Navigating Internship Opportunities at the Financial Times: A Comprehensive Guide

The Financial Times (FT) is a globally recognized news organization known for its authority, integrity, and accuracy. It offers various internship programs, providing students and aspiring journalists with invaluable opportunities to gain experience in the media industry. These internships are designed to be hands-on, allowing interns to contribute meaningfully from day one while working alongside seasoned professionals.

The Financial Times Internship Experience

At the FT, curiosity thrives, and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Interns are encouraged to develop ideas, present their work, and gain valuable insights from across the business. The FT is committed to creating a fair and inclusive workplace where everyone has equal opportunity to succeed. They welcome and value different perspectives and strive to ensure all employees are heard and supported. The company believes people do their best work when they can be themselves and have the flexibility they need to balance their work and personal lives. As an intern, you are truly part of the team and make a meaningful contribution during your time there. Internships are designed to involve you with hands-on project work from day one; you will face new challenges every day and work alongside career professionals.

Available Internship Programs

The Financial Times offers a range of internship programs across various departments, including:

Financial Times Live Internship

Financial Times Live (FT Live) is the conferences and events division of the Financial Times newspaper and its group publications. The FT Live internship offers the opportunity to connect and collaborate across the FT - in the US and globally. You’ll develop ideas that help drive our growth, present your work to US leadership, and gain valuable insights from across the business.

Duration: Full time from May 4th 2026 - Aug 7th 2026.
Compensation: A reasonable estimate of the salary range for this role is $17 per hour. To ensure pay fairness, the successful candidate will be offered a rate within the estimated range based on a number of considerations including but not limited to: skills; experience and training; certifications; and other business and organisational needs.

People & Talent Intern

The People & Talent Intern will play a hands-on role in supporting initiatives that drive the success of the People & Talent function. You’ll become a key member of the business, working alongside a People Generalist and Talent Acquisition Specialist to take on complex projects that support the business. You’ll get exposure to building out candidate pipelines, handling internal employee engagement and becoming an integral part of the FT.

Duration: Full time from June 1st 2026 - Aug 7th 2026.
Compensation: A reasonable estimate of the salary range for this role is $17 per hour. To ensure pay fairness, the successful candidate will be offered a rate within the estimated range based on a number of considerations including but not limited to: skills; experience and training; certifications; and other business and organisational needs.

Data Journalism Internship

The Financial Times' US data journalism team is a small, interdisciplinary group working across the paper - on data visualisation, data analysis, news writing, enterprise stories, narrative features, interactive features and visual stories. As an intern, you will work closely with all members of the team. The team fulfills a dual role: enhancing the existing report with sharp analysis and visualisation, and pitching and producing our own original work.

Duration: Full time from June 1st 2026 - Aug 7th 2026.
Compensation: A reasonable estimate of the salary range for this role is $20 per hour. To ensure pay fairness, the successful candidate will be offered a rate within the estimated range based on a number of considerations including but not limited to: skills; experience and training; certifications; and other business and organisational needs.

Marjorie Deane Internship

The Marjorie Deane internships at The Economist and Financial Times are designed to provide paid work experience for promising journalists or would-be journalists, who would like to research and write about finance and economics. Three-month internships are available at The Economist; placements at the The Financial Times may last up to six months.

Dow Jones News Fund Internship Program

The Dow Jones News Fund internship program has a legacy of excellence dating back to 1960. Interns attend one-week training programs before reporting to work in paid internships at top media companies for 10 to 12 weeks. In the application, due November 5, you are asked to indicate which training programs/internship positions interest you. You may select more than one.

Audience Engagement: Audience engagement internships vary by newsroom, but the mission always remains the same-help the news find its audience. From writing SEO-friendly headlines and producing engaging content for video and social to crafting newsletters and seizing on trending topics on social media, job expectations vary.
Business Reporting: We place reporters in more than 30 newsrooms across the country covering a wide variety of topics from Wall Street to Main Street, including the stock market, new businesses and entrepreneurs, labor unions, minority-owned businesses, real estate, climate change, agriculture and automotive industries.
Data Journalism: There are three different types of data internships we usually place interns in: 1) heavy emphasis on filing records requests and analyzing data using spreadsheets; 2) reporting and writing using government data or assisting investigative reporting projects; and 3) using coding and technical tools to build apps and interactive visuals for news stories.
Digital Media: Working as a digital media intern means many different things, depending on the newsroom. You could be working in print, social, video, audio or all of it. Interns receive across-the-board training so they can expand their skill sets using the latest technology and storytelling techniques.
Multiplatform Editing: Editors are the final check on a story before it is published. Multiplatform editing interns assess copy for accuracy, completeness, tone and style while also writing SEO-friendly headlines and designing pages on deadline.

Eligibility Criteria

College sophomores, juniors, seniors and graduate students who are enrolled in school full-time as of Nov. 5, 2025, are eligible to apply. This includes December graduates. Those with work visas are also eligible.

