The Wikimedia Foundation celebrates the end of the year with a list of the English-language Wikipedia articles that received the most pageviews.
This question resolves YES to the English-language article that the Wikimedia Foundation affirms as #1 most viewed of 2025. Please note that this determination may be made prior to the end of the year (e.g. Dec 5, Dec 15).
For easy reference, here are links to the previous years' lists: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
As another resource, pageviews.wmcloud.org provides rankings by annual pageviews, though note that their numbers are slightly different.
See also:
1,000
3.00Right now, Charlie Kirk is leading for the year, with 41,681,338 views - which also puts it ahead of the 2nd-most viewed article of 2024 (2024 United States Presidential Election), but below the most-viewed article last year (Deaths in 2024).
However, Kirk has quickly lost steam (just like 2024 Presidential Election did last year), and has now dipped back below Deaths in 2025 in terms of daily pageviews. With that said, Deaths in 2025 is below where Deaths in 2024 was this time last year in terms of daily pageviews - there's a chance it can't catch back up to Kirk.
@Marnix very close by my calculations too, too scared to commit early lmao despite buying and selling already. think it'll even come down to when they release the figures since there's almost a 2 week difference between 2022 and 2024. i was pretty sure kirk would slow down, but his page was actually getting ~10k/day before the assassination so it really depends on how quickly his page's daily views fall
@Marnix :/ feels like everything is changing in like a single year, that this would be the topmost article
@AlanTennant To be fair, things beat Deaths in <year> pretty frequently - ChatGPT in 2023, Jeffrey Dahmer in 2022, Trump and Covid in 2020. I think the most important reason those views ballooned so much in that first week was the fact that his death was both inescapable (the footage was EVERYWHERE) and initially uncertain (so anyone who knew who he was had a few refreshes, just to see if his death was announced yet) - plus, the widespread cancellation wave culminating in Kimmel getting pulled (meaning people who didn't know him were looking at the guy to see what the hell this guy's deal was). A similar thing happened with Kobe Bryant - the helicopter crash was reported first, then there was a big gap where no one knew if he was alive, and then the reports of his death. His death didn't have a secondary fallout bump, though, so he didn't have enough to pull ahead of ChatGPT.