Delta Air Lines city guides take flight

One great joy of travel is, of course, making friends on the journey—especially when those bonds might be less expected. So it is with the new collaboration between Delta Air Lines and Wildsam.

You know Delta, the first global airline in the US to celebrate its centennial, with routes to 300 of the best destinations around the world. If you’re reading this, you might know Wildsam, a travel and culture publisher that creates story-focused field guides, an open-road-minded magazine and more, all dedicated to exploring America.

This spring, Delta Shop will release a collection of curious and cool books: pocket-sized, covers popping with illustrations evoking the cities they explore, pages full of travel intel and cultural insight. These special-edition Wildsam x Delta Air Lines books celebrate Delta's century-long commitment to connecting with the people, places, and local communities that make iconic destinations in Delta’s network distinctive. Inside each guide, find updated selections from the Wildsam editorial team, featuring famous sights, under-the-radar gems, and stories of each city’s history and culture.

The guides to Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle are one of Delta Shop’s first city-specific collections for 2026, available at shop.delta.com.

This special-edition release—all with new covers, all with freshly updated editorial content—brings long-popular Wildsam titles into 2026. More installments, including an all-new guide to Salt Lake City and the Utah mountains beyond, will debut later this year.

“This is a project that gets right to the heart of what we’re trying to do at Wildsam,” says editor-in-chief Zach Dundas. “We talk about American travel destinations and culture in all sorts of ways, but the field guides are where we started, and in many ways they’re our guidepost as a brand. The chance to put books in more hands, with a look and feel we’ve never tried before, working with such a globally recognized partner—it’s amazing.”

To see what makes this creative collaboration tick, the field guide to Austin, Texas makes a fine example. Austin, Wildsam’s home for many years and a sort of spiritual stronghold of our brand, has long been the hero of one of the most popular Field Guides. For Delta, the Texan capital is likewise a vital reference point, a place that draws travelers attuned to culture, food, drink, music and the burly landscape and dramatic skies of Central Texas.

While all the field guides aim to create a vivid portrait of the places they cover, the Austin book has a special place within the Wildsam line. Its recommendations across food, drink, culture and the outdoors combine with interviews with a diverse gallery of Austinites and a deep well of history and lore to steep a traveler in what Austin is all about.

“The Austin book was the first field guide I ever read,” Dundas says. “There’s a magic to how that book evokes Austin’s spirit—the way Texas swagger balances with a whimsical, humble appreciation for the good life there. You can feel the caliche and smell the barbecue as you browse that one. And if a traveler does even 10 percent of the things we recommend in that book, I really believe they’ll come to know Austin at an exceptional level. That’s what we’re going for.”

For the Austin cover—as with the other titles in the collaborative series—bespoke illustrations and a distinctive typeface capture the book’s spirit and energy.

“The design work for the collaborative books focuses on celebrating each destination through vibrant color palettes, custom illustrations, and hand-lettered typography,” says Wildsam design director Ashley Burch. “Every book is uniquely designed to reflect the culture, energy, and visual character of its location, creating an immersive and collectible travel experience.”

The result: a dashing addition to any serious traveler’s kit. Set course to shop.delta.com.