Sainik Samachar had started as Fauji Akhbar, as a sixteen page Urdu weekly on January 2, 1909. Its aim was to provide Army personnel with 'a summary of news with a military bias'.

Fauji Akhbar has traveled from Shimla, where its office was originally located and published from Allahabad to Lahore, back to Shimla and then to Delhi. Its popularity was at its peak during the World War-II when an overseas edition was also brought out from Cairo for the benefit of Indian troops deployed in far-off theatres of war. The print order of Fauji Akhbar and its special bi-weekly supplement Jang Ki Khabarein was in excess of three lakhs at that time. The publication of Fauji Akhbar was suspended temporarily immediately after Independence due to sudden migration of staff and printers. However, it bounced back with renewed vigour in no time. The magazine turned into a fortnightly on April 4, 1954 and was rechristened as Sainik Samachar.

Published by the Directorate of Public Relations (DPR), Ministry of Defence, the magazine is now brought out in 13 different Indian languages viz., Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu & Urdu including English.