Guinness World Records: Mr Beast now most-subscribed YouTuber ever

Jimmy Donaldson (USA) has officially broken the record for the most subscribers for an individual male on YouTube with his channel Mr Beast, which has amassed an unbelievable 112,193,139 subs, as verified on 17 November 2022.

He has surpassed the previous record held by PewDiePie, aka Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (Sweden). The two were neck and neck in the subscriber race, but Mr Beast pulled past PewDiePie to reach the never-before-hit milestone (for an individual) of 112 million.

Donaldson also has four other channels, all of which have over 10 million subscribers. His MrBeast Gaming channel is the second-largest with 29.5 million subs.

Donaldson joined the platform in 2012 and since then has clocked up 18.5 billion views on his videos.

His most popular upload to date is a “Squid Game in real life” video, were he flew 456 people out to a private island for a series of increasingly difficult challenges. The pay off? A cash prize of $456,000 USD for the winner and 304 million views.

Mr Beast’s content on the platform ranges from ultra-swanky, such as staying in $1 million dollar a night accommodation or giving away a $2.5 million dollar private jet, to the more peculiar or mundane, such as reading the entire Bee Movie script or, quite literally, watching paint dry.

Before Mr Beast, PewDiePie had been the most subscribed to individual on YouTube for close to a decade.

It was also the most subscribed to channel of all time – but that changed in late 2018 when Indian music channel T-series began closing in.

This sparked an intense competition for the top spot in 2019. Calls to action were issued by impassioned fans and other creators who were desperate to see him retain pole position on the platform, which resulted in PewDiePie accumulating millions of subscribers in a groundswell of support.

One of PewDiePie’s key supporters in the race was, ironically, Mr Beast, who canvassed his fans (and Super Bowl LIII viewers) and drove huge numbers of subscribers to PewDiePie’s channel.