The Guardian is to relaunch its weekly edition as a news magazine and increase its distribution. The move will mean Guardian Weekly will be stocked alongside other news magazines such as the Economist and the New Yorker.

Guardian Weekly has been published as a newspaper since July 1919, with the original aim to present “what is best and most interesting in the Guardian, what is most distinctive and independent of time, in a compact form”.

The publication has a circulation of about 42,000 worldwide, of which 32,000 are subscribers and about 10,000 newsstand sales.

As part of the relaunch, the magazine will be available on more newsstands in Australia and at more than 120 WHSmith stores in British railway stations and airports. It will continue to be sold in a number of independent retailers in the US.

The redesign was announced to subscribers in this week’s edition in a letter by the editor, Will Dean. The first editions of the new-look publication are due to arrive with subscribers and on newsstands from Thursday 11 October.

The glossy magazine will have a slightly increased cover price and a greater focus on design and photography. For the first time there will be regionalised editions for Australia and North America, in line with the Guardian’s online expansion in those territories. There will continue to be a global edition for the rest of the world.

“The new-look Guardian Weekly has been beautifully redesigned as a modern weekly news magazine to meet the growing demand for Guardian journalism across the world,” said Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News and Media.

“It will continue to offer the best reporting, opinion and features from the Guardian, Observer, theguardian.com and our international editions in the US and Australia – giving our readers more ways to engage with and support Guardian journalism.”