For the first time since the inaugural year-end global charts in 2021, the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts have different reigning artists. Sabrina Carpenter is the top artist on the former list and Bad Bunny leads the latter.
Explore All of Billboard’s 2025 Year-End Charts
Both acts are powered by new releases. Bad Bunny released DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS on January 5 and immediately impacted the charts. Five of its songs debuted in the top of each global list, with its entire track listing filling up the rest of the tallies. He sports nine titles on the year-end Global Excl. U.S. Songs chart, including “DTMF” at No. 10, and eight on the Global 200 roundup.
Carpenter’s new hits came later in the year, upon the Aug. 29 unveiling of Man’s Best Friend. “Manchild” previewed the album with its June release, which debuted at No. 2 on both global charts. “Tears” followed months later, with the same No. 2 start.
But Carpenter’s best year-end showings are her biggest hits from 2024. “Espresso” winds up in the top 10 for both lists, with “Please Please Please” and “Taste” each in the top 40.
Billie Eilish and Bruno Mars also appear in the top five for both charts, with Kendrick Lamar filling the final spot for Global 200 Artists and Lady Gaga doing the same among Global Excl. U.S. acts.
Billboard’s year-end music charts represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts from Oct. 26, 2024, through Oct. 18, 2025. Rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the entries appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology detail, and the October-October time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.
For the fourth consecutive year, the Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts have the same year-end No. 1 song. More, both charts have an identical top five: the same songs in the same order.
Bruno Mars dominates the songs lists, at No. 1 with “APT.,” with BLACKPINK’s ROSÉ, and at No. 2 with “Die With A Smile,” alongside Lady Gaga. These songs, both released in 2024, traded off the top spot on both weekly lists for the majority of the 2025 tracking period. On Global Excl. U.S., they ruled for 29 of the year’s first 30 weeks, interrupted for one week by Mariah Carey’s annual trip to the top with “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
Both hits have endured, only dropping out of the top 20 in the final week of the tracking period due to Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl clogging up the top of both charts. Mars bounced back in the weeks since, potentially gearing up for another showing on the 2026 year-end recap.
Very few songs reached the top of either global chart in 2025, which were mostly run by a handful of dominant tracks. After “APT.” and “Die With A Smile,” Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” took charge, leading the Global 200 for 10 consecutive weeks and Global Excl. U.S. for eight. Ultimately, it finishes at No. 4 for both year-end lists.
“Ordinary” is sandwiched on the year-end charts by two other No. 1 songs. Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” is No. 3 and Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” is No. 5. Both of these were multi-week chart-toppers, but not in 2025.
“Beautiful Things” conquered both lists for multiple months in the Spring of 2024, ultimately becoming that year’s top global song. “Birds of a Feather” reached the summit in August of last year, right before “Die With A Smile” began Mars’ lengthy reign. Both hits lasted in the top 10 of the global charts through July, more than a year after either song was released.
Boone and Eilish are two examples of a broader trend, with other top 10 spots taken up by Carpenter’s 2024 smash “Espresso” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” which first charted in 2023.
Still, one of 2025’s biggest breakthroughs also places in the top 10. HUNTR/X — an animated girl group featuring the voices of EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami — is No. 9 on Global Excl. U.S. and No. 10 on the Global 200 with “Golden,” the breakout hit from Netflix’s runaway record-breaker Kpop Demon Hunters. The Grammy Award-nominated song spent 12 of the last 14 weeks of the tracking period atop both global charts, and returned to the top for the first frames of the 2026 chart year.
