The Most Popular TV Shows on Netflix in the Past 12 Months
A data-backed ranking of Netflix's biggest TV shows from July 2025 through July 2026 — built from Netflix's own official "What We Watched" Engagement Reports and weekly Top 10 charts, not guesswork. Wednesday, Stranger Things, Untamed, Squid Game, and more, with real view counts and embedded trailers throughout.
How this ranking was built
Netflix doesn't publish subscriber-level ratings the way linear TV does — instead, twice a year it releases What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report, which measures every title by "views" (total hours viewed divided by episode runtime). The most recent complete report covers July–December 2025, released in January 2026. A first-half-2026 report typically follows Netflix's Q2 earnings release, which lands after this post's publish date — so the ranking below combines that most recent official report with verified weekly Top 10 chart data for the first half of 2026 to keep the "past 12 months" window accurate.
The top 10 most-watched shows, ranked
Wednesday — Season 2
Season 2 of the Jenna Ortega-led Addams Family spinoff released in two parts — Part 1 on August 6, Part 2 on September 3, 2025 — and dominated Netflix's charts for months. It broke the record for the highest number of countries in which an English-language title has hit #1 in a single week (91 countries), and by the end of its 91-day tracking window it had racked up 928.5 million hours watched, making it the fourth most-watched English-language series in Netflix's history — trailing only its own Season 1, which remains Netflix's all-time #1 series ever.
Stranger Things — Season 5
Stranger Things closed out its run with an unusual three-part rollout: Volume 1 (four episodes) on November 26, 2025, Volume 2 (three episodes) on Christmas Day, and the finale on New Year's Eve. That staggered release meant the H2 2025 report only captured the finale's first few hours of availability — meaning this number will climb further once Netflix's next report accounts for the full premiere window. Even so, it landed at #2 for the half. All five seasons combined for 275 million views in the same period, as fans rewatched the entire series ahead of the finale.
Untamed — Season 1
Nobody saw this coming. Eric Bana stars as a special agent investigating a mysterious murder in Yosemite National Park in this detective thriller, originally billed as a limited series. It premiered July 17, 2025 and quietly built into one of the biggest hits of the year, pulling in 92.8 million views by the end of December — a number so strong that Netflix reversed its own "limited series" framing and ordered a second season.
Squid Game — Season 3
The Korean survival drama's final season premiered June 27, 2025 — right at the boundary between Netflix's two reporting halves — so its viewership is split across both official reports. It logged 72 million views in just its first four days (captured in the H1 2025 report), then added another 79 million in the H2 2025 report as it continued its run. Combined across all three seasons, Squid Game drew 231 million views in the first half of 2025 alone, making it one of the single biggest properties on the platform across the entire year.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story
The third installment of Ryan Murphy's Monster anthology, following the infamous killer who inspired Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, premiered October 3, 2025 and pulled in 56 million views in its first two months on the platform — continuing the franchise's pattern of turning true-crime anthology seasons into some of Netflix's most reliable hits.
Sean Combs: The Reckoning
This docuseries premiered December 2, 2025 — just weeks before the reporting period closed — and still managed 50.8 million views by year's end, capitalizing on the real-world attention around Sean Combs' high-profile trial. Given how late in the period it launched, expect this number to be significantly higher once fuller data is available.
Ms. Rachel
YouTube star Ms. Rachel's compilation series was integrated into Netflix in January 2025, and it's become one of the platform's most reliable draws for preschool-age viewers — 46.8 million views in the second half of 2025 alone, an especially notable number given the same content is also freely available on YouTube.
Wednesday — Season 1 (rewatch surge)
Season 1's return to the top 10 in late 2025 wasn't a new release — it was pure rewatch demand ahead of Season 2, nearly three years after its original 2022 debut. That 47 million views in a single half, on a three-year-old season, underscores just how enormous Wednesday Season 1 remains: it's still the single most-watched season of television in Netflix's history, at over 252 million total views.
Wayward
Mae Martin's miniseries about a troubled-teen reform academy held viewers captive for 39.8 million views in H2 2025 — a strong showing for a limited series without an existing franchise name attached to it.
My Life With the Walter Boys — Season 2
The teen romance drama's second season, released in August 2025, drew 39.4 million views — up from Season 1's 33.4 million two years earlier, despite Season 1 having had an extra month of release window to accumulate views. A genuine growth story for a young-adult title in a crowded field.
Video: Wednesday Season 2 official trailer
The official Netflix trailer for the most-watched show of the past 12 months:
How the top titles actually compare
All figures per Netflix's official "What We Watched" report for July–December 2025. Figures for titles that premiered late in the period (like Stranger Things 5 and Sean Combs: The Reckoning) are understated relative to their eventual totals, since the report cutoff came before their full viewing windows closed.
Video: Stranger Things Season 5 official trailer
The official trailer for Stranger Things' final season, Netflix's #2 show of the period:
The shows rising fast in 2026
Netflix's official engagement data for the first half of 2026 isn't published yet as of this post, but weekly Top 10 chart tracking already shows several titles positioned to land high once that report drops:
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