Record Seven Holiday Albums in Top 10 on Billboard 200 Chart
There are a record seven holiday albums in the top 10 of the latest Billboard 200 chart (dated Jan. 3, 2026), led by Bing Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas, which hits a new peak with a 6-2 climb. The holiday takeover is likely sparked by how, for the first time since 2014, the chart’s tracking week ended on Christmas Day.
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Previously, the most holiday titles to populate the top 10 was six — which happened multiple times, most recently just last week, on the Dec. 27-dated chart. The first time there were six holiday albums in the top 10 was on the Jan. 5, 1959, chart, when holiday sets by Mitch Miller, Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Mantovani and Perry Como dotted the region.
Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas earned 110,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending Dec. 25, according to Luminate. Streaming activity largely fueled that number, with the album’s songs generating 140.71 million on-demand official streams. That’s Crosby’s best streaming week ever for an album, and the biggest streaming week for any holiday album. Ultimate Christmas beats its own record, as it previously had the biggest streaming week ever for both a Crosby album, and any holiday title, with 125.77 million on the Jan. 4, 2025-dated chart (the same week it had reached its previous high of No. 3 on the Billboard 200).
Ultimate Christmas also hits No. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums chart for the first time, rising 2-1.
Ultimate Christmas contains such classic Holiday 100-charting tunes from Crosby as “White Christmas” (featuring The Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and His Orchestra), “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “Mele Kalikimaka” (with The Andrews Sisters).
As for the other six holiday sets in the top 10: Michael Bublé’s former No. 1 Christmas climbs 5-3, Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song rises 5-4, the various artists project A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector hits a new best as it jumps 9-5 (surpassing its No. 7 peak achieved on the Jan. 6, 2024, chart), Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas is up a spot to No. 7, Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas jingles 10-8, and Frank Sinatra’s Ultimate Christmas hits a new high as it rises 12-9 (besting its No. 10 peak on the Jan. 4-dated chart).
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Jan. 3, 2026-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Dec. 30. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
