Cristiano Ronaldo crowned Wikipedia’s most-viewed sports star of 2025

Cristiano Ronaldo has added another remarkable line to his already overflowing list of records – this time, in the world of online knowledge.

According to data released by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Portuguese legend was the most-viewed sportsman on English Wikipedia in 2025 and the only athlete to appear in the platform’s global top 20 most-read articles, coming in at #19 with 10,827,510 pageviews.

In a year dominated by politics, pop culture, and major deaths, Ronaldo stood alone as the sporting world’s standard-bearer on what has become the backbone of knowledge on the internet.

Wikipedia at 25 – and Ronaldo still on top

Wikipedia will celebrate its 25th anniversary on 15 January 2026. What began as a small, volunteer-driven experiment has grown into a central infrastructure of the modern web, powering everything from search engines and voice assistants to generative AI tools.

In 2025 alone, people spent an estimated 2.4 billion hours reading English Wikipedia articles, supported by nearly 250,000 volunteers who maintain pages, add citations, and enforce neutrality.

Within that vast ocean of information, Cristiano Ronaldo’s biography stood out as the only sports-related entry to crack the top 20 most-viewed articles of the year. In a non-Olympic year, when global searches often drift away from sport and toward politics or entertainment, Ronaldo’s enduring pull is striking.

For Portugal, it’s yet another reminder that even in the late stages of his playing career, Ronaldo remains one of the most searched, discussed, and analyzed figures on the planet.

No World Cup. No Euros. No Olympics. And still, one name from sport breaks through: Cristiano Ronaldo.

A lonely star from the world of sport

The Wikimedia analysis notes that, “Without the Olympics, the sporting side of pop culture was far less prominent” on this year’s list – and it shows. While previous years saw multiple athletes and sports events in the top rankings, 2025 features only Ronaldo.

His presence at #19, ahead of countless global celebrities, politicians, and fictional universes, highlights a few things:

Longevity of relevance: Ronaldo has been at the top of world football for nearly two decades, and interest in his story – from Sporting CP to Manchester, Madrid, Turin, Riyadh, and beyond – clearly hasn’t faded.
Global curiosity, not just football fans: Wikipedia traffic isn’t just match reports and goal counts; readers explore his personal life, transfers, records, awards, and cultural impact.
Portugal’s soft power: In a list that overwhelmingly reflects American politics and global media, the one sports icon people are still rushing to look up is Portuguese.

In a digital landscape where trends come and go in days, it’s remarkable that Cristiano Ronaldo continues to command this level of worldwide attention.

What the rest of the list reveals about 2025

While Ronaldo is the headline for Portuguese readers, the full top 20 most-read English Wikipedia articles of 2025 paints a broader picture of a turbulent, highly online year.

1. Politics, tragedy, and the new pope

The top of the list is dominated by political drama, death, and the Catholic Church:

Charlie Kirk – 44,907,789 views
Deaths in 2025 – 42,508,846
Ed Gein – 31,232,285
Donald Trump – 25,127,616
Pope Leo XIV – 22,052,502

Charlie Kirk, a US political activist, became the most-viewed article of the year after he was assassinated in September during a university campus debate he had organized. In the 24 hours following his death, his Wikipedia article was viewed nearly 15 million times, averaging more than 170 views per second. Around 43% of those views came from outside the United States, underscoring how instantly global such events have become.

The perennial “Deaths in 2025” article took the #2 spot, as it does almost every year. Volunteer editors continuously update it with newly published obituaries of notable figures, splitting it into month-by-month lists to keep the page readable.

One of those deaths was Pope Francis, who passed away in April after 12 years as pope. A few weeks later, the College of Cardinals elected Pope Leo XIV. The announcement triggered a huge spike: Wikimedia projects together peaked at around 800,000 hits per second, more than six times normal traffic, setting a new record.

Former pope Francis also appears in the ranking at #11 with 15,281,541 views, as people around the world looked back on his life and legacy.

At #4, Donald Trump returns to the list as US president once again, having taken office for a second term on 20 January 2025. Apart from 2022 and 2023, his article has appeared in Wikipedia’s annual most-read lists every year since 2015.

2. Streaming, horror, and superheroes dominate entertainment

As usual, films and TV shows make up a large chunk of the list, driven by what researchers call the “second-screen effect”: people watch something, then immediately open Wikipedia to read more, look up cast and crew, or, yes, spoil the ending.

