The latest Billboard 200 chart, dated January 3, 2026, marks a significant milestone with a record-breaking seven holiday albums populating the top 10. This unprecedented surge in festive music is largely attributed to the chart's tracking week concluding on Christmas Day, a first since 2014. Historically, the previous record for holiday titles in the top 10 stood at six, a feat achieved multiple times, most recently on the December 27-dated chart, and first observed on January 5, 1959, with albums from artists like Mitch Miller, Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Mantovani, and Perry Como.

Leading this holiday takeover is Bing Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas, which ascended to a new peak position of No. 2 from No. 6. The album garnered an impressive 110,000 equivalent album units in the United States during the week ending December 25, as reported by Luminate. This success was overwhelmingly driven by streaming activity, with the album's songs collectively generating a massive 140.71 million on-demand official streams. This figure not only represents Crosby's best streaming week ever for any album but also stands as the biggest streaming week recorded for any holiday album, surpassing its own previous record of 125.77 million streams achieved on the January 4, 2025-dated chart, when it had reached its former high of No. 3 on the Billboard 200. Furthermore, Ultimate Christmas achieved its first No. 1 position on the Top Streaming Albums chart, climbing from No. 2.

Bing Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas features several classic Holiday 100-charting tunes, including “White Christmas” (with 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” (featuring The Andrews Sisters). Six other holiday albums also made their mark in the top 10. Michael Bublé’s former No. 1 Christmas climbed from No. 5 to No. 3, while Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song moved from No. 5 to No. 4. The various artists project A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector reached a new best at No. 5, jumping from No. 9 and surpassing its previous No. 7 peak from the January 6, 2024, chart. Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas moved up one spot to No. 7. Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas jingled from No. 10 to No. 8, and Frank Sinatra’s Ultimate Christmas achieved a new high at No. 9, rising from No. 12 and bettering its prior No. 10 peak on the January 4-dated chart.

The Billboard 200 chart serves to rank the most popular albums weekly in the U.S., based on a multi-metric consumption methodology measured in equivalent album units, meticulously compiled by Luminate. These units are a composite of album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each equivalent album unit signifies either one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported on-demand official audio and video streams, or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.

The complete January 3, 2026-dated chart is scheduled to be published in full on Billboard’s website on December 30. For continuous chart news and updates, readers are encouraged to follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram, and consider a Billboard VIP Pass.