The Most Famous People from Ireland
Top 64 of 64 ranked · August 2026 · See today's live standing →
First issue under methodology v5.62. Movement begins with the next issue frozen under the same version.
McGregor clear of Brosnan as Ireland's fame runs on fists and film
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · 1 min read
The UFC fighter leads Ireland's origin list for August 2026, ahead of a former Bond and a run of actors and singers, with only two dead among 64 names.
Conor McGregor, the mixed martial artist who headlined the five highest-selling UFC events in history, is the most famous person from Ireland in August 2026 at 20.4. Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond four times between 1995 and 2002, is second at 17. The gap is more than three points, and nobody else on the list comes within a point of Brosnan either.
The engine measures 64 people from Ireland, 62 of them living, and neither dead name reaches the top fifteen. That is unusual for a country with Joyce, Yeats and Wilde in its past, and it reflects where the engine's evidence currently lies rather than a ruling on Irish letters. What it can see is screen, stage and sport.
Actors are the largest group. Colin Farrell, with three Golden Globes, is fifth. Cillian Murphy is seventh, Paul Mescal eighth, Barry Keoghan tenth, Jonathan Rhys Meyers twelfth and Brendan Gleeson fifteenth. Six of the top fifteen act for a living, and four of them belong to the generation that broke through in the last decade.
Music runs a close second. Niall Horan and Enya share 15.8 in third and fourth, an odd pair from different centuries of Irish pop. Bono is ninth, Hozier eleventh, Ronan Keating fourteenth. Roy Keane, the former Manchester United captain turned pundit, is sixth and the only footballer near the top. Jimmy Carr, the British comedian of Irish descent, is thirteenth by origin. The ranking measures worldwide fame, not merit, and Ireland's attention is loud in the octagon and steady on screen.
| Rank | Name | Score | Live |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Conor McGregor celebrityAlive | 20.4 | iFANN → |
| 2 |  Pierce Brosnan celebrityAlive | 17.0 | iFANN → |
| 3 |  Niall Horan celebrityAlive | 15.8 | iFANN → |
| 4 |  Enya celebrityAlive | 15.8 | iFANN → |
| 5 |  Colin Farrell celebrityAlive | 15.4 | iFANN → |
| 6 |  Roy Keane celebrityAlive | 14.3 | iFANN → |
| 7 |  Cillian Murphy celebrityAlive | 13.5 | iFANN → |
| 8 |  Paul Mescal celebrityAlive | 13.0 | iFANN → |
| 9 |  Bono public figureAlive | 11.5 | iFANN → |
| 10 |  Barry Keoghan celebrityAlive | 11.2 | iFANN → |
| 11 |  Hozier celebrityAlive | 11.1 | iFANN → |
| 12 |  Jonathan Rhys Meyers celebrityAlive | 10.7 | iFANN → |
| 13 |  Jimmy Carr celebrityAlive | 10.7 | iFANN → |
| 14 |  Ronan Keating celebrityAlive | 10.7 | iFANN → |
| 15 |  Brendan Gleeson celebrityAlive | 10.3 | iFANN → |
| 16 |  Jacksepticeye internet personalityAlive | 10.2 | iFANN → |
| 17 |  Graham Norton celebrityAlive | 9.9 | iFANN → |
| 18 |  Bob Geldof celebrityAlive | 9.7 | iFANN → |
| 19 |  Andrew Scott celebrityAlive | 9.4 | iFANN → |
| 20 |  Eve Hewson celebrityAlive | 9.2 | iFANN → |
| 21 |  Domhnall Gleeson celebrityAlive | 9.0 | iFANN → |
| 22 |  Becky Lynch celebrityAlive | 8.7 | iFANN → |
| 23 |  Ian Garry celebrityAlive | 8.7 | iFANN → |
| 24 |  Caitríona Balfe celebrityAlive | 8.4 | iFANN → |
| 25 |  Aidan Gillen celebrityAlive | 8.4 | iFANN → |
| 26 |  Martin McDonagh celebrityAlive | 8.3 | iFANN → |
| 27 |  Nicola Coughlan celebrityAlive | 8.3 | iFANN → |
| 28 |  Robbie Keane celebrityAlive | 8.2 | iFANN → |
| 29 |  Finn Bálor celebrityAlive | 8.2 | iFANN → |
| 30 |  Sheamus celebrityAlive | 8.2 | iFANN → |
| 31 |  Fiona Shaw celebrityAlive | 8.1 | iFANN → |
| 32 |  Kerry Condon celebrityAlive | 7.7 | iFANN → |
| 33 |  Evanna Lynch celebrityAlive | 7.6 | iFANN → |
| 34 |  Gabriel Byrne celebrityAlive | 7.4 | iFANN → |
| 35 |  Glen Hansard celebrity | 6.5 | iFANN → |
| 36 |  Aidan Turner celebrityAlive | 6.3 | iFANN → |
