As part of the National Year of Reading, the initiative brings together leading publishers, including Immediate, Egmont, Kennedy, Future, and Creature & Co, in partnership with Frontline, to get more than 60,000 magazines into the hands of children.

Working with National Literacy Trust hubs, and supported by independent charities such as The Children’s Book Project and Book Bank Charity, the campaign will target families and communities who have limited access to reading resources.

Sean Cornwell, CEO, Immediate said: “At the heart of this campaign is a simple aim: to help children discover the joy of reading. Magazines offer a uniquely engaging entry point for young readers, especially powerful for reluctant or less confident readers. It’s fantastic to work on such an important project with our partners from across the industry to demonstrate the impact we can have when publishers, partners and charities work together to help inspire more children to enjoy reading.”

Ali Foster-Grose, Director of Community & Events, Immediate added: “We created National Magazine Day to help make reading accessible, inclusive and genuinely enjoyable for children across the country. Our hope is that this becomes the start of something with real and lasting impact.”

A national school competition will run from 1 July to 1 September, inviting parents and carers to enter for the chance to win bundles of children’s magazines for their child’s school by answering one simple question. Twenty schools across the UK will each receive 250 magazines, with winners notified in early October and prizes delivered in time for National Magazine Day on 14 October.

Families who nominate a winning school will also receive a £100 Amazon voucher as a thank you, and one school will be awarded a special £1,000 ‘Golden Ticket’ to spend on new books, magazines, and other reading resources for their library. The competition will celebrate reading for pleasure and aims to spark a wave of excitement around magazines in classrooms and playgrounds.

In a recent study from the National Literacy Trust, reading enjoyment among 8-18‑year‑olds showed a modest rise after four consecutive years of decline, with more than a third now saying they enjoy reading in their free time.

However, overall engagement remains low, and the research highlights a widening gap for children receiving means‑tested support, who are significantly less likely to have books, magazines, or other reading materials at home. This matters because reading for enjoyment is strongly linked to educational attainment, wellbeing, future life chances and even economic growth.

At a time when many families are concerned about rising screentime, magazines offer an encouraging route back into reading: they’re visual, approachable, and easy to dip in and out of, making them a welcoming alternative to digital distractions.

 National Magazine Day aims to help address this gap in a simple but effective way, using magazines as an inclusive, low‑barrier entry point into reading at home, in schools and in communities. The initiative also aligns with the priorities of the National Year of Reading 2026, particularly around improving access, encouraging reading for pleasure, supporting families and widening participation in literacy.

Professor Banerjee, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Sussex commented: “Our UKRI research has shown that reading plays a key role in building empathy in children, which in turn is associated with greater engagement in reading for pleasure as well as greater prosociality.  In our latest study with 8- to 10-year-olds, we found that a significant proportion of children were reading magazines at least on occasion.  This is just one part of the ‘literacy menu’ that can foster a culture of reading amongst children, drawing them in with the content that they find most fun and engaging.”

National Magazine Day 2026 is about more than celebrating magazines. It is about using the reach, creativity and accessibility of magazines to support children, families, and communities across the country.

By placing magazines directly into the hands of children and creating a national moment of excitement in schools, the campaign aims to help more young people experience the enjoyment, confidence and opportunity that reading can bring. For many of the children reached through this initiative, magazines may be one of the few engaging reading materials they encounter at home or in their community ​-​ offering an accessible first step into reading that can spark lasting confidence and curiosity.