Since 2014, I've compiled an annual ranking of science fiction and fantasy magazines, based on prominent award nominations and "best of" placements over the previous ten years. If you're curious what magazines tend to be viewed by insiders as elite, check the top of the list. If you're curious to discover reputable magazines that aren't as widely known (or aren't as widely known specifically for their science fiction and fantasy), check the bottom of the list.
Below is my list for 2026. (For previous lists, see here.)
Method and Caveats:
(1.) Only magazines are included (online or in print), not anthologies, standalones, or series.
(2.) I give each magazine one point for each story nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, World Fantasy, Ignyte, or Eugie award in the past ten years; one point for each story appearance in the past ten years in the "best of" anthologies by Dozois, Horton, Strahan, Clarke, Adams, and Tidhar; and half a point for each story appearing in the short story or novelette category of the annual Locus Recommended list. New This Year: Since "best of" anthologies are becoming sparser, I've added the Ignyte and Eugie awards, including retrospectively to 2020 for the Ignyte and through the whole period for the Eugie.
(3.) I am not attempting to include the horror / dark fantasy genre, except as it appears incidentally on the list.
(4.) Prose only, not poetry.
(5.) I'm not attempting to correct for frequency of publication or length of table of contents. I've noticed that dividing by the number of stories generates results that fit less well with expert opinion. A magazine's reputation appears to be driven mostly by the visibility of the most visible stories, not by the visibility of the average story. (Similar remarks apply to the prestige of philosophy journals.)
(6.) I'm also not correcting for a magazine's only having published during part of the ten-year period. Reputations of defunct magazines slowly fade, and sometimes they are restarted. Reputations of new magazines take time to build.
(7.) I take the list down to 1.5 points.
(8.) I welcome corrections.
(9.) I confess some ambivalence about rankings of this sort. They reinforce the prestige hierarchy, and they compress complex differences into a single scale. However, the prestige of a magazine is a socially real phenomenon worth tracking, especially for the sake of outsiders and newcomers who might not otherwise know what magazines are well regarded by insiders when considering, for example, where to submit.
Results:
1. Reactor / Tor.com (193 points)
2. Clarkesworld (192.5)
3. Uncanny (188)
4. Lightspeed (128)
5. Asimov's (101)
6. Fantasy & Science Fiction (95.5)
7. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (63)
8. Strange Horizons (incl Samovar) (55.5)
9. Analog (39.5)
10. Apex (39)
11. Nightmare (38.5)
12. FIYAH (30)
13. Slate / Future Tense (23.5) (ceased 2024)
14. Fireside (20.5) (ceased 2022)
15. The Dark (18)
16. Fantasy Magazine (16.5) (off and on during the period)
17. The Sunday Morning Transport (14.5) (started 2022)
18. Interzone (13.5)
19. Diabolical Plots (12.5)
20. The Deadlands (12) (started 2021)
21. khōréō (7.5) (started 2021)
22. Future Science Fiction Digest (7) (ran 2018-2023)
22t. PodCastle (7)
24t. Conjunctions (6.5)
24t. GigaNotoSaurus (6.5)
24t. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (6.5)
27. The New Yorker (6)
28t. Omni (5.5) (classic magazine relaunched 2017-2020)
28t. Psychopomp (5.5) (started 2023; not to be confused with Psychopomp Magazine)
30. Kaleidotrope (5)
31t. Anathema (4) (ran 2017-2022)
31t. Baffling (4) (started 2020)
31t. Boston Review (4)
31t. Omenana (4)
31t. Terraform (Vice) (4) (ceased 2023)
31t. Wired (4)
37t. B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog (3.5) (ceased 2019)
37t. Paris Review (3.5)
37t. Shimmer (3.5) (ceased 2018)
37t. Sirenia Digest (3.5)
41t. Science Fiction World (3)
41t. Galaxy's Edge (3) (ceased 2023)
43t. Augur (2.5) (started 2018)
43t. Beloit Fiction Journal (2.5)
43t. Bourbon Penn (2.5)
43t. Buzzfeed (2.5)
43t. Escape Pod (2.5)
43t. Flash Fiction Online (2.5)
43t. McSweeney's (2.5)
43t. Tin House (2.5) (ceased short fiction 2019)
*51t. Abyss & Apex (2)
51t. Black Static (2) (ceased 2023)
51t. Mothership Zeta (2) (ceased 2017)
*51t. PseudoPod (2)
51t. Reckoning (2)
51t. Shortwave (2) (started 2022)
*51t. Weird Horror (2)
*58t. Constelación (1.5) (ran 2021-2022)
58t. MIT Technology Review (1.5)
58t. New York Times (1.5)
58t. Translunar Travelers Lounge (1.5) (started 2019)
[* indicates new to the list this year]
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Comments:
(1.) Beloit Fiction Journal, Boston Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Reckoning, and Tin House are literary magazines that sometimes publish science fiction or fantasy. Buzzfeed, Slate and Vice are popular magazines, and MIT Technology Review, Omni, and Wired are popular science magazines that publish a bit of science fiction on the side. The New York Times ran a series of "Op-Eds from the Future" from 2019-2020. The remaining magazines focus on the science fiction and fantasy (SF) genre or related categories such as horror or "weird". All publish in English, except Science Fiction World, which is the leading science fiction magazine in China, and Constelación, which was bilingual English and Spanish.
(2.) For a sense of recent momentum, it's also interesting to consider a three-year window. Here are those results, down to six points:
1. Clarkesworld (67)
2. Uncanny (54.5)
3. Reactor / Tor (42.5)
4. Lightspeed (36.5)
5t. Asimov's (22.5)
5t. Strange Horizons (22.5)
7. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (13)
8. The Sunday Morning Transport (9.5)
9. Nightmare (9)
10. FIYAH (8.5)
11t. Apex (8)
11t. F&SF (8)
11t. The Deadlands (8)
14. Analog (7.5)
15. Diabolical Plots (6.5)
16. Fantasy Magazine (6)
(3.) Other lists: The SFWA used to have a qualifying markets list of "pro" science fiction and fantasy venues based on pay rates and track records of strong circulation. However, that list has been discontinued. Submission Grinder is a terrific resource for authors, with detailed information on magazine pay rates, submission windows, and turnaround times.
(4.) Starting about 10-15 years ago, the classic "big three" print magazines -- Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog -- were slowly displaced in influence by the leading free online magazines, Reactor / Tor, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and Lightspeed (all founded 2006-2014). Last year, Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog were all purchased by Must Read Books, and the transition has been bumpy, with author contract problems, delayed or skipped issues, and broken websites. It remains to be seen if the classic big three can stay viable in print format.
(5.) Standalone anthologies (traditionally in print format) have also been declining, probably for similar reasons as print magazines -- that is, the increasing consumption of free SF online. For example, in the most recent (2025) Locus recommended reading list only 8 of 99 (8%) recommendations in the novelette and short story categories are from anthologies, compared to 23/111 (21%) ten years ago (2016).
(6.) Academic philosophy readers might also be interested in the following magazines that specialize specifically in philosophical fiction and/or fiction by academic writers: AcademFic, After Dinner Conversation, and Sci Phi Journal.
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