The last document from the Snowden archive was published on 29 May 2019. The Guardian stopped publishing documents in February 2014, Der Spiegel in January 2015, and The New York Times and Pro Publica in August 2015. After that, only The Intercept was still publishing documents, with only a few exceptions, until it closed its archive in March 2019. Eleven weeks later, on 29 May 2019, it released what would become the final batch of documents from the archive. Since then, no news outlet, journalist, or institution anywhere has published a single document from the Snowden archive.

The arguments for closure included "The remaining documents have aged," "Other major media outlets stopped reporting as well," "The budget," and "Editorial priorities." Edward Snowden's intent to seek other partners was also cited, along with the observation that "Nobody wanted to close it."

Laura Poitras started receiving materials from Snowden in late 2012. On 31 March 2013, she received an encrypted file called astro_noise. On 10 May 2013, Snowden posted a box from Hawaii to a Brooklyn address, which went to Jessica Bruder, then Dale Maharridge, and finally to Poitras on 15 May. On 21 May 2013, Snowden sent Poitras and Barton Gellman the keys to an encrypted archive called Pandora containing about 50,000 documents.

Snowden warned Poitras about a "single point of failure" and urged her to distribute copies. She gave one to Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, one to an unidentified person, and one to someone unknown. Maharridge kept a copy himself. Despite continued possession, neither Poitras nor Greenwald has published anything from the archive in seven years.