Which Video Has the Most Views on YouTube?

The most viewed YouTube videos, with the latest count each primary source confirms

View counts on YouTube change every minute, so a ranking is only true for the day it was taken. This page was built in November 2026 to use only counts that a primary source has published and dated: the counter or description on YouTube itself, the YouTube Official Blog, Guinness World Records, which verifies counts before it awards a title, or the company that owns the video. When BusinessStats tried to read the live counters on the video pages in November 2026, YouTube returned a bot check page instead of the count, so no live counter is quoted here. Where a source gives a threshold, the page writes more than that figure.

On that basis the order at the top is clear. Baby Shark Dance has almost twice the views of Despacito: 16.64 billion verified by Guinness World Records in February 2026 against more than 8.9 billion for Despacito two months later. Behind them sits a group of pop videos from the mid 2010s. The last full ranking that YouTube itself published, on 15 July 2022 for the tenth anniversary of its Billion Views Club, put Shape of You by Ed Sheeran second among music videos with 5.7 billion views, See You Again by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth third with 5.5 billion, Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars fourth with 4.6 billion and Gangnam Style by PSY fifth with 4.4 billion. For the platform as a whole, from users to watch time, see our YouTube statistics overview.

Ranks 3 to 6 follow the July 2022 YouTube list, the latest ranking YouTube has published. All four videos have grown since then, and their order today may differ; no primary source has published newer dated counts for them. Upload dates are shown only where YouTube or Guinness World Records states them.

Despacito in a class of its own: in July 2022 it led Shape of You by 2.2 billion views, more than the 1.3 billion that separated second place from fifth.

The upload year shows how long it takes to build these counts. Every video in the top six was uploaded between 2012 and 2017, and no video uploaded since then appears in any dated top list from YouTube or Guinness World Records. A newer hit can reach a billion faster than ever, as the speed records below show, but the leaders have had close to a decade of replays. The channels that host these videos are ranked by subscribers in a separate page on the most subscribed YouTube channels.

Every video at the top is a song; the biggest non-music clips are far behind

Music dominates the all-time list. Guinness World Records classes Baby Shark Dance as a music video for children, so the most viewed video overall is also a music video. If songs for young children are set aside, Despacito leads with more than 8.9 billion views, and every other video on the dated lists from YouTube is an official music video. YouTube said in April 2025 that more than 300 music videos had passed 1 billion views.

Non-music videos are much harder to rank. Neither YouTube nor Guinness World Records publishes an all-time title for the most viewed video that is not music, so there is no verified number two outside music. The verified non-music figures that do exist are far smaller or measure something else: the first video ever uploaded, Me at the zoo, had been watched more than 386 million times by April 2026, and the most viewed non-music video in its first 24 hours, the first Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, drew 90,421,491 views on 5 December 2023. The same pattern holds for music streams on other services, as our list of the most streamed tracks on Spotify shows.

No primary source publishes an all-time non-music ranking, so the non-music rows are the verified records that exist, not a ranking.

Five videos have held the most viewed title since 2010

Guinness World Records began tracking the most viewed YouTube video in 2010, when Justin Bieber held it with Baby, which had 425 million views by the end of that year. Since then the title has changed hands only four times, and each new holder needed a far bigger number to take it.

Sources: Guinness World Records news of 21 November 2012 (with an update on 26 November 2012), 2 November 2020 and 19 January 2022. Guinness World Records gives the 2017 changes by year only.

Gangnam Style was the video that showed how fast a global hit could travel. It went from upload on 15 July 2012 to the top of YouTube in about four months, overtaking Baby over the weekend of 24 and 25 November 2012, and then became the first video to reach 1 billion views a month later. It held the title until 2017, when See You Again briefly took over before Despacito passed it about a month later, according to Guinness World Records.

Baby Shark Dance took the title on 2 November 2020 with 7,042,967,886 views, about 16 times the 425 million that Baby had when the record was first tracked. By November 2026 it has held the number one spot for six years, longer than Gangnam Style, which held it from November 2012 until 2017. Its lead is also the largest any holder has had: when it reached 10 billion views in January 2022, Pinkfong said it was 2.3 billion views ahead of second place.

Gangnam Style was first to 1 billion, Despacito first to 5 billion and Baby Shark Dance first to 10 billion

Times from upload are BusinessStats calculations from the dates in the sources. For 16 billion and 17.2 billion the sources give the month or a threshold passed, not an exact day.

Each step brought a much larger number. Despacito reached 5 billion views less than 15 months after upload and had 5,353,299,564 views by 25 July 2018, according to Guinness World Records. Baby Shark Dance then became the first video to reach 10 billion, and Guinness World Records noted in January 2022 that it had passed the world population in views as early as February 2021. YouTube puts its later milestones at 16 billion in June 2025, and Guinness World Records reported more than 16 billion on 26 November 2025.

Hello by Adele reached 1 billion views in 88 days, almost twice as fast as Gangnam Style

While the all-time leaders took years to build their counts, new hits now reach the first billion far faster. In its 20th birthday post on 23 April 2025, YouTube listed the music videos that reached 1 billion views in the shortest time. Hello by Adele leads with 88 days, followed by Shape of You and Despacito with 97 days each, Mi Gente by J Balvin and Willy William with 103 days and APT. by ROSE and Bruno Mars with 105 days. Gangnam Style, the first video to reach the milestone, needed 159 days in 2012.

Speed is not rank: APT. reached 1 billion views in 105 days, but the fastest videos are not the most viewed; only Despacito and Shape of You appear in both lists.

