Fifty names on this year’s Forbes Top Creators 2026 list earned $1.02 billion between them. For the first time, the highest-earning creators on the internet have passed the billion-dollar mark as a group.
Forbes puts it succinctly: “the ranking of the 50 most powerful influencers collectively broke the billion-dollar mark, earning a total of $1.02 billion”. Last year the same fifty earned $853 million, so this year’s rise is 20% year on year.
The top three pushed the group past the billion-dollar mark, and one of them is the only European.
How Forbes counts and over what period
The ranking measures estimated gross earnings over a window from 1 March 2025 to 1 March 2026, with data from the creator marketing firm Influential, and counts income, not stakes in the companies held. A creator who has built a studio or fund appears on the list according to how much money reached their account last year, not according to how valuable the company they are building around themselves is. The value of those businesses lies outside the table.
Steven Bertoni of Forbes frames this year’s edition with a line: “Creators continue to harness their communities, creativity and a bold entrepreneurial spirit to steer the direction of media, entertainment and advertising.” This is the fifth edition of the ranking, and a reading in which the creator is not a talent on screen but a founder with a support base behind them.
First place stays with MrBeast
MrBeast leads with an estimated $300 million and is first for the fifth year in a row. Between him and the rest of the top three there is a chasm. Dhar Mann finished second on $65 million, just under a quarter of first place.
Dhar Mann is exactly the kind of creator for whom the methodology counts income rather than the value of the company. He runs Dhar Mann Studios, which produces short scripted videos, and in January announced a partnership with Fox Entertainment for vertical scripted content for the My Drama app from Holywater. A creator who negotiates with a studio as an equal partner is as much at home on this list as a YouTuber with a camera.
The opening slate is set to include forty narrative titles. The ranking is thereby ceasing to be a parade of influencers and becoming a table of founders.
Third place goes to a European
In third place is Steven Bartlett with $52 million. The host of The Diary of a CEO podcast is the highest-placed European on the whole list and at the same time the highest-placed podcaster. Fourth, Markiplier earned $38 million, and fifth is the duo Rhett & Link with $37 million. From a European perspective, that one position is what matters.
Bartlett’s position is not the fluke of one good year. In the Forbes 2025 list he was the only Brit, ninth by earnings and eleventh overall, with an estimate of £15 million, or $20 million. This year’s third place is a jump of eight places in a single year, built on a podcast that serves as an entry point to a broader business.
What Bartlett is building around the podcast
Bartlett co-founded Social Chain, which he left as CEO at the age of 27, and his Flight Fund invests in European startups. Diary of a CEO is only the visible part.
Beneath him runs the media holding Steven.com, which buys up other creator-led brands, and Founded.com, which gained a million followers on Instagram in ten months.
This is where the European angle cuts most sharply. Bartlett’s $52 million is income for a single window. The valuation of the holding that he has built around the podcast is on a different scale and does not enter the table. Forbes’s income methodology therefore underrates precisely what sets Bartlett apart from the others in the top three.
Where European capital sits on the list
For a brand director in Europe, the signal lies in where the only European representative sits. MrBeast and Dhar Mann are American production machines tied to studios. Beside them, Bartlett is a European founder whose podcast works as an acquisition channel for the media group he controls, and whose fund sends capital back into European startups. He is both creator and investor, and based in Europe.
American data on the creator economy cannot, however, be read literally in Europe. The highest earnings on the list and the American deals have no direct equivalent in the European media market, nor a comparable volume of money. In this context, Bartlett is the one point at which the European market can see how high a creator built on a European audience and European capital can climb.
The billion-dollar threshold has been crossed. From a European perspective, the one name in the third row of the table matters more.
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