- Chapter 1 -- basic concepts
- Chapter 2 -- Advice, common issues
- Chapter 3 -- Rules cyclopedia
- Chapter 4 -- Adventure building
- Chapter 5 -- Campaign building
- Chapter 6 -- Cosmology
- Chapter 7 -- Magic items
- Chapter 8 -- 'A surprise'
- Appendices -- maps, lore glossary
Interesting decision, and for once this is something that I appreciate, because the announced DMG and MM changes doesn't really alter the edition, unlike changing PHB classes, but only improve it.
The new list of chapter turn the DMG flow upside down. The 2014 version of the DMG goes top-down from first creating your own fantasy world to then designing adventures and finally running the game. This was a very academic approach, it makes the DMG look neat in theory but it's not practical. It's a bit like studying chemistry starting from the fundamental laws of particles, or computer science starting from boolean algebra and Turing machines: it works well if you're building towards a university degree but then it assumes you actually will complete it, and if you don't you're left with nothing usable.
The 2024 version of the DMG will go bottom-up: first learn how to run the game at the table (and you can use a pre-made adventure or sample scene), then move onto designing your own adventures, then campaign, then fantasy world. You start by doing something usable, like starting chemistry from sample experiments or computer science from coding. This is better because not all DMs design their own adventures or fantasy worlds, but all of them need to run the game (well, except bedroom DMs who only fantasize about playing).
Having said that, I am not sure having a DMG in the first place is still that important or even useful... it's not the 90s anymore, and the amount of suggestions, examples, discussions available on the web about DMing vastly outnumbers what they can put in a single book. Traps and Magic Items could belong to a different book, probably the MM, if it wasn't for the fact that the latter take a lot of space (but if they had kept the fonts and layout of 3e core books, they might have fit). The harder stuff like optional rules and the mechanical designs (monsters, items, spells) is something I appreciate more than the vague 'how to deal with the narrative' (meaning, I would appreciate that as well if it was really good, but I have never seen a brilliant job at that, while at least the mechanical design can be more factual), so I'd prefer a DMG leaning more to that side, but then probably it would be too heavy for most DMs.