Incorporated in August 2012,[3] The World Weekly began publishing in January 2013 with 75,000 print copies being distributed at corporate venues, members' clubs and transport hubs around London.

[1] Rory O'Grady described The World Weekly as an independent publication without any "specific political ideology" or "religious/non-religious view" with a "multidimensional" approach to news, saying it was "a new journalistic experiment"[1].

It aimed to provide international news including non-Western points of view, with both free and premium services, targeting elite business, airlines and hotels.

Shaheen described the journal's team as "very multicultural from all over the world" and aimed to "cut through the Western bias of big news organisations and get around entrenched political positions", and to "give readers the bigger picture".

His successor Manuel Langendorf, later a European Council on Foreign Relations visiting fellow, was the magazine's editor-in-chief until it ceased publishing in June 2018.