Speed and staying power are different things. Hello started with 27.7 million views in its first 24 hours and reached 1 billion on 17 January 2016, but it is not in the July 2022 top five that YouTube published. Despacito and Shape of You are the only two videos that appear on both YouTube lists, the five fastest to a billion and the five most viewed music videos, which suggests that a long run of repeat listening matters more than a big launch.

From 1 billion to more than 17.2 billion views in eight and a half years

Baby Shark Dance did not take off at once. Pinkfong uploaded the two minute song on 17 June 2016, and according to YouTube it reached its first billion views in February 2018. Then the pace picked up sharply: 5 billion in April 2020, the number one spot with 7,042,967,886 views on 2 November 2020, 10 billion on 13 January 2022, 14.5 billion in June 2024, 16 billion in June 2025, 16,643,177,027 verified by Guinness World Records on 4 February 2026 and more than 17.2 billion by 20 August 2026.

Six billion views in under three and a half years: between January 2022 and June 2025 the video added 6 billion views, more than Shape of You had in total in July 2022.

Where the views come from is also documented by YouTube. The United States watches Baby Shark Dance the most and leads its watch time on connected TVs, Brazil gives it the most likes and Indonesia has the highest watch time on mobile devices. Creators have made more than 100,000 videos using the song and other Pinkfong content, YouTube said in October 2025. The audience picture by country for YouTube as a whole is in our ranking of the countries with the most YouTube users.

One video also carries a large share of a much bigger catalogue. In January 2022 Pinkfong said its YouTube channels had 50 billion views in total, when Baby Shark Dance alone had reached 10 billion, about one fifth of the total. By June 2024 the channels had passed 100 billion lifetime views while Baby Shark Dance had 14.5 billion, so its share had fallen to 14.5 percent as the rest of the catalogue of more than 7,000 pieces of content in 25 languages caught up.

One upload, one seventh of the catalogue: a single video from 2016 produced 14.5 percent of all Pinkfong views on YouTube by June 2024, down from about 20 percent in January 2022.

J Balvin and Justin Bieber had the most billion-view music videos

A billion views is the entry ticket to the YouTube Billion Views Club. When YouTube marked the club tenth anniversary in July 2022, it named the artists with the most official music videos past that line: J Balvin and Justin Bieber with 11 each, Ozuna with 10, and Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Maluma with 8 each. Three of the six, J Balvin, Ozuna and Maluma, record mainly in Spanish, which matches the Latin weight of the all-time list led by Despacito.

Latin music leads: half of the six artists with the most billion-view videos in 2022 record mainly in Spanish.

The club has kept growing. YouTube described it as holding hundreds of music videos in July 2022 and more than 300 in April 2025. YouTube has not published a newer artist table, so the counts above are a 2022 snapshot. K-pop is strong in the speed and first-day records below, a trend that also shows in our page on the views of KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix.

BTS holds the highest first-day count published by Guinness World Records

The first-day record measures launch power, not staying power. The highest 24-hour count that Guinness World Records has published is 108.2 million views for Butter by BTS on 22 May 2021. BTS also held the record before that with Dynamite, which drew 101.1 million views in 24 hours on 22 August 2020, and earlier with Boy With Luv featuring Halsey in 2019 and Idol in 2018.

Source: Guinness World Records record pages. The Dynamite page gives 101,100,000 in its text and 101,000,000 in its summary box. The Grand Theft Auto VI trailer was released earlier than planned after a leak a few hours before.

None of the 24-hour record holders appears in the July 2022 top five from YouTube. A video game trailer comes closest to the music records: the first Grand Theft Auto VI trailer drew 90,421,491 views in a day, the most for any non-music video. For views of short videos on other platforms, see our data on the most viewed TikTok hashtags.

Despacito is the most liked video even though Baby Shark Dance has twice the views

Likes tell a different story from views. Guinness World Records lists Despacito as the most liked video on YouTube, a title it took on 31 August 2018 with 29,585,207 likes, ahead of See You Again with 21,212,779. By January 2022 Despacito had 47 million likes against 33 million for Baby Shark Dance. A likely reason is that very young viewers rarely press like themselves. Guinness World Records still named Despacito as the most liked video in its April 2026 article, although its record page has not been updated since 2018.

Sources: Guinness World Records record page for the most liked video and news of 2 November 2020, 19 January 2022 and 23 April 2026.

Dislikes can no longer be compared. YouTube made dislike counts private on 10 November 2021. Before that, Guinness World Records listed YouTube Rewind 2018 as the most disliked video and Baby Shark Dance second with more than 14 million dislikes. For likes on another platform, compare our list of the most liked Instagram posts.

What counts as a YouTube view and why counts from different dates do not match

A public view count is not a raw tally of every play. YouTube says it may discard playbacks that do not meet its quality standards, for example one person playing a video on several devices or in several tabs, and that it may temporarily slow down, freeze or change a count while it checks it. That is one reason figures from different dates and sources rarely match exactly.

Because of these rules, this page treats every count as a dated snapshot. YouTube is owned by Google; the advertising business behind these views is covered in our pages on Google and Alphabet annual revenue. For a comparison of YouTube with other networks by size, see the biggest social media platforms by users.

The most viewed YouTube videos in eight numbers

How this ranking was compiled and what it leaves out

BusinessStats checked every figure on this page in November 2026 against the organisation that published it. Four types of primary source are used: the YouTube video pages themselves, the YouTube Official Blog and YouTube Help, Guinness World Records, which verifies counts on YouTube before awarding a title and states the date of each count, and the rights holder of a video, here The Pinkfong Company through its own press releases.

Questions about the most viewed YouTube videos