MrBeast is now Mr Has The Most YouTube Subscribers

(Image credit: Dave Kotinsky (Getty Images))

Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson has broken yet another record in his all-conquering career, with his main account becoming the most popular YouTube channel on the planet. The MrBeast channel overtook the music channel T-Series on Sunday with 269 million subscribers and, a mere two days later, has already raced further ahead with 271 million subscribers.

T-Series may be familiar to some, thanks to Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg's unsuccessful campaign to beat the channel himself. Pewdiepie is still enormous, of course, with 111 million subscribers of his own, but after being overtaken in late 2018 was never able to topple T-Series despite a subs drive, with the creator at the time observing that "all it took was a massive corporate entity with every song in Bollywood."

The Indian music channel uploads trailers and music videos, and has been the largest YouTube channel since that point. MrBeast overtook PewDiePie himself in late 2022 and, in celebrating the news, MrBeast nodded to the onetime king of content creators: "After 6 years we have finally avenged Pewdiepie."

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The MrBeast channel has been around since February 2012, and at the time of writing features 798 videos. This is just one of several channels that MrBeast and his proxies operate, with others dedicated to his philanthropy work, reaction videos, and gaming.

MrBeast's most popular content can be summed-up in one word: stunts. The bigger the channel gets, the bigger the stunts, and some of MrBeast's most popular content includes his own version of Squid Game, the star being buried alive, and recently using his money to cure the blind by paying for cheap but essential operations—an act some criticised as "charity porn".

MrBeast is one of the most recognisable faces on the planet, though his ambitions are clearly bigger than just YouTube. The influencer recently signed a TV deal with Amazon, reportedly worth a cool $100 million, and is using his brand to push into areas like snacks (after MrBeast Burger turned out to be a bit of a disaster). Nevertheless, in 2020 the star insisted the long-term goal is to use all of the fame and fortune he accrues to "one day open hundreds of homeless shelters/food banks and give away all the money."

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."