Overview
- The Emma team and founder Alice Schwarzer announced on Wednesday that the magazine will publish a double‑sized final issue on 8 December 2026 and then stop.
- The editorial statement said the closure is not primarily economic, noting that current revenues still cover costs while the small, long‑serving staff has become exhausted and recruitment of successors failed.
- Schwarzer’s public stances since 2022 — including a peace initiative with Sahra Wagenknecht on the Ukraine war and critical coverage of trans issues — provoked protests and led many subscribers to cancel, a loss she has previously described as roughly one in five readers.
- Emma’s complete editorial archive will be transferred to the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and is scheduled to be made available to researchers from 2029.
- Founded in 1977, Emma produced 398 issues and shaped debates on child sexual abuse, Islamism, spousal tax rules, breast cancer and female genital mutilation, and its end raises questions about who will carry those investigative and feminist interventions forward.