Top 10 Most Popular Players in the NFL in 2026: Instagram, X, and More
Determining the most popular NFL players in the world in 2026 was no easy task, but we combined Instagram and X followers with surveys of real people to find out.
Read on to discover the top 10 most famous NFL players as of August 2026, just before the start of the new football season.
Top 10 Most Popular Football Players in the World in 2026
| # | Player | X | YouGov | nX | nYG | nIG | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Patrick Mahomes | 8.9M | 39% | 6.4M | 1.0000 | 1.000 | 0.378 | 0.8445 |
| 2 | Odell Beckham Jr. | 3.9M | 31% | 16.5M | 0.4382 | 0.579 | 1.000 | 0.6490 |
| 3 | Travis Kelce | 1.4M | 35% | 7.7M | 0.1573 | 0.789 | 0.458 | 0.5486 |
| 4 | Saquon Barkley | 828K | 34% | 3.4M | 0.0930 | 0.737 | 0.193 | 0.4400 |
| 5 | Aaron Rodgers | 4.2M | 31% | 2.0M | 0.4719 | 0.579 | 0.107 | 0.4343 |
| 6 | Lamar Jackson | 1.4M | 32% | 3.5M | 0.1573 | 0.632 | 0.200 | 0.4050 |
| 7 | Joe Burrow | 900K | 30% | 4.2M | 0.1011 | 0.526 | 0.243 | 0.3491 |
| 8 | Josh Allen | 859K | 31% | 2.0M | 0.0965 | 0.579 | 0.107 | 0.3404 |
| 9 | Jalen Hurts | 800K | 31% | 2.1M | 0.0898 | 0.579 | 0.113 | 0.3403 |
| 10 | Christian McCaffrey | 590K | 28% | 2.7M | 0.0633 | 0.421 | 0.150 | 0.2647 |
To no one’s surprise, Patrick Mahomes remains the most popular football player in 2026, followed by Odell Beckham Jr. and Travis Kelce! But how did we reach that conclusion?
Unlike the richest NFL owners ranked by net worth, no single metric could be used to decide who’s the most popular football player in the world. That’s why we combined three different factors to decide: YouGov data, X, and Instagram.
Before we explain our methodology, let’s check them one by one.
10 Most Popular Football Players by YouGov Rating
| Player | August 2025 | August 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Mahomes | 45% | 39% | -6 |
| Travis Kelce | 37% | 35% | -2 |
| Saquon Barkley | 35% | 34% | -1 |
| Lamar Jackson | 35% | 32% | -3 |
| Josh Allen | 33% | 31% | -2 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 36% | 31% | -5 |
| Odell Beckham Jr. | 34% | 34% | -3 |
| Jalen Hurts | 31% | 31% | 0 |
| Joe Burrow | 30% | 30% | 0 |
| Matthew Stafford | 28% | 29% | +1 |
Matthew Stafford is the only player in the top 10 to see his popularity rating increase from last year’s YouGov popularity poll. Despite Patrick Mahomes dropping from 45% to 39%, he still retains the top spot. Feel free to read their methodology if you want to learn more.
While Travis Kelce’s fame rating rose due to his high-profile marriage to Taylor Swift, his popularity fell by 2% from 37% to 35%. Overall, the 2026 list is considerably tighter.
Mahomes remains the clear No. 1, but his lead has shrunk. Rodgers is the biggest faller in the rankings from No. 3 to No. 6, while Barkley is the biggest ranking climber after moving up two spots, despite actually losing 1% point.
Hurts and Burrow are the only returning top-10 players whose popularity hasn’t changed. Note that Russell Wilson was bumped off the list after coming in at No. 10 last year due to his retirement. If you are interested in betting on any of the most popular players in the NFL, the best NFL betting sites will offer an array of prop bets for 2026.
Top 10 Most Popular NFL Football Players on X
| Player | X Handle | August 2025 | August 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Mahomes | @PatrickMahomes | 2.7M | 8.9M | -6 |
| Aaron Rodgers | @AaronRodgers12 | 4.4M | 4.2M | -2 |
| Odell Beckham Jr. | @obj | 4.2M | 3.9M | -1 |
| Dak Prescott | @dak | 1.6M | 1.6M | -3 |
| Travis Kelce | @tkelce | 1.4M | 1.4M | -2 |
| Lamar Jackson | @Lj_era8 | 1.2M | 1.4M | -5 |
| Deshaun Watson | @deshaunwatson | 1.3M | 1.2M | -3 |
| Tyreek Hill | @cheetah | – | 1.1M | 0 |
| Juju Smith-Schuster | @TeamJuJu | – | 1M | 0 |
| Joe Burrow | @JoeyB | – | 900K | +1 |
Patrick Mahomes’ X follower count has skyrocketed over the last year. The first NFL player to land a half-billion-dollar contract saw his following jump from 2.7 million to 8.9 million, a gain of 6.2 million since August 2025.
