Michael Jackson, 17 years after his death, has emerged as the best-selling album artist in the United Kingdom this year, according to Official Charts Company data. His 2005 compilation, The Essential Michael Jackson, has passed 508,000 chart units in the first nine months of 2026, putting it at the top of the year-to-date list. Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving is second, followed by Harry Styles’ Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years: Don’t Stop and Olivia Rodrigo’s You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, which has topped 305,000 units after climbing eight places in the latest update. The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, Noah Kahan, Alex Warren and Oasis complete the top ten, while Jackson also holds Thriller at No. 16 and Bad at No. 20, giving him three albums in the top 20.
The resurgence has been driven by Michael, the biopic starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson and directed by Antoine Fuqua, which opened in April and has reportedly become the first music biopic to pass $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Sony Music said in August that streams of Jackson’s catalogue had risen to roughly four times their pre-release levels. The Essential has also returned to No. 1 on the weekly UK albums chart, spending two weeks at the top this year after a seven-week run in 2009, the year Jackson died. Even so, the contest has been tight: Music Week reported at the mid-year point that Dean led with 403,604 units, ahead of Jackson on 370,940 and Styles on 352,482, and The Essential was only seventh in April. By the chart week ending September 17, it had 498,360 units, 86.4% of them from streaming, just 11,448 ahead of The Art of Loving on 486,912.
Dean’s album has been built on a different footing, with 402,288 sales-equivalent streams, 78,530 physical copies and 6,094 downloads, and vinyl sales approaching 100,000. It marked its first anniversary on September 25 with a silver vinyl edition and a CD and Blu-ray set, and Rough Trade managing director Lawrence Montgomery said the retailer expected the reissues to “bring renewed interest to an album that is already selling well.” With a Mercury Prize nomination and tour dates in Australia and New Zealand this month, Dean could yet keep the pressure on. With the final quarter still to play, Jackson’s lead is real but not secure, and a major new release or a late surge in Dean’s physical sales could reshuffle the order before the Official Charts Company publishes its end-of-year rankings. For now, the King of Pop, who died on June 25, 2009, aged 50, sits atop the UK album list for 2026.
