ViralWorld

Most watched on YouTube

Every time the record changed hands, and what it cost the counter.

Why this is a history and not a chart

A list of who currently has the most views would be out of date before you finished reading it, and this archive is not permitted to rank on the view counts it collects. There is a better reason than either: in 2024 a video reached about 1.4 billion views in a day because software looped it, and the number was later revised down to a few million. Counts get rewritten. Dates do not. So everything below is something that happened, on a day, reported at the time by somebody who can still be cited.

  1. 2005 Happened

    Me at the zoo, uploaded by Jawed Karim, became the first video on YouTube.

    Wikipedia — Timeline of YouTube — source
  2. 2005 Happened

    A Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho became the first YouTube video to reach one million views.

    Wikipedia — List of most-viewed YouTube videos — source
  3. 2008 Happened

    Music Is My Hot Hot Sex became the first YouTube video to reach one hundred million views.

    Wikipedia — List of most-viewed YouTube videos — source
  4. 2009 Happened

    Charlie Bit My Finger overtook Evolution of Dance as the most-viewed video on YouTube — the last non-music video ever to hold the title.

    Wikipedia — List of most-viewed YouTube videos — source
  5. 2010 Happened

    Lady Gaga's Bad Romance took the title — the first music video to do so, beginning a hold by music videos that has never since been broken.

    Wikipedia — List of most-viewed YouTube videos — source
  6. 2010 Held the title

    Justin Bieber's Baby became the most-viewed video on YouTube, and held the title for roughly 863 days.

    CBC News — source
  7. 2012 Happened

    Gangnam Style became the first video in YouTube history to reach one billion views, 159 days after it was uploaded.

    Official YouTube Blog — source
  8. 2014 Happened

    Gangnam Style became the first video to pass two billion views.

    Wikipedia — List of most-viewed YouTube videos — source
  9. 2014 Happened

    YouTube rebuilt its view counter after Gangnam Style approached the maximum a 32-bit integer can hold. One more pass and the count would have turned negative.

    TechCrunch — source
  10. 2015 Happened

    YouTube removed the "301+" freeze, ending the years in which a popular upload visibly stopped counting at 301 views while it was checked for fraud.

    Wikipedia — Timeline of YouTube — source
  11. 2017 Held the title

    See You Again overtook Gangnam Style, ending a reign of nearly five years — and then held the title for about 25 days, the shortest of the modern era.

    Variety — source
  12. 2017 Happened

    Despacito became the most-viewed video on YouTube and the first to pass three billion views, less than seven months after upload.

    TechCrunch — source
  13. 2018 Happened

    Despacito became the first YouTube video to reach five billion views.

    Guinness World Records — source
  14. 2020 Happened

    BTS's Dynamite set the record for the most views a YouTube video has taken in 24 hours, at 101.1 million.

    Guinness World Records — source
  15. 2020 Happened

    Baby Shark Dance overtook Despacito to become the most-viewed video in YouTube history, at 7,042,967,886 views — the first video outside the music industry to hold the title since 2010.

    Guinness World Records — source
  16. 2021 Happened

    YouTube removed the public dislike count from every video, permanently ending the ability to observe that number from outside.

    Wikipedia — Timeline of YouTube — source
  17. 2022 Happened

    Baby Shark Dance became the first video in history to reach ten billion views.

    Guinness World Records — source
  18. 2024 Happened

    A Discord April Fools' video reached about 1.4 billion views in under a day because an in-app notification looped it automatically. YouTube later revised the figure down to the low millions.

    Tubefilter — source
  19. 2026 Reported

    Guinness World Records recorded Baby Shark Dance as the most-viewed video on YouTube, at 16,643,177,027 views.

    Guinness World Records, as of 4 February 2026 — source

This is not a complete list of the most-watched videos, and does not claim to be. No durable public source publishes one. What it is complete about is the succession: every video that has held the title, and when it took and lost it.