These entertainment-related entries made the cut:

#3: Ed Gein – 31,232,285
#8: Sinners (2025 film) – 18,230,654
#10: Superman (2025 film) – 17,007,716
#12: Severance (TV series) – 13,892,847
#14: Thunderbolts* – 12,864,839
#15: Weapons (2025 film) – 11,753,018
#17: Adolescence (TV series) – 11,571,799
#20: The Fantastic Four: First Steps – 10,768,070

A few highlights:

Ed Gein, the notorious US serial killer, surged because of the latest season of Netflix’s Monster. Only about half of the article’s views came from the US, proving how global true-crime streaming has become. Earlier seasons on Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers similarly drove traffic in previous years.
Sinners (directed by Ryan Coogler) and Weapons (by Zach Cregger) were among the biggest US box-office hits of 2025. Their success marks the first time horror films have featured in Wikipedia’s annual top-read list.
Severance, the Apple TV+ series, saw its second season explode in cultural impact. Its article nearly tripled its 2022 pageviews, showing the show’s growth into a mainstream phenomenon.
Adolescence, a British Netflix series, captured attention not only for its story and performances but also for episodes filmed as single, continuous takes. Interest peaked about 10 days after release, as word of mouth spread.
The superhero machine keeps rolling: a new Superman reboot, Thunderbolts* (Marvel’s “new Avengers”), and The Fantastic Four: First Steps all brought in millions of curious readers.

One title that just missed the top 20 was KPop Demon Hunters, the animated musical that Netflix says is its most-watched original animated film ever.

3. Power, politics, and the people who shape policy

Five of the top 20 articles are directly tied to politics and political power, particularly in the US:

#1: Charlie Kirk
#4: Donald Trump
#6: Elon Musk – 20,179,628
#16: JD Vance – 11,617,451

In addition to Trump and Kirk, Wikipedia readers flocked to the pages of:

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur and former senior advisor in the US administration, whose decisions in both politics and business kept him constantly in headlines.
JD Vance, the US vice president, whose biography and political trajectory were closely scrutinized as he settled into office.

4. Pop culture icons: from the “Prince of Darkness” to MrBeast… and Ronaldo

Three entries in the list reflect pop culture outside of film and TV:

#9: Ozzy Osbourne – 17,787,997
#18: MrBeast – 11,475,681
#19: Cristiano Ronaldo – 10,827,510

Ozzy Osbourne, the legendary rock singer and reality-TV fixture known as the “Prince of Darkness,” died in July, prompting a massive wave of searches as people revisited his life and career.

MrBeast, the YouTuber with the world’s largest channel, made the list for the first time. Though he has been a dominant force on YouTube for years, interest in his Wikipedia page spiked in January after he publicly expressed interest in buying TikTok, sending his name into yet another news cycle.

And then, of course, there’s Cristiano Ronaldo – the only athlete who stood shoulder-to-shoulder in this ranking with politicians, popes, tech billionaires, streaming phenomena, and cultural icons.

The full top 20 most-read English Wikipedia articles of 2025

For context, here is the complete list and pageview totals released by the Wikimedia Foundation (data from 1 January to 10 November 2025):

Charlie Kirk – 44,907,789
Deaths in 2025 – 42,508,846
Ed Gein – 31,232,285
Donald Trump – 25,127,616
Pope Leo XIV – 22,052,502
Elon Musk – 20,179,628
Sinners (2025 film) – 18,230,654
Ozzy Osbourne – 17,787,997
Superman (2025 film) – 17,007,716
Pope Francis – 15,281,541
Severance (TV series) – 13,892,847
United States – 13,040,217
Thunderbolts* – 12,864,839
Weapons (2025 film) – 11,753,018
JD Vance – 11,617,451
Adolescence (TV series) – 11,571,799
MrBeast – 11,475,681
Cristiano Ronaldo – 10,827,510
The Fantastic Four: First Steps – 10,768,070

What this means – from Lisbon to the world

As Wikipedia prepares to celebrate 25 years online, this year’s list captures a world preoccupied with:

political conflict and polarization,
high-stakes elections and assassinations,
streaming hits and horror cinema,
the deaths of major religious and cultural figures,
and the rise of new types of internet celebrity.

Amid all of that, a boy from Madeira remains one of the most searched people on Earth.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s status as the most-viewed sportsman on Wikipedia in 2025 is more than a trivia nugget. It’s a reminder that:

his story continues to fascinate across borders and generations;
Portuguese talent still shapes global culture;
and even as the internet changes, some names never leave the conversation.

Twenty-five years after Wikipedia began, and more than twenty years after Ronaldo’s debut, both are still rewriting what “global” truly means.