The 40 Best Illustrations of
The most memorable illustrations of the year, chosen by art directors at The New York Times.
Dec. 26, 2025
Weronika Marianna Put Your Phone Down and Dance!
Social media seemed to hold enormous promise for the dance field. So why are some dancers and companies choosing to disconnect?
Ohni Lisle Sex Had Become a Chore. Then They Started Reading Romantasy.
The wildly popular fiction genre allows readers to talk openly about yearning, sex and desire. And it’s spilling over into their bedrooms.
Rosa Sawyers 6 Things We Get Wrong About Sleep
And how to actually get better rest, according to experts.
Leonie Bos When Beauty Standards and Body Positivity Collide
A new cultural ideal for women is ultrathin and cloaked in the language of inclusivity and self-acceptance.
Quentin Blake Times Insider | 62 Fascinating Facts of 2024
John Provencher Hey ChatGPT, Which One of These Is the Real Sam Altman?
Two journalists explore the artificial intelligence company OpenAI and present complementary portraits of its notorious co-founder.
Miroslav Weissmüller He’s Undead, He’s Indigenous, and He Wants Revenge on America
In “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” a Blackfeet man becomes a vampire and seeks vengeance for the country’s sins.
Alexis Jamet 100 Years Ago, Fictional Londoners Looked Up. They Saw Our Present Day.
Our critic A.O. Scott takes apart a scene from “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf’s 1925 masterpiece, and shows why the book is a must-read now.
Brendan Conroy Fix Your Glutes. Fix Your Life.
I didn’t appreciate their utility — and paid for it.
Nicolás Ortega Do the Best Shoes Look Like … Potatoes?
When it comes to footwear, there’s one perfect shape (and we’re living in the golden era for it).
Gary Baseman The New York Times Kids
Tom Gauld The New York Times Kids
Daniele Castellano What Is Your Greatest Superstition?
First, we knocked on wood. Then we asked a visual artist, a designer, a psychic medium, a makeup artist and a conductor to each reveal their biggest superstitions.
Deanne Cheuk This 1,200-Page Poetry Book Affirms Seamus Heaney’s Towering Genius
Even the previously uncollected work in “The Poems of Seamus Heaney” shows a master craftsman in full control of his powers.
Gigi Rose Gray Four Women, Navigating Friendship and Ambition in a World on Fire
In her sweeping second novel, “The Wilderness,” Angela Flournoy inhabits a quartet of shifting perspectives with wit, tenderness and exquisite grace.
Christa Jarrold Opinion | America Is Losing the Fight for the Teenagers of the World
Marta Monteiro Opinion | Northern Ireland, Gaza and the Road to Peace
Aldo Jarillo Opinion | I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students.
Martin Naumann Opinion | The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World
Hannah Whitaker ‘Frankenstein’ Has Always Held Up a Mirror. What Does It Show Us Now?
In Guillermo del Toro’s new version, the answer lies in how deeply it explores the relationship between creator and created.
Jiayi Li Are You the Only One Who’s Broke? Or Is It ‘Money Dysmorphia’?
The ‘boom boom’ aesthetic meets the gloom and doom of market turmoil.
Gaia Alari 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Musicals
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sara Bareilles, Joshua Henry, Jeanine Tesori, Jason Robert Brown and New York Times writers and editors pick 13 songs to seal the deal.
Magali Cazo Joyce Carol Oates on a Mesmerizing New Story Collection
The Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin explores the ambiguities and ironies of domestic life in a new collection.
Ben Giles 250 Years of Capitalism: Soulless, Exploitative and All but Unstoppable
A new book by The New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy plumbs more than two centuries’ worth of grievances about our global financial order.
Fromm Studio ‘I’m on Fire’: Testosterone Is Giving Women Back Their Sex Drive — and Then Some
There is no F.D.A.-approved testosterone product for women. Insurance won’t cover it. Many doctors won’t prescribe it. It’s become a cultural phenomenon.
Lola Dupre It Isn’t Just the U.S. The Whole World Has Soured on Climate Politics.
How do we think about the climate future, now that the era marked by the Paris Agreement has so utterly disappeared?
Derek Brahney Opinion | Boy Crisis of 2025, Meet the ‘Boy Problem’ of the 1900s
Ezekiel Aquino Opinion | A Pianist and a Law Professor Meet at the Bar …
Crystal Zapata With Etch a Sketches and Apples, Math Is Revealed
A new series for the Health and Science section aims to make complex topics easy to dissect, and maybe even help people ‘fall in love’ with math.
Tim Lahan Misplaced Millions? Lost Life Savings? Tell Us.
A new personal finance column was inspired by head-scratching messages from Times readers.
Eric Timothy Carlson When Musical Directions Don’t Say What to Do, but How to Be
What is the purpose of a poem, an illustration or a nonsensical phrase in a score? If it makes musicians stop and think, that’s a good start.
Felix Decombat Opinion | Tune In to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. The Justices Will Be Squirming.
Nata Metlukh An Agoraphobe Goes to the Grocery Store
Daniel Savage How A.I. Sees Us
Brendan Conroy Opinion | A Simple Fix to America’s Soaring Electricity Prices
Petra Péterffy Silicon Valley Is in Its ‘Hard Tech’ Era
Goodbye to the age of consumer websites and mobile apps. Artificial intelligence has ushered in an era of what insiders in the nation’s innovation capital call “hard tech.”
Pablo Delcan She Is in Love With ChatGPT
A 28-year-old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex.
Xiao Hua Yang Let’s Talk About Death
From end-of-life care to burials and beyond, we answer your questions on mortality.
Mirko Ilić Mapping the Sense of What’s Going On Inside
Scientists are learning how the brain knows what’s happening throughout the body, and how that process might go awry in some psychiatric disorders.
Travis Louie After Eight Years, a Kids Section Says Goodbye
The New York Times for Kids took its audience seriously by pursuing topics that children had questions about, from money and puberty to cake and slime.
Cover illustration by Zuzanna Rogatty and Tomas Markevičius.
Produced by Deanna Donegan, Antonio de Luca, Vinnie Neuberg and Tala Safie
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