Nielsen is celebrating the top streaming shows and movies of 2025 with its second annual ARTEY Awards. Named after our founder, Arthur C. Nielsen, the ARTEY Awards (Audience Rated Television Entertainment of the Year) are a testament to the stories and fan favorites that audiences couldn’t stop watching. This recognition—powered by Nielsen’s media intelligence—is reserved for the streaming titles that achieved the highest levels of viewership across the year, commemorating the content that truly defines the cultural conversation.
This past year, audiences spent a whopping 16.7 trillion minutes streaming—that’s about 11.6 billion days, or 31.7 million years’ worth. This is a 19% increase compared to 2024, when audiences spent 14 trillion minutes streaming, equivalent to 9.7 billion days or 26.6 million years.
Categories
Top Overall Streaming of 2025
Top New Streaming Original Series of 2025
Most-Binged Streaming Title
Streaming Icon of the Year
Categories
Top New Streaming Original of 2025
Top Overall Streaming of 2025
Most-Binged Streaming Title
Streaming Icon of the Year
2025 Top Overall Streaming Programs
Top Overall Streaming Title & Top Acquired Series
Bluey
45.2B
mins on Disney +
Animated Australian import Bluey is the returning champion this year, ranking as the overall most-watched streaming title of the year and most-watched acquired title. Bluey’s notably short episodes, which average just eight minutes in length, further underscore just how much the show resonates with kids (who make up more than half the audience) and families.
Runner up
Grey’s Anatomy
40.9B
mins on Netflix and Hulu
Grey’s Anatomy also repeated as the runner-up for most-streamed overall, but closed the gap a bit this time around. Beyond being an evergreen favorite, new episodes help keep Grey’s in our Streaming Top 10 week after week, and while it did not take the overall crown, it was the top streaming title among women 18-49.
Top Streaming Original
Stranger Things
40.0B
mins on Netflix
Netflix took advantage of some of the heaviest viewing days of the year, releasing Stranger Things’ final season in three phases aligned with the holiday season. This alignment resulted in 25.1 billion minutes of watch time over a five week period—amounting to 65% of its annual total! Stranger Things finished the year as the top show among teens, adults 18-34, and adults 35-49. And to keep in mind, Nielsen’s 2025 calendar ended on December 28, so the final total doesn’t even include viewing for the series finale.
Runner up
Squid Game
22.2B
mins on Netflix
The past year also marked the end for another international hit on Netflix: Squid Game. The second season was released at the tail end of 2024, with the third and final installment following at the end of June. It appeared in our weekly Top 10 rankings a total of 11 times across the year, including two weeks with over 3 billion viewing minutes.
Top Kids Movie
KPop Demon Hunters
20.5B
mins on Netflix
This year, we split the movie category between kids and general audiences, given how much children rewatch their favorite titles and its impact on the results. While KPop Demon Hunters falls into the kids category due to its primary audience makeup (48% kids 2-11), that didn’t stop it from becoming a cultural phenomenon. Following its premiere on Netflix in June, it charted in the Streaming Top 10 in 25 consecutive weeks. Its influence extended beyond the TV set as well, including a platinum soundtrack and a number one single in “Golden.”
Runner up
Moana 2
9.4B
mins on Disney +
The sequel to the most-streamed movie of both 2023 and 2024—Moana—Moana 2 landed in the runner-up slot for top kids’ movie of 2025. Both Moana 2 and the original Moana were among the year’s top 10 movies, together accounting for over 15 billion minutes of viewing in 2025.
Top Streaming Movie – General Audiences
Happy Gilmore 2
7.1B
mins on Netflix
The long-anticipated sequel to 1996’s Happy Gilmore debuted on Netflix at the end of July 2025, and immediately set a new weekly viewing record for a streaming movie. It was undoubtedly Adam Sandler’s most successful collaboration with Netflix to date from a viewership perspective. And as detailed in Nielsen’s recent Tops of Sports report, the movie’s release may have also provided a lift to PGA Tour viewing as well.
Runner up
Wicked
6.8B
mins on Peacock / Prime Video
Wicked first landed in our Streaming Top 10 when it was made available on Peacock in the spring. It later returned toward the end of the year—this time on Prime Video—as sequel Wicked: For Good hit theaters. It was a close second to Happy Gilmore 2 in the overall running, and was one of three movies to clear 2 billion viewing minutes among women 18-49.
Top New Streaming Original Series of 2025
Top New Original Drama Series
The Pitt
11.4B
mins on HBO Max
The Pitt may be the dark horse of this year’s ARTEY Awards. The HBO Max original hovered just outside the Top 10 before finally breaking in five times consecutively toward the end of its first season’s 15-episode run. The Pitt is also one of just a handful of shows exclusive to HBO Max that doesn’t also air on HBO’s linear network. With over 11 billion viewing minutes and an Emmy win in 2025, it’s clear that critics and viewers alike have embraced the gritty medical drama.
Runner up
The Residence
9.5B
mins on Netflix
Following its mid-March premiere on Netflix, The Residence charted in the Streaming Top 10 for six consecutive weeks and ultimately totaled over 9 billion viewing minutes on the year. The eccentric detective trope seems to be having a moment in the TV world as well:you have Rian Johnson’s Knives Out film series on Netflix, Poker Face on Peacock (also from Johnson), and High Potential and Will Trent on ABC. It’s no surprise that the lead character in The Residence, Cordelia Cupp, played by Uzo Aduba, also falls into that category.