Application Process

The FT embraces innovation and the use of technology and appreciates that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst the company is happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications. Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

To apply for an internship at the Financial Times, candidates typically need to submit the following:

Resume/CV
Cover letter
Unofficial transcript
A 500-word essay: What was the most impactful thing you did as a journalist in the past year? (Note: This question may be interpreted very broadly.
Samples of your work. Please attach 3-5 clips of stories you wrote or links to digital content you produced. For data journalism you may attach code you have written or a data visualization you created; editors can provide headlines, page designs or social media posts.

The FT is committed to providing reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities, in our internship application and/or interview process. Please put “Reasonable Accommodation” in the subject line and provide a brief description of the type of assistance you need.

Advice from Past Interns

Past interns of the Marjorie Deane program highlight the invaluable experience gained at the Financial Times and The Economist:

The Marjorie Deane internship is an incredible opportunity to work in the beating heart of one of the best newsrooms in the UK. Right from the start you are treated like a proper FT journalist, and given the responsibility and independence to pursue your own interests while learning on the job how to report on corporate news. All the new jargon might seem intimidating at first, but it won’t for long!
Applying for the Marjorie Deane internship was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The scheme is immensely valuable for aspiring journalists and those looking to specialise in finance in particular (there are a lot of terms, numbers and concepts to get your head around), but I think any aspiring journalist would get a lot out of it. I spent six months in the Financial Times’s newsroom on the Companies and FastFT desks, both of which were fast paced and full-on learning experiences.
The Marjorie Deane scheme is one of the best opportunities out there for young journalists. It places you at the heart of the Financial Times newsroom and gives you the chance to work on some of the most important stories of the day right from the outset. I did my internship in 2018 and spent it working with the energy team, reporting on everything from bust UK utilities to the politics of international oil prices.
As an ex-City lawyer trying to break into journalism, the Marjorie Deane fellowship meant the FT could take a chance on me. Despite having limited writing experience, I got thrown in to covering everything from features on fund managers to helping with breaking news on a special live blog.
The internship was an amazing learning experience for me, a crash course in financial journalism, as I had previously only written on politics, books, and culture. I wrote about 15 articles across the paper during my stint, covering subjects from Breitbart’s business model to China’s changing credit culture to supply-chain finance to gender-budgeting.
I got my first opportunity to work as a journalist through the Marjorie Deane Foundation’s sponsorship, without which I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live in London and work as an intern for The Economist. It’s an invaluable opportunity for early-career journalists, and through it I met a wonderful community of journalists who I still run into around the world, now that I’m based in Beijing with the Financial Times. I would definitely recommend applying, even if you don’t have a “traditional” journalism background.
The programme is a fantastic opportunity to learn about financial journalism through hands-on experience. It provides a good grounding in reporting on companies and markets, but you’re also encouraged to branch off and pursue your own story ideas. I wrote on topics ranging from sovereign debt in sub-Saharan Africa to British dairy farmers.
Since joining the FT on the Marjorie Deane programme, I have had the chance to write about a huge variety of fascinating topics - from the Arab Awakening to the Eurozone crisis to pandas - met presidents and spy chiefs, business titans and eminent economists, and spent time working in both London and Berlin.
The experience was excellent: I spent three months among some of the brightest people I have met, learned a lot about a lot, published articles in the paper and online, researched topics I never thought I´d be interested in and saw from the inside how one of the most important publications in the world is produced.

A Look Inside the FT Culture

The Economist has an incredibly warm informality and collegiality. If you are invited to intern you will find yourself blogging from the first day, immediately invited to contribute to “Free Exchange”, just like any other economics correspondent at the paper. Writing for the paper is more competitive, but, as a result, more rewarding when it happens. It can be hugely challenging. In my second week I was asked to write the “Economics Focus” on academic perspectives on privatisation. Combining academic rigor with an accessible style was tough, and I needed more than a bit of editorial hand-holding, but I survived. Although based in the Finance and Economics team, there’s a chance to pitch stories all over the place, and I managed to write for the Business and Britain sections during my time as an intern.

Benefits of Interning at the Financial Times

Interning at the Financial Times offers numerous benefits, including:

Hands-on experience: Interns are involved in project work from day one, gaining practical experience in their respective fields.
Networking opportunities: Interns have the chance to connect and collaborate with professionals across the FT, both in the US and globally.
Skill development: Interns develop new skills and expand their knowledge through training and mentorship.
Career advancement: A successful internship can lead to future career opportunities at the FT.
Exposure to a global news organization: Interns gain insights into the workings of a leading international news publication.
Competitive compensation: The FT offers reasonable hourly rates for its internships.
Inclusive and supportive work environment: The FT is committed to creating a fair and inclusive workplace where everyone has equal opportunity to succeed.
Best-in-class perks: The FT offers generous annual leave, health coverage, 401k and company match, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community.

Staying Vigilant Against Fraudulent Job Postings

The Financial Times advises applicants to beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The Financial Times is an equal opportunities employer and seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. The FT is committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. The company has implemented a hybrid working model and promotes flexible working and will consider specific requests around flexibility for all roles where it can be accommodated.

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