The Atlantic Hits the Seas With New Cruise Ship Partnership

The occasions programming can be overseen by Evan Smith, the previous founder and CEO of the Texas Tribune who constructed that outlet’s pageant right into a nationally acknowledged occasion. Smith now leads The Atlantic’s occasions operation. 

Programming this 12 months will function hearth chats. The slate will then develop in its second two years, with the flagship 2028 voyage timed to the fortieth anniversary of Seabourn and marketed as 12 Days with The Atlantic. The scope of the programming will resemble that of The Atlantic Pageant, spanning tradition, literature, expertise, and enterprise, and can be knowledgeable, partly, by no matter is animating The Atlantic’s journalism on the time.

The partnership arrives as The Atlantic has been leaning arduous into dwell occasions as a progress car. 

Final 12 months, occasions made up 25% of the corporate’s business income, anchored by The Atlantic Pageant, which moved to New York final fall and generated 36% extra income than the prior 12 months, McKown said at the time. 

The corporate produces roughly 25 occasions yearly, and in 2025 launched The Atlantic Throughout America, a 50-state tour that has thus far drawn greater than 7,500 attendees throughout 5 occasions, with two extra scheduled for April.

“We wish to go to [audiences],” McKown mentioned. “Within the age of AI and the web, simply having your model present up in particular person is so helpful and builds affinity and strengthens that relationship.”

The partnership can be backstopped by an organization that has been on a exceptional run. 

The Atlantic now counts 1.46 million whole subscribers as of the second half of 2025, having added 300,000 web new subscriptions over the prior 12 months. This 27% year-over-year achieve has outpaced all however one of many 184 titles that filed audited figures with the Alliance for Audited Media, in accordance with the writer. The Atlantic additionally added greater than 50 newsroom positions final 12 months, bringing its editorial headcount above 200.

The corporate has been constructing its subscription base by way of a collection of artistic distribution strikes, together with a school subscription program that has enrolled greater than 75 universities, and a program providing free digital entry to each public highschool in America. The Seabourn deal provides one other channel, one the place the potential subscriber base is self-selecting and well-matched.

“We did do math on subscription projections,” McKown mentioned, “and we noticed that there was appreciable upside.”