The latest Billboard 200 chart dated January 3, 2026, marks a historic milestone with seven holiday albums entering the top 10, a record for festive music. The surge is attributed to the tracking week ending on Christmas Day, a first since 2014. Previously, the record for holiday titles in the top 10 stood at six, first observed in January 1959 with releases from artists like Mitch Miller, Bing Crosby, and Johnny Mathis, highlighting the legacy of seasonal music.

Leading the charge is Bing Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas, which climbed to a new peak of No. 2 from No. 6. The album earned 110,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. for the week ending December 25, powered predominantly by streaming. Its songs generated a record-breaking 140.71 million on-demand official streams, surpassing its previous record of 125.77 million and securing Crosby’s first No. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums chart.

Crosby’s album features timeless tracks like “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). Other holiday albums also achieved notable placements: Michael Bublé’s Christmas rose to No. 3, Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song reached No. 4, and the various artists compilation A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector jumped to No. 5. Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas, and Frank Sinatra’s Ultimate Christmas all made gains, highlighting the enduring popularity of holiday classics.

The Billboard 200 ranks the most popular albums in the U.S. using a multi-metric system based on equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. These units account for album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA), where one unit equals either one album sale, 10 individual track sales, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription streams of an album’s songs.

The full January 3, 2026-dated chart will be published on Billboard’s website on December 30. For ongoing chart news, readers are encouraged to follow Billboard on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and explore the Billboard VIP Pass for exclusive access and insights into trending music.