The National Geographic 33
In April 2025, National Geographic presented its inaugural collection of 33 visionary changemakers who are striving to make the world a better place. This month, the April issue presents its second collection of 33 honorees, each an inspiration at a time when good news is rare. Why 33? Because the magazine’s editor explains, “they are an homage to the society’s founders—an extraordinary group of individuals that included inventor Alexander Graham Bell—who came together in 1888 to reimagine how we encounter and understand our planet.”
In his letter introducing this April’s issue of NG, Nathan Lump writes, “This year we are recognizing 33 individuals from around the globe who are using their influence, their ideas, and their actions to make a difference.” As in the inaugural 2025 April issue, the 2026 NG 33 include visionaries, icons, adventurers, and creators—all “bold thinker and problem solvers who believe that our world needs imaginative solutions and urgent action, and they are leading the charge for change.”
At this critical time for the health of our fragile planet and its people, an increasing number of autocrats and billionaires are focused on self-aggrandizement, crass name recognition, and exclusion rather than focusing their attention and resources on improving the health of our planet and its people. What the world needs is creative thinkers who are passionately embracing big challenges because they believe they can make a difference. All of us can be changemakers at some scale. Selfless acts of kindness and common decency matter. And finding the courage to get involved in changing the direction our planet’s future is headed is critical.
The April 2025 and 2026 NG 33 issues of National Geographic give me hope. They are available by subscription in print or digital format from your public library system, as well as online and from local bookstores. In this month’s letter from NG Editor Nathan Lump, he talks about how many of us feel like our world in upside down and find little to be optimistic about. “Our planet,” he writes, “faces daunting threats, and it sometimes seems like our basic norms of decency do too.”
At this precarious time, many of us indeed feel overwhelmed, discouraged about the future of our nation, our democracy, and our share planet. But change is happening. These two NG 33 issues of National Geographic will give you hope. They celebrate extraordinary visionaries, icons, creators and adventurers who are searching for and finding solutions for some of the planet’s most pressing environmental and social problems. Reading about their positive actions and passion for change will inspire you to act, and that is how together we can all help make the world a better place.
[For expanded profiles of and information about the work of these global changemakers, visit: natgeo.com/ng33].