Submission guidelines

We believe that the best indication of what we are looking for can be found in back issues of the magazine itself. It’s important to be familiar with our magazine, its content, architecture, audience and tone before pitching.

Always send us your ideas in writing. You can email your query to [email protected].

We like ideas to be topical and current. We look to the quality of the writing in the proposal itself for indications of how well writers write. We also need ideas that mesh with our timelines; we often plan features more than a year before they’re published, although we can fit in shorter pieces for our front-of-book and back-of-book sections more quickly. And finally, be patient. We publish Canadian Geographic six times a year and the Canadian Geographic Travel section twice a year, and that means we only buy about 28 feature stories a year. Each of those stories represents a considerable investment for us in photography, cartography and the work of the handling editor. We consider good proposals carefully and many are rejected simply because, say, we have too many science stories from British Columbia on hand or too many wildlife stories from Newfoundland. Each issue is balanced geographically and thematically. If a particular issue has a strong story from Saskatchewan in it, then there is no possibility of us slotting another into the same issue. A rejection letter from us is often the result of a decision about our needs and not your skills.

Due to the volume of pitches we receive, we are not able to respond to each query individually.

Thank you for your interest in submitting a story idea to Canadian Geographic or Canadian Geographic Travel. We look forward to reading your pitch!