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A new year has brought new leaders to the Global Sub Top 50 chart, and 2026 is shaping up to be a good year for individual creators and creator duos. Among the top ten most-subscribed channels during the first full week of January, only one — Zee Music Company — is affiliated with a corporate entity.
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The other members of that upper echelon include U.S.-based individuals (MrBeast, iShowSpeed, and Topper Guild) and short-form superstars (KIMPRO and Leo Show, to name two). But the ranking is still led by couple channels, with Cadel and Mia claiming the #1 spot thanks to their 1.1 million weekly subscribers.
The epicenter of the 2026 soccer boom can be found on YouTube Shorts
We’re only a few days into the new year, but it’s already become clear that soccer content will end up as one of 2026’s most notable social video trends. The impending arrival of the 2026 World Cup (to be held in Canada, the United States, and Mexico) has turned platforms like TikTok and Roblox into official FIFA partners.
Those deals figure to pay off in the long run, but FIFA should also remember that platforms and Big Tech firms didn’t launch the soccer boom — independent creators did. Before anyone was thinking about the 2026 World Cup as a marketing opportunity, short-form distributors were hauling in millions of views per week by sharing the freshest Ronaldo and Messi memes.
At the start of 2026, the tastemakers on YouTube Shorts are still leading the way. Channels led by soccer fans are some of the most-subscribed hubs of the current moment. Even a fan account hosted by a kid — BR2 — is high on the charts.
Though he doesn’t have FIFA’s official stamp of approval, BR2 gets tens of millions of views with short-form videos that compare soccer stars and fans against one another. His friends and family seem to be split on the relative quality of Real Madrid star Kylian Mbappé and young phenom Lamine Yamal. Maybe we’ll get a World Cup match between France and Spain to settle the argument.
BR2 got 310,000 weekly subscribers to reach 36th place in our Global Sub Top 50 chart. That’s not quite high enough to get out of the proverbial group stage, but BR2 isn’t the only footy fan vying for the top of the ranking. So too is Yunior Polanco, a Cristiano Ronaldo fan who got 623,300 new subscribers during the first full week of January. That put him in 13th place in the Global Sub Top 50, and he was the Dominican Republic’s sole representative in the ranking.
Polanco’s animations typically feature Ronaldo (and sometimes Ronaldo’s buddy iShowSpeed). The Portuguese superstar is depicted in a cartoonish manner, but he tends to come out on top, and that might be the key to Polanco’s success. Just months after launching his channel, the animator is already hauling in millions of views per week.
Data via Gospel Stats
Brand new channels are becoming YouTube superstars, and mere mentions of soccer legends are the reason why. That should be all the evidence FIFA needs to share the love with some independent creators.
Here’s the even wilder bit of all this: Soccer content typically spikes in the summertime, even when it’s not a World Cup year. This trend is only going to get bigger, and if it doesn’t, you can siuuu me.
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
- India: 12
- United States: 9
- Mexico: 4
- Brazil, Hong Kong, and Japan: 3
- Australia and South Korea: 2
- Argentina, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Pakistan, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and United Kingdom: 1
This week, 40 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
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