Journalism of Courage
Wikipedia most-read 2025: Charlie Kirk’s Wikipedia page became the most-read entry on the platform in 2025, drawing nearly 45 million views as people sought information on the conservative activist following his assassination in September
Charlie Kirk, a prominent figure in US conservative circles and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot during a university campus debate on September 10. The incident drove a global surge of interest: more than 40% of views on his Wikipedia article came from outside the US, according to data released by the Wikimedia Foundation.
In keeping with an annual trend, Wikipedia’s list of “Deaths in 2025” was the year’s second-most viewed page, while the third position went to Ed Gein, the US serial killer who became the focus of the third season of Netflix’s Monster anthology.
The platform, which turns 25 on January 15, continues to rely on its community of 2,50,000 volunteer editors and its foundational principles: neutrality, reliance on published sources and avoiding personal opinion or original interpretation.
Rounding out the top five were US President Donald Trump, marking his eighth appearance in the annual ranking and Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born pontiff.
Film and television continued to be major drivers of traffic. The 2025 releases Sinners and Superman both landed in the top 10, reflecting the “second-screen” habit of viewers looking up information while watching. The Netflix four-part series Adolescence, which went viral after release, finished at No. 17, with page views peaking 10 days after it dropped. Severance, the critically praised Apple TV series, also saw viewership of its Wikipedia entry nearly triple from its first season in 2022 to its second this year.
US politics continued to shape reading trends, accounting for a quarter of the top 20. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s dramatic political rise placed him just below Elon Musk in the overall list. YouTube star MrBeast made his debut in the top 20 as well.
