand apart for its rigor and excellence, and for its singular mix of stories that surprise, delight, and inform.
“When Harold Ross was in the midst of founding The New Yorker, he wrote a prospectus for potential advertisers and subscribers that promised the magazine would be interpretive, not ‘stenographic,’ that it would report with integrity, accuracy, wit, and humanity,” the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, said. “The New Yorker has evolved in many ways over time—taking on new subjects, new writers and artists, new technologies—but the same principles animate our work. As we celebrate our centenary, we look forward to a great future sustained by those principles.”
A Year of Special New Yorker Programming
This year, The New Yorker will publish four issues to mark the centenary, starting with the annual Anniversary Issue, dated February 17 & 24, 2025. The issue—the magazine’s 5,057th—will feature a special cover extravaganza reinterpreting the dandy Eustace Tilley, the iconic character who appeared on the very first cover, in 1925. It will include new investigative reporting, pieces examining the personalities and ideas behind the magazine, and a series of “Takes”—short articles by New Yorker writers and famous readers on the stories that changed them.
Alongside the Anniversary Issue, The New Yorker will publish a digital collection page for all things relating to the centenary. There, readers can learn about the magazine’s founding editors, writers, and artists; explore specially curated story collections; watch master classes on the art of making the magazine; peruse ongoing and upcoming events celebrating a hundred years; and shop centenary merchandise. The page, which will go live on February 10th, also solicits readers’ memories of moments with The New Yorker, which can be sent to themail@newyorker.com.
To mark the milestone, The New Yorker is digitizing its full archive, opening new pathways into a hundred years of great reporting, Profiles, fiction, and humor. The project will transform thousands of issues into searchable articles published on newyorker.com, including treasures from writers such as James Baldwin, Shirley Jackson, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, E. B. White, Hannah Arendt, and other major figures of the twentieth century. When complete, later this year, readers will be able to explore more than four thousand issues that were previously only available in PDF form.
For a dash of humor, the magazine developed Laugh Lines, a weekly digital game that challenges players to place New Yorker cartoons in chronological order, according to when they were published. Beginning on January 27th, new installments of the game will become available every Monday throughout the centenary year.
Centenary Celebrations Around Town
Institutions in New York City and beyond have found their own ways to celebrate The New Yorker at one hundred. The magazine’s prose, art, and history will be showcased at museums, live events, film festivals, and more, bringing its iconic stories and visuals to new audiences and forms.
The New York Public Library will present “A Century of The New Yorker,” a major exhibition that draws from the library’s rich collections to trace the magazine’s history from its founding through the digital age. The exhibit will explore the ways in which The New Yorker has shaped myriad aspects of American life, and will include original manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, cartoons, cover art, and an audio guide and video featuring New Yorker writers and editors. The exhibit opens to the public on February 22nd, and will run through February 21, 2026.
Plus, to celebrate the opening, the library will stage a building takeover on February 28th called “The Library After Hours” that will showcase the exhibition alongside curator talks, trivia, musical performances, drinks, dancing, and more.
A feature-length documentary film on The New Yorker, directed by the Academy Award winner Marshall Curry, is currently in production and set to première on Netflix later this year. The film, which is produced by Marshall Curry Productions and Apatow Productions, will examine the stories that define The New Yorker’s history and capture authentic moments of journalism in the making, following the magazine’s writers, editors, and staff members as they produce this year’s special Anniversary Issue. The documentary film is produced by Marshall Curry and Xan Parker; executive producers are Judd Apatow, Josh Church, Michael Bonfiglio, Helen Estabrook, and Sarah Amos.
On February 4th, Knopf will publish two new anthologies gathering both literary landmarks and forgotten gems from the first hundred years of the magazine: “A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker,” edited by the fiction editor Deborah Treisman, and “A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker,” edited by the poetry editor Kevin Young.
On February 12th, to mark the release of the fiction anthology, Symphony Space will present “Selected Shorts,” hosted by Treisman, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre. Following video introductions from notable authors such as Zadie Smith and George Saunders, an ensemble of actors—including Cynthia Nixon and Fred Hechinger—will take the stage to read selections from the anthology, including William Maxwell’s “Love,” V. S. Pritchett’s “The Ladder,” and Yiyun Li’s “All Will Be Well.”
On February 20th, 92NY will present an event honoring the release of the new poetry anthology. The evening will be hosted by Young, and will feature readings from some of the foremost poetic voices in America. More readings will follow throughout the year.
On February 21st, Film Forum will kick off “Tales from The New Yorker,” a two-week festival showing a slate of more than thirty films inspired by fiction and reporting from the magazine, and by the legendary writers who helped define it. Screenings will include “In Cold Blood,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “Citizen Kane,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and “A Star Is Born.” Select films will be introduced by New Yorker writers and editors. The festival will run through March 6th.
