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The 2026 FIFA World Cup continues to dictate our Global Top 50 rankings. After months of build-up play, the biggest soccer creators on YouTube are scoring one banger after another. Belgian Celine Dept earned her first #1 finish of 2026 by collecting 1.11 billion weekly views.
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What does it take for creators to break through the World Cup noise and crack our Top 50? For creators like Dept, years of hard work are required, but some content studios have found a shortcut that might be working too well.
The World Cup AI skits are just as sloppy as you’d expect
On the pitch, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland are fierce rivals. They’re the star players for two of Europe’s biggest clubs, the leaders of their respective national teams, and the recipients of two of the biggest contracts in soccer history.
On YouTube Shorts, however, Mbappé and Haaland have a more cordial relationship. They share sweets with each other, blow bubbles, and pull pranks on Ronaldo.
There’s just one problem: The people in those videos aren’t actually soccer legends — they’re merely AI-generated imitations. By turning the stars of the 2026 World Cup into uncanny characters, the channel Mischief Time has merged AI slop with soccer videos to unite two massive buckets of Shorts content.
That combination is taking off. Mischief Time finished 30th in the Global Top 50 with 405.4 million weekly views. Shorts turns soccer icons into short-form superstars, so Mischief Time’s success isn’t too surprising. The only real surprise seems to be the practical jokes AI Lamine Yamal pulls on AI Mbappé and AI Haaland.
In the simplest sense, the rise of Mischief Time is a symptom of the AI slop epidemic that YouTube just can’t shake. Even after YouTube helped its soccer creators get access to real-life athletes (hence the rise of Celine Dept), the AI facsimiles are proving equally popular among Shorts viewers.
If we want to be more generous, we can concede that all soccer content — AI-generated or not — is blowing up right now. Thanks to the World Cup, channels based around the beautiful game are getting more weekly views than they’ve received at any point this year. Just look at Futcrunch, a U.K.-based creator who finished 43rd in this week’s Global Top 50 thanks to 373.7 million weekly views.
Data via Gospel Stats
As a big-time sports fan myself, I’ll miss this surge of soccer content once the World Cup wraps up in July. It’s been fun to see creators from all over the world come together, both on YouTube and in North America.
At the same time, the growth of Mischief time suggests that the World Cup-related YouTube channels are only going to get weirder from here on out. There’s too much viewership up for grabs to keep the genAI engines silent, so AI Mbappé is as much of an inevitability as his real-life counterpart’s goal-scoring prowess.
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
- India: 25
- United States: 6
- Canada: 3
- China, South Korea, and United Kingdom: 2
- Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Switzerland, and Vietnam: 1
This week, 40 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
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