Top New Original Comedy
Running Point
5.1B
mins on Netflix
Netflix’s sports comedy Running Point came out of the gate strong in February 2025, enjoying two consecutive weeks at over a billion viewing minutes, which helped propel it to the top comedy spot. Original streaming comedies are less common than dramas, and episodes are generally shorter in length, which make these shows a bit slower to accrue viewing minutes.
Runner up
The Four Seasons
5.0B
mins on Netflix
Ensemble comedy The Four Seasons, featuring multiple Saturday Night Live alumni, followed a very similar trajectory to Running Point and ended the year in a very similar place, with 5 billion viewing minutes on Netflix.
Top New Original Unscripted
Sean Combs: The Reckoning
4.8B
mins on Netflix
True crime is a beloved genre across multiple mediums, and with Sean Combs’ trial in the headlines for much of the year, it makes sense that the documentary series Sean Combs: The Reckoning coincided with public interest. Despite being released late in the year, it quickly racked up nearly 5 billion minutes of watch-time and rose to the top of this category.
Runner up
Million Dollar Secret
2.4B
mins on Netflix
Netflix is more well-known in the reality genre for its success with shows like Love is Blind. The streamer stepped further into the mystery game show corner of reality TV this year with Million Dollar Secret, released in March. This reality format has garnered more recent success in the streaming world, with shows like The Traitors on Peacock.
Most-Binged Title
For this category, we examined streaming titles with extensive libraries (50+ episodes) and limited the calculations to viewers who had spent at least one episode’s worth of time with the show (20 min. or longer). While half-hour programs tend to be more binge-able, the level of dedication from audiences in viewing to programs across the board was astonishing.
Gunsmoke
241
episodes per viewer on
Paramount +, Pluto and Peacock
Last year, Gunsmoke competed for our Legacy Award, coming in just behind Little House on the Prairie. This year, it solidified itself as a streaming staple, more than doubling its total minutes from 10.2 billion in 2024 to 22.5 billion in 2025. This year it’s been crowned the most-binged streaming title of the year, averaging a whopping 241 episodes per viewer out of the 404 total episodes available to stream. A big contributor to its growth story is accessibility, as its availability on ad-supported platforms like Pluto enabled fans of the show to stream for free. Unsurprisingly for a show that premiered in 1955, Gunsmoke’s audience tends to skew older. It is also a favorite among Black viewers, who contributed 29% of watch-time across the year.
Runner up
American Dad!
143
episodes per viewer on Hulu
Adult animation is another very popular genre in streaming, and American Dad! finds itself in the same position it was last year: runner-up in the Most-Binged category. While it didn’t reach the same minute total as fellow Fuzzy Door production Family Guy, it seems viewers who watched at least one episode of American Dad! also tended to watch a lot more. That being said, both adult animation series were among the top five most-streamed shows by adults 18-34 in 2025.
Streaming Icon of the Year
Seth MacFarlane is Nielsen’s inaugural Streaming Icon of the Year. This is the first time Nielsen has bestowed this specific honor, designed to recognize a creator, actor, producer or writer whose vast body of work drives significant, sustained viewership across platforms.
Seth MacFarlane
The ARTEY for Streaming Icon of the Year was presented to Seth MacFarlane. This specific honor recognizes a creator, actor, producer or writer whose vast body of work drives significant, sustained viewership across platforms. As a prolific force in entertainment, MacFarlane was selected as the inaugural recipient for his time-tested ability to engage audiences. In 2025 alone, MacFarlane’s catalog of TV series and films generated over 60 billion viewing minutes across streaming platforms, a figure equivalent to about 116,000 years of time spent streaming.
Family Guy
The series ranked as the second most-watched adult animation streaming title and the No. 7 streaming program overall in 2025. In a display of incredible consistency, Family Guy charted on Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 for an astonishing 37 weeks in 2025. Family Guy remains a pop-culture staple, earning MacFarlane multiple Emmy Awards—including four for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance, tying for the most wins in that category’s history. All episodes of Family Guy stream on Hulu. Family Guy was the top streaming show among adults 18-34 in 2025.
American Dad!
The series secured the No. 3 most-watched adult animation streaming title in 2025, further solidifying MacFarlane’s dominance in the genre. He is the co-creator, executive producer, and primary voice actor for the long-running animated favorite. The new season will air its anticipated 400th episode in 2026 and all episodes stream on Hulu. American Dad! ranked fifth among adults 18-34 in 2025.
Acclaimed Films & TV Series
MacFarlane’s acclaimed films generated nearly 2 billion viewing minutes on streaming alone, including recent Critics Choice Award Winner The Naked Gun, Ted, Ted 2, A Million Ways to Die in the West and Books of Blood. MacFarlane’s additional, beloved TV series racked up nearly 3 billion minutes, including The Orville, Ted (series), The Cleveland Show,The End is Nye, Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey and Cosmos: Possible Worlds.
2025 Top 10 Streaming Programs and Movies
2025 Top Overall Streaming Programs
2025 Top Original Streaming Programs
2025 Top Streaming Acquired Programs
2025 Top Streaming Kids Movies
2025 Top Streaming Movies — General Audiences
Source: Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings (Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Starz, Pluto TV). Nielsen National TV Panel (USA). Viewing on television. NOTE: Streaming platforms featured in Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 are limited to distributors with program-level data in Nielsen reporting systems. However, viewing totals are inclusive of streaming viewership to all platforms beyond the listed distributors. Time Period: 12/30/24 – 12/28/25. Kids Movies = Features with a kids 2-11 audience composition of 30% or greater. General Audience Movies = Features with a kids 2-11 audience under 30%.
