Cover of the Year vote 2026
Attention-grabbing covers can spark conversations, be a piece of art, or simply capture a moment or theme that makes the reader want to discover more. This award celebrates standout front covers from 2025 that were simply unmissable. Our judges have whittled it down, now it’s your turn to have your say.
Voting closes midnight 6 May.
Cover of the Year
Sponsored by:
Boundless Magazine, Our Media
About the cover:
Impact, engagement, entertainment and a hundred tiny people living their best lives? That’s this ingenious Boundless cover. As an organisation, Boundless offers money-saving fun around the UK for its members. As a magazine, we showcased that brilliantly to bring summer to life in unforgettable style.
Country Life, Future
About the cover:
Country Life, October 22 2025: The cover of the issue guest-edited by Sir David Beckham, as photographed at his Cotswolds home by Millie Pilkington
Gamepop, Red Bull Media House
About the cover:
An actual playable video game – that’s the special-edition cover of Gamepop’s first edition. The illustration by Dave Arcade conceals a flexible 1mm-thin circuit, playing Tetris via functioning hand-drawn ‘buttons’ on a colour LED matrix, with sound and a USB-C charging port. The world’s first playable electronic magazine cover.
Glamour UK, Condé Nast
About the cover:
The Dolls cover for Glamour UK brought together nine trailblazing trans women in a powerful statement of visibility, sisterhood, and solidarity. A bold cultural moment that sparked exceptional engagement and global conversation, it showcased the strength of unity, inspiring dialogue, driving change, and championing women’s empowerment.
MadeForMums, Immediate
About the cover:
A hand-knitted sperm meets egg in this bold, playful cover for MadeForMums’ fertility-focused digital edition. Tactile, unexpected and scroll-stopping, it transforms a scientific moment into something warm, hopeful and human: redefining how parenting journalism can look and feel.
MoneyWeek, Future
About the cover:
This cover is a rare ‘magical magazine moment’ combining creativity and editorial clarity. The image of Trump as a generalissimo, having defaced his banner using Sharpie, and a Venezuelan flag behind him, captures the hasty and hubristic nature of the operation. The T on the cap shows it’s Trump first!
National Geographic Traveller (UK), APL Media
About the cover:
This classic winter scene showcases rail travel as exciting and the stuff of adventure, whetting the reader's appetite for the feature within. The elegant yet dramatic layout, with its well-judged use of type, helped the March 2025 issue become the best-selling single issue on newsstand in the magazine’s 16-year history.
Radio Times, Immediate
About the cover:
Because this cover captured Tom Daley exactly as the nation sees him now, warm, witty and unexpectedly brilliant. With exclusive access, beautiful photography and standout design, Radio Times turned knitting into must-see culture and proved that great covers still stop you in your tracks. No side-eye to be seen!
Stylist
About the cover:
Stylist spent eight weeks travelling the UK to interview girls about their lives.
This anonymous model was photographed in an unidentifiable school by an all female crew.
Stylist has always been here to serve women. To advocate for them, to be their biggest cheerleader. We won’t forget the girls.
Work. Magazine, Wonderly
About the cover:
Given the automation of many knowledge tasks and the resilience of manual jobs, might the future be more hands-on than thought? It might also involve less work – more time experimenting with techniques like cyanotype, used to create this special issue artwork, and one of the oldest, simplest photographic methods.