Today, the Church announced significant changes to its three monthly magazines it publishes for adults, adolescents, and children that will go into effect in January 2021. The Ensign will be called the Liahona (name used currently for the Ensign outside of the United States), the New Era will be called For the Strength of Youth, and the Friend will remain the Friend. These changes constitute a major advancement in the availability of regular and contemporary Church messages, news, and teachings in additional languages, and at a greater frequency than before for most languages. Also, this marks the first time that the Church will have separate magazines for adolescents and children in other languages. There will be 87 languages with translations of Church magazines beginning January 2021. See below for information on the frequency and availability (print or online) of these magazines in different languages, as contained in the official announcement:
Beginning in January 2021, print and digital magazines will be available each month in the following languages: Cebuano, Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Tongan, and Ukrainian.
In the following languages, print and digital magazines will be available bimonthly (six times a year). Additionally, selected magazine content will be available digitally in the months a print magazine is not available: Albanian, Armenian, Bislama, Bulgarian, Cambodian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Fijian, Greek, Icelandic, Indonesian, Kiribati, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Marshallese, Mongolian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian, Swahili, Tahitian, and Vietnamese.
In the following languages, selected magazine content will be available only digitally each month: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Chuukese, Efik, Fante, Georgian, Haitian, Hiligaynon, Hindi, Hindi (Fiji), Hmong, Igbo, Ilokano, Kinyarwanda, Kosraean, Laotian, Lingala, Malay, Maltese, Nepali, Palauan, Pohnpeian, S. Sotho, Serbian, Shona, Sinhala, Slovak, Tamil, Telugu, Tshiluba, Tswana, Turkish, Twi, Urdu, Xhosa, Yapese, Yoruba, and Zulu.
Many of these languages have never had editions of Church magazines before, although some have had digital copies of select Church magazine content available online. There will be 23 languages with print and digital versions, 24 languages with bimonthly print versions and digital versions of select magazine content on remaining months, and 40 languages with monthly digital versions of select magazine content. Currently, the Church maintains editions of the Liahona in the following 48 languages (number of editions per year provided in parentheses)
- Albania (6)
- Armenian (4)
- Bislama (6)
- Bulgarian (4)
- Cambodian (6)
- Cebuano (12)
- Chinese (Simplified) (6)
- Chinese (12)
- Croatian (2)
- Czech (6)
- Danish (12)
- Dutch (12)
- English (12)
- Estonian (2)
- Fijian (4)
- Finnish (12)
- French (12)
- German (12)
- Greek (1)
- Hungarian (12)
- Icelandic (1)
- Indonesian (6)
- Italian (12)
- Japanese (12)
- Kiribati (6)
- Korean (12)
- Latvian (2)
- Lithuanian (2)
- Malagasy (4)
- Marshallese (6)
- Mongolian (6)
- Norwegian (12)
- Polish (4)
- Portuguese (12)
- Romanian (6)
- Russian (12)
- Samoan (12)
- Slovenian (1)
- Spanish (12)
- Swahili (2)
- Swedish (12)
- Tagalog (12)
- Tahitian (4)
- Thai (12)
- Tongan (12)
- Ukrainian (12)
- Urdu (3)
- Vietnamese (4)
