NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE reaches 49 million print and digital readers in 33 languages worldwide.
The English edition of the April 2020 issue celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. This month’s single-topic issue cover questions what lies ahead for the planet—will it be saved or lost?
For this occasion, National Geographic created the first ever “flip” issue to look ahead at the world our descendants will inhabit 50 years from now. Two starkly different futures for Earth Day’s 100th anniversary were explored—one optimistic future, and one pessimistic future.
This is the first time in at least a decade that every one of our language editions has embraced the same single-topic issue and featured it on the cover, giving National Geographic an exciting show of solidarity. The editions also made the content their own: The issue’s timeline, which marked milestones that have either helped or hindered environmental progress, was localized in about a dozen editions with examples in their countries. The "Earth Voices" story about a rising youth movement was also localized by several editions to feature activists in their regions.
All but eight local-language editions opted for our "flip" cover this month. Because of printing limitations, the Bulgarian, Indian, Korean, Latin American, Lithuanian, Russian, Thai, and Turkish editions went with a single-page version, presenting the optimistic and pessimistic views in a single globe.
See below for a round-up of our covers from across the globe.
