LIFE is coming back to print. Ninety years after Henry Luce started it, the magazine is relaunching on November 23, 2026 with a quarterly print edition, a free digital platform, and a new focus on video, documentaries and live events.
The first issue is titled *Where Are We Now?*, and LIFE's own editors describe it as a 250-page oversized print edition put together by more than 120 people. Hugo Lindgren is editor, Richard Turley is creative director.
No conventional print advertising. Revenue comes from subscriptions, a founding membership program, and selected brand partnerships across print and digital. Dotdash Meredith retains ownership of the photography archive while Bedford Media, led by Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner, runs editorial and business strategy.
The editors' letter is worth reading in full, because it explains the bet more honestly than any press release would. "Print is the start," it says. Each issue is meant to be the thing that gets amplified through digital storytelling, documentaries, video, special edition prints and collectibles, and events where members gather. The first cover goes after Andrew Jarrell, a commercial fisherman in Alaska on his ninth winter expedition for gray cod.
What catches my attention is the archive. LIFE's photo library — Capa, Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith, Alfred Eisenstaedt — is one of the largest that exists, and Dotdash Meredith keeping it means the relaunch has an asset that no new magazine can manufacture. The editors say there are some famous people in the first issue and most are not, which is the right instinct.
Whether people pay for print photography quarterly is the open question. The archive is the part I'd want to see actually getting used, because a title built on its own back catalogue is worth more than a single issue ever can be.