The satirical weekly once again featured the Prophet Mohammed on its cover -- but with a tear in his eye, holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign under the headline "All is forgiven".
After many Parisians joined long queues outside newspaper kiosks in the pre-dawn cold to get their hands a copy, French President Francois Hollande said "Charlie Hebdo is alive and will live on".
"You can murder men and women but you can never kill their ideas," he said.
Around 700,000 copies were released and sold on Wednesday as part of a print run that will eventually total five million.
Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch (AQAP) claimed responsibility for the attack by Islamist gunmen on the Paris offices of the weekly last Wednesday that left 12 people dead including some of the country's best-loved cartoonists.
"(AQAP) was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan... It was following orders by our general chief Ayman al-Zawahiri," said one of its leaders in the video, adding it was "vengeance" for the weekly's cartoons of the prophet.
Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi who carried out the attack are known to have trained with the group.
Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman and attacked a Jewish supermarket in Paris in attacks he said were coordinated with the Kouachi brothers, has claimed links to the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
IS on Wednesday described Charlie Hebdo's decision to print another Mohammed cartoon as "extremely stupid".
Under government orders to crackdown on hate crimes, French prosecutors have opened over 50 cases for condoning terrorism or making threats to carry out terrorist acts since the attacks that claimed 17 lives.
They include one against the controversial comedian Dieudonne Mbala Mbala.
He was arrested on Wednesday and will stand trial at a later date over a comment suggesting he sympathised with one of the Paris attackers, as France cracks down on those who condone terrorism.
The comedian wrote "I feel like Charlie Coulibaly" on Facebook -- mixing the popular "Je Suis Charlie" homage to the slain journalists with a reference to the supermarket gunman.
Under France's ultra-fast-track court system, a 21-year-old in Toulouse was sent to prison for 10 months on Monday for expressing support for the jihadists while travelling on a tram.
AFP