The Most Famous People from Singapore
Top 21 of 21 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.
Tharman, Wong and Lee: Singapore's fame abroad belongs to its government
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · 1 min read
Three heads of state and government top the August 2026 origin list for Singapore, a small table of 21 names in which no score reaches double figures.
Singapore's origin list for August 2026 is led by its president. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, head of state since 2023, holds a score of 8.9, ahead of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong at 7.9 and his predecessor Lee Hsien Loong, who governed from 2004 to 2024, at 7.8. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong is seventh, opposition leader Pritam Singh eighth, and ministers K. Shanmugam and Ong Ye Kung eleventh and fifteenth. Seven of the top fifteen hold or held political office.
The scores are modest by the standards of larger countries, and the list is short: 21 people measured, all of them living. No historical figure appears, so the founding generation is absent and the table reads as a snapshot of the present administration and the people around it.
Business supplies the next tier. Peter Lim, the investor who built a fortune in stocks and owns Valencia, is fifth at 4.2, and Forrest Li, founder and chief executive of Sea Limited, is sixth at 3.9. Sport is represented by Shanti Pereira, the sprinter who holds national records, at tenth, and by footballers Hariss Harun and Irfan Fandi, the national-team captain, at thirteenth and fourteenth.
The origin tag also gathers people whose public identity lies elsewhere. Tila Tequila, fourth at 6.4, is an American model and reality-television personality born in Singapore. Jun Togawa, ninth, is a Japanese avant-garde singer, and Eric Moo, twelfth, a Malaysian-Chinese singer-songwriter with four decades of work across Asia.
| Rank | Name | Score | Live |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Tharman Shanmugaratnam politicianAlive | 8.9 | iFANN → |
| 2 |  Lawrence Wong politicianAlive | 7.9 | iFANN → |
| 3 |  Lee Hsien Loong politicianAlive | 7.8 | iFANN → |
| 4 |  Tila Tequila internet personalityAlive | 6.4 | iFANN → |
| 5 |  Peter Lim celebrityAlive | 4.2 | iFANN → |
| 6 |  Forrest Li celebrityAlive | 3.9 | iFANN → |
| 7 |  Gan Kim Yong politicianAlive | 3.2 | iFANN → |
| 8 |  Pritam Singh politicianAlive | 2.7 | iFANN → |
| 9 |  Jun Togawa celebrityAlive | 2.4 | iFANN → |
| 10 |  Shanti Pereira celebrityAlive | 2.1 | iFANN → |
| 11 |  K. Shanmugam politicianAlive | 2.1 | iFANN → |
| 12 |  Eric Moo celebrityAlive | 2.0 | iFANN → |
| 13 |  Hariss Harun celebrityAlive | 1.9 | iFANN → |
| 14 |  Irfan Fandi celebrityAlive | 1.8 | iFANN → |
| 15 |  Ong Ye Kung politicianAlive | 1.7 | iFANN → |
| 16 |  Song Ui-young celebrityAlive | 1.6 | iFANN → |
| 17 |  Desmond Lee politicianAlive | 1.6 | iFANN → |
| 18 |  Melissa Chen celebrityAlive | 1.4 | iFANN → |
| 19 |  Tan Chuan-Jin politicianAlive | 1.1 | iFANN → |
| 20 |  Mimi Chu celebrityAlive | 0.8 | iFANN → |
| 21 |  Chiao Chiao celebrityAlive | 0.4 | iFANN → |
About this list
This list ranks people from Singapore by their overall worldwide fame rather than local attention, as assessed for August 2026: the top 21 of 21 names, frozen as the permanent record of that edition. This is the standard reading: everyone, living or dead, on one scale. 21 of the 21 listed are living; the Alive reading restricts the same ranking to living people.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam is No. 1 on this list for August 2026. Behind Tharman Shanmugaratnam come Lawrence Wong and Lee Hsien Loong.
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 Singapore
Singapore 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 Singapore 2026, top celebrities in Singapore August 2026, Singapore fame ranking, most famous person in Singapore.
"Tharman Shanmugaratnam, No. 1 on The Most Famous People from Singapore", iFAMOUS No. 1 (August 2026), ifamous.org