Twenty-three of the hundred are dead. That is the record.
Why the standard list ranks the living and the dead together, who the twenty-three are, and what the Alive list is for.
The 100 Most Famous People in the World is one list, and it makes one claim: these are the hundred most famous names in the world as the rankings assessed them at the date of the issue. It does not ask whether a name belongs to someone who can read the list. In September 2026, twenty-three of the hundred belong to people who cannot.
They are, in rank order: Jesus Christ (1), Michael Jackson (3), Muhammad (14), Adolf Hitler (17), William Shakespeare (22), Albert Einstein (27), Tupac Shakur (44), Elizabeth II (45), Diana, Princess of Wales (48), Mahatma Gandhi (49), Napoleon (50), Marilyn Monroe (56), Isaac Newton (59), Elvis Presley (63), Abraham Lincoln (66), John F. Kennedy (70), Steve Jobs (72), Vincent van Gogh (76), Osama bin Laden (78), Bruce Lee (80), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (84), Pablo Picasso (85) and Ludwig van Beethoven (98).
Why one list
A separate category for the departed would have been the tidier design, and the journal considered it. It was rejected because it would have made the standard list untrue. If the question is who the world is paying attention to, then Michael Jackson at No. 3 is the answer, and moving him to a side table because he died in 2009 would be an editorial decision dressed up as a measurement. The journal prints lists; it does not curate them.
The same rule holds everywhere. Twenty-nine of the fifty-six country lists with a named No. 1 are topped by someone who is no longer living, twenty-five of them by Jesus Christ. The country pages print that as it is.
What the Alive list is for
The Most Famous People in the World Alive exists because the second question readers ask is a fair one, and because a list of living people is the one that most press citations, most conversations and most arguments are actually about. It is not a lesser list. It is the same ranking, read with one filter, published under its own title with the month in it, and re-issued every month alongside the standard list. Every country, origin, region and sector list in the journal has the same two readings, one click apart.
How "alive" is decided
The journal uses the engine's own definition, so that the Alive list here never disagrees with the live filter on ifann.net. A person counts as living when the engine's record for them says so: a profile exists, it does not mark the person as deceased, and it carries no date of death. In September, every one of the hundred had a status on file: seventy-seven living, twenty-three dead.
More from the journal
The month in fame, September 2026
The second issue opens with the same name at the top and a wider gap behind him: Jesus Christ at 55.7, Ronaldo the most famous living person again, and a hundred on which seventy-seven are alive.
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · October 2, 2026
The month in fame, August 2026
The first issue of the record opens with a name that has held the world's attention for two thousand years, a footballer who holds it now, and a list on which the living and the dead are measured on one scale.
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · September 5, 2026
The most famous living person in the world is still a footballer from Madeira
Cristiano Ronaldo holds the Alive list at No. 1 in September 2026, more than five points clear of Donald Trump, and leads Portugal, Africa, Europe and every footballer on earth.
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · October 2, 2026
Around the world, September 2026
Sixty-one country lists, fifty-six named No. 1s, twenty-five of them the same man. A tour of the second issue's map.
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · October 2, 2026