On September 15, 2026, we’ll be launching our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 17 of Lightspeed and Year 15 of Nightmare.

Join us for a year of new short fiction from some of the biggest stars in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including:

• Travis Baldree
• Olivie Blake
• P. Djèlí Clark
• Tananarive Due
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Grady Hendrix
• Hugh Howey
• Stephen Graham Jones
• Ken Liu
• Victor LaValle
• Seanan McGuire
• Veronica Roth
• Paul Tremblay
• Jeff VanderMeer

Plus, we’ll have a new essay by Charles Yu, and John Scalzi is going to write “something”—what exactly hasn’t been decided yet, but he promises it will be fun.

Since 2010, Lightspeed has been among the world’s leading publishers of science fiction and fantasy short fiction, showcasing the work of award-winning authors alongside exciting new voices. Since 2012, our sibling magazine, Nightmare, has been doing the same for horror short fiction. Between the two magazines, we’ve published nearly 10 million words of fiction; this campaign will help us bring to life another 450,000 words.

In the past, you’ve helped us fund our acclaimed “Destroy” series of special issues: Women Destroy Science Fiction! (all women staff and contributors), Queers Destroy Science Fiction! (all queer staff and contributors), and People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! (all BIPOC staff and contributors). Thanks to your support, those campaigns far exceeded their funding goals and resulted in us publishing companion fantasy and horror volumes as well.

We haven’t run a Kickstarter since then, but in the wake of major changes to the publishing landscape—especially Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program—have made reader support more important than ever. That’s why we’re launching this Kickstarter campaign to help ensure the magazines continue to thrive. Think of it as a subscription drive, but bigger and with more rewards.

So go to the campaign’s pre-launch page (lightspeedmagazine.com/kickstarter will redirect you there) then click the NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH button to sign up to be notified when the campaign launches, so you can be one of the first in line to show us your support.

Hope to see see you live on Kickstarter on September 15!