Wikipedia has released its 11th annual list of the most-read articles of the year. In 2025, people spent an estimated 2.4 billion hours reading English Wikipedia articles. The most popular entry? Charlie Kirk's page.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia, has released its list of the year’s most-read articles, and the entry on Charlie Kirk topped the 2025 roster of the online encyclopedia’s Top 20 English-language pages.
The article on the conservative activist was viewed nearly 45 million times. His death dominated headlines and divided opinions, and the views on his page surged after he was shot at a university campus on 10 September.
The day after his assassination, Kirk's Wikipedia page was viewed 15 million times - an average of over 170 times per second. Over 40 per cent of the views for the article came from outside the US, data from Wikimedia Foundation showed.
The second-most read is a regular feature in Wikipedia’s annual list: ‘Deaths in 2025’ - the notable deaths of the year, with 42.5 million views. The 2024 list of notable losses was the most read last year.
Serial killer Ed Gein's page was third, with views boosted by Monster, Netflix’s true crime anthology series whose third season focuses on the American murderer known as the Butcher of Plainfield.
Donald Trump’s Wikipedia article secured fourth place with 25.1 million views - his eighth appearance on the annual list – while the article on Pope Leo XIV, the first Pope to have been born in the US, rounded off the Top 5.
Scroll down for the full Top 20 list of the most read Wikipedia articles of 2025.
Other notable entries in the top ten include New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, Ozzy Osbourne, who died earlier this year, and several film-related pages like the articles on Ryan Coogler’s vampire horror movie Sinners and James Gunn’s Superman.
When looking at this year’s Top 20, it becomes apparent that US politics were a prime motivator of reading habits, accounting for a quarter of the list.
Here are the most-read Wikipedia pages in 2025:
- Charlie Kirk - 44.9m page views
- Deaths in 2025 - 42.5m
- Ed Gein - 31.2m
- Donald Trump - 25.1m
- Pope Leo XIV - 22.1m
- Elon Musk - 20.2m
- Zohran Mamdani - 20.1m
- Sinners (2025 film) - 18.2m
- Ozzy Osbourne - 17.8m
- Superman (2025 film) - 17m
- Pope Francis - 15.3m
- Severance (TV series) - 13.9m
- United States - 13m
- Thunderbolts* (2025 film) - 12.9m
- Weapons (2025 film) - 11.8m
- JD Vance - 11.6m
- Adolescence (TV series) - 11.6m
- MrBeast - 11.5m
- Cristiano Ronaldo - 10.8m
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025 film) - 10.8m
Wikipedia celebrates its 25th birthday on 15 January 2026.