Kelce may have been in the spotlight this year, but Mahomes has dominated the online metrics for one of the most popular football players in 2026. Beyond that, there haven’t been any major changes: OBJ is down 0.3 million followers, and Aaron Rodgers is down 0.2 million.
Dak Prescott and Lamar Jackson posted modest gains on X, both up 0.2 million compared to this time last year.
Top 10 Most Followed NFL Players on Instagram
| Player | X Handle | August 2025 | August 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Odell Beckham Jr. | @obj | 17.2M | 16.5M | -0.7M |
| Travis Kelce | @killatrav | 6.9M | 7.7M | +0.8M |
| Patrick Mahomes | @patrickmahomes | 6.6M | 6.4M | -0.2M |
| Joe Burrow | joeyb_9 | 4.1M | 4.2M | +0.1M |
| Lamar Jackson | new_era8 | 3.6M | 3.5M | -0.1M |
| Saquon Barkley | @saquon | 2.5M | 3.4M | +0.9M |
| Christian McCaffrey | @christianmccaffrey | 2.6M | 2.7M | +0.1M |
| JuJu Smith-Schuster | @juju | 2.8M | 2.7M | -0.1M |
| Tyreek Hill | @cheetah | 2.7M | 2.6M | -0.1M |
| Stefon Diggs | @stefondiggs | – | 2.5M | New |
With Mahomes third in the most popular NFL players on Instagram, he doesn’t have the top ranking for all three categories. Odell Beckham Jr. is a huge draw on the social platform, with a staggering 16.5 million followers. That’s more than double Kelce’s 7.7 million in second.
Kelce has a 1.2 million advantage over Mahomes on Instagram, so despite not leading on YouGov or X, more people are interested in his photos and videos! Barkley witnessed the largest show of support over the last year. His Instagram count surged by nearly a million from 2.5 to 3.4.
Mahomes and Kelce are near the top of all the metrics, which explains their public status and strong performance overall on the football field.
While their salaries and follower count is sky-high, NFL salaries after tax take a significant dent out of their take-home pay, but we’re sure they don’t have financial issues! Especially if you compare Mahomes’ salary to NFL personnel.
How We Picked the Most Popular NFL Players: Methodology
We combined the following three factors when working on our football player popularity rankings:
- YouGov Football Popularity Rankings: YouGov.com conducts various polls among real people, asking them about different celebrities: whether they know them, their opinion on them, and so on. We took their popularity ratings as one of the data points for rankings.
- X (formerly known as Twitter) Followers: the number of followers on X is a good sign of popularity, so that was another data point we used.
- Instagram Followers: we also use Instagram followers, another huge social media platform that can serve as a strong indicator of fame.
Our goal was to combine the polls with social media popularity for the best results, which is why we used these three data points.
Since we wanted a balanced outcome, we gave the following weighting to each data point:
| Data Point | Weighting |
|---|---|
| YouGov | 50% |
| 25% | |
| 25% |
Since YouGov is our only source when people were proactively asked questions, we gave it the same importance as Twitter and IG followers combined.
Of course, the data from each source comes in a different format, so we included a normalization process to make sure we can compare the data points properly. We added a min-max normalization for each category, using the following formula:
Normalized value = (Value – Min Value)/(Max Value – Min Value)
As a result, we got a result between 0 and 1 for each platform. We applied the weighting described above, and this is how we got the results of the top 10 most popular players in the NFL.
Now that you know how we measured the final rankings, let’s look at each platform separately.
Important: YouGov’s polling data for this post was collected in Q2 of 2026, while the X and IG followers were collected by our team in early August 2026, just before the start of the 2025-26 NFL season.
Who Are Your Favorite NFL Players?
Who are the NFL players you like the most?
Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments below or on the Sport Geek’s Instagram, X account, or Tik Tok!
