Album Let It Be closed the band's studio catalogue with a chronological twist. The sessions, held in January 1969 at Twickenham and at the Apple studio under the working title Get Back, were finished more than a year before the album reached the shops. Abbey Road, recorded later, came out earlier, in September 1969. The tapes carrying the Get Back material sat in storage, rejected in two assembly versions by Glyn Johns, until Lennon and Harrison handed them to Phil Spector. The album appeared on 8 May 1970, barely a month after McCartney announced the group had split.

In the UK the launch had an unusual commercial structure. The first edition was not a standalone album but the Apple PXS 1 box set: the PCS 7096 disc, a sleeve, and the 164-page book The Beatles Get Back with photographs by Ethan Russell and text by Jonathan Cott and David Dalton. Despite the higher price, on 23 May 1970 the album reached number one on the chart, held the top spot for three weeks, and spent a total of 59 weeks on that chart. Within six months, however, production of the box and the book was halted, and Let It Be was made available in November 1970 as a standalone album under the same catalogue number, PCS 7096.

The disc itself was pressed at the EMI factory in Hayes, Middlesex, where the metal parts, lacquers, matrices, mothers, and stampers were also produced. The plant reached its production peak in the 1960s, employing around 14,000 people across a 150-acre site. The fully laminated covers were printed by Garrod & Lofthouse.

The historical anomaly of this release is twofold. First, the reversed order: the last Beatles album to be released contains material older than the recording and release of Abbey Road. Second, the two-stage launch: the PCS 7096 disc first served as a component of an expensive box set, and only after that set was withdrawn did it become a cheaper standalone release. And one more thing. The Get Back book had weak binding, and copies with a complete set of pages that have not fallen out are today more sought after than the disc itself.