| 37 |  Maria Doyle Kennedy celebrityAlive | 6.2 | iFANN → |
| 38 |  Colm Meaney celebrityAlive | 6.2 | iFANN → |
| 39 |  Larry Mullen Jr. celebrityAlive | 6.2 | iFANN → |
| 40 |  Chris O'Dowd celebrityAlive | 6.2 | iFANN → |
| 41 |  Robert Sheehan celebrityAlive | 6.0 | iFANN → |
| 42 |  Sarah Bolger celebrityAlive | 6.0 | iFANN → |
| 43 |  Denis Irwin celebrityAlive | 5.8 | iFANN → |
| 44 |  Stuart Townsend celebrityAlive | 5.7 | iFANN → |
| 45 |  Anne Bonny celebrity | 5.6 | iFANN → |
| 46 |  Maura Higgins celebrityAlive | 5.0 | iFANN → |
| 47 |  Una Healy celebrityAlive | 4.3 | iFANN → |
| 48 |  CMAT celebrityAlive | 4.3 | iFANN → |
| 49 |  Sinéad Cusack celebrityAlive | 4.2 | iFANN → |
| 50 |  Eoin Macken celebrityAlive | 3.8 | iFANN → |
| 51 |  Aoife Valkyrie celebrityAlive | 3.5 | iFANN → |
| 52 |  Rea Garvey celebrityAlive | 3.5 | iFANN → |
| 53 |  Damien Dempsey celebrityAlive | 3.4 | iFANN → |
| 54 |  Damien Molony celebrityAlive | 2.9 | iFANN → |
| 55 |  Dominique McElligott celebrityAlive | 2.9 | iFANN → |
| 56 |  Jamie-Lee O'Donnell celebrityAlive | 2.6 | iFANN → |
| 57 |  Moe Dunford celebrityAlive | 2.4 | iFANN → |
| 58 |  Laura Whitmore celebrityAlive | 2.2 | iFANN → |
| 59 |  Tommy Tiernan celebrityAlive | 1.9 | iFANN → |
| 60 |  Paul McGinley celebrityAlive | 1.4 | iFANN → |
| 61 |  Jordan Devlin celebrityAlive | 1.3 | iFANN → |
| 62 |  Móglaí Bap celebrityAlive | 1.3 | iFANN → |
| 63 |  Eamon Dunphy celebrityAlive | 1.2 | iFANN → |
| 64 |  Paul Ronan celebrityAlive | 1.2 | iFANN → |
About this list
This list ranks people from Ireland by their overall worldwide fame rather than local attention, as assessed for August 2026: the top 64 of 64 names, frozen as the permanent record of that edition. This is the standard reading: everyone, living or dead, on one scale. 62 of the 64 listed are living; the Alive reading restricts the same ranking to living people.
Conor McGregor is No. 1 on this list for August 2026. Behind Conor McGregor come Pierce Brosnan and Niall Horan.
What famous means here
Fame, in iFAMOUS, is how widely the world knows a name: how recognisable a person's name, face or work is, and how well people know who they are. It is assessed from extensive historical and current public data, some of it reaching back more than twenty years, and it is not merit, talent, importance or popularity on iFANN. The rankings model real-world global fame, not internet fame; the data is the instrument, not the subject. Activity on iFANN itself is excluded.
The month in the title is the date of this edition, not the period measured. The list is a snapshot of overall fame as it stood when the issue was frozen: a name does not lose its place because one month was quiet, and a trending moment alone does not put a name here. Trending attention is published separately on ifann.net.
How the list was ranked
The iFANN Global Fame Rankings combine worldwide Wikipedia readership across languages, worldwide news coverage and search interest anchored against stable reference names, with search history reaching back to 2004. A twelve-month baseline sits behind the current reading and short-lived surges are capped, so the list reflects durable recognition rather than one week of headlines. Rankings are computed daily on ifann.net and frozen on the second day of the following month as that month's issue; a published issue never changes.
About Ireland
Ireland is one of the countries and regions the journal ranks every month. Country lists use the same rankings and the same scale as The 100, so a name can be compared with its neighbours and against the world.
Powered by iFANN
iFAMOUS is published by iFANN and powered by the iFANN Global Fame Rankings v5.62. Today's live standing for this list is on ifann.net; the journal freezes it once a month so it can be cited permanently.
Related searches: most famous people in Ireland 2026, top celebrities in Ireland August 2026, Ireland fame ranking, most famous person in Ireland.
"Conor McGregor, No. 1 on The Most Famous People from Ireland", iFAMOUS No. 1 (August 2026), ifamous.org