Longest Running Number One Song on Billboard: Choosin' Texas

"Choosin' Texas" by Ella Langley is the longest running number one song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. On the chart dated 7 November 2026 it spent its 26th week at No. 1, four weeks more than the previous record holder, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You", according to Billboard.

Langley's song reached that total in seven separate runs between February and November, and Carey's holiday song built its 22 weeks one holiday season at a time. Holiday songs come back every winter, which raises a question the record lists leave open: can the Christmas song take the record back, and when? We counted every Hot 100 No. 1 from January 2019 to November 2026, week by week, to find out.

Longest running number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100

Three more songs share fifth place with 16 weeks each: Morgan Wallen's "Last Night", "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber, and "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. The ranking is Billboard's, published with the chart dated 7 November 2026 and also kept on Wikipedia's list of Hot 100 milestones, and it covers every chart since August 1958.

Long reigns are a recent development on this chart. When Carey's song set the record in December 2025, Billboard noted that all seven songs then on its list had led since November 1991, when the chart adopted electronically monitored Luminate data, and the songs on the current list fit that pattern too. Before 1991, no single had led for more than ten weeks; Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" in 1977 and Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" in 1981 and 1982 both stopped there.

Counted in unbroken weeks, the record looks different, and Lil Nas X still has the edge over Langley. "Old Town Road" spent all 19 of its weeks in a single run, from the chart dated 13 April to the chart dated 17 August 2019. The longest unbroken stretch for "Choosin' Texas" is 14 weeks, from 4 July to 3 October 2026. More chart analysis is in our Charts & Data section.

How Choosin' Texas reached 26 weeks at No. 1

"Choosin' Texas" entered the Hot 100 on the chart dated 1 November 2025 as Langley's fifth entry, reached the top 10 in January and first led on the chart dated 14 February 2026, Billboard reported. Langley wrote it with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert and Joybeth Taylor. It is released by SAWGOD/Columbia, and Triple Tigers promoted it to country radio.

Its runs at No. 1, from our count of the weekly charts:

Other songs took the top spot between those runs, most recently Taylor Swift's "Patient Zero", which led for three weeks in October before "Choosin' Texas" returned. Of the 45 charts dated 3 January to 7 November 2026, Langley's song topped 58 percent. It passed the 19 weeks of "Old Town Road" and "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" on the chart dated 5 September, drew level with Carey on 19 September and went ahead on 26 September, the week Billboard said it had rewritten the record for the longest run ever achieved atop the Hot 100.

Its latest weekly numbers, from Luminate data published by Billboard, cover 23 to 29 October: 19.2 million official US streams, 57.8 million in radio airplay audience and 3,000 sold. The same week it returned to No. 1 on Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart, its 20th week there. Sales on that scale are close to the yardstick we used in our look at AI songs on the Billboard charts, where an AI-generated country song topped a sales chart in November 2025 on about 2,500 downloads. Speaking about the song's impact earlier in the year, Langley told Billboard News: "It feels surreal."

All I Want for Christmas Is You weeks at No. 1, season by season

Carey's song came out in November 1994 on her album Merry Christmas. It first reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 on the chart dated 21 December 2019, and Billboard's rules allow older holiday songs back onto the chart each season. Its weeks at No. 1 come in short winter bursts:

The four weeks of 2025-26 are the charts dated 13, 20 and 27 December 2025 and 3 January 2026. The 20th week, on the chart dated 20 December 2025, broke the record that "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" and "Old Town Road" had shared, and Carey then held it alone for roughly nine months, until "Choosin' Texas" caught up in September 2026.

Seven seasons have produced 22 weeks, an average of 3.1 a season, and no season has gone past four.

Can Mariah Carey take the record back?

To pass Langley, Carey's song needs one week more than the final total of "Choosin' Texas". If that total stays where it is, the Christmas song needs five more weeks, one more than its best season has ever delivered. A repeat of that best season would bring it level, so if the coming winter goes like the last seven, the best Carey can do is share the record. By our calculation, 2027-28 is the earliest season she could hold it alone.

The target moves if "Choosin' Texas" keeps winning weeks in November and December. Our projection, using Carey's best season and her seven-season average of 3.1 weeks:

The two songs also compete for the same weeks. Every week the Christmas song spends at No. 1 is a week "Choosin' Texas" cannot add to its total. Last December shows how crowded the top gets: on the chart dated 20 December 2025, holiday songs held eight of the top ten places, including the entire top five.

How Choosin' Texas compares with Mariah Carey on streams and radio

The two songs get to No. 1 in different ways. In the tracking week of 5 to 11 December 2025, Carey's song drew 39.5 million US streams and 22.6 million in airplay audience. In its latest week, "Choosin' Texas" drew 19.2 million streams and 57.8 million in airplay audience. The holiday song had about twice the streams; the country song has about two and a half times the radio audience.

These figures come from weeks almost a year apart, and the Hot 100 also counts sales, so they do not make a chart score. They do show where each song is strong, and a decline in streams for "Choosin' Texas": from 21.8 million in the week of 11 to 17 September to 19.2 million in late October, about 12 percent over six weeks, while its radio audience stayed close to 58 million.

On the chart dated 7 November 2026, the longest running number one song on the Hot 100 is "Choosin' Texas", with 26 weeks. At the pace of the last seven Christmases, the earliest "All I Want for Christmas Is You" could take the record back is the 2027-28 holiday season.

About the data

We built the week-by-week list of Hot 100 No. 1s from Wikipedia's lists of Billboard Hot 100 number ones for 2019 through 2026, read on 4 November 2026, in which every week cites Billboard's chart page. We checked the totals against Billboard's chart reports for the charts dated 20 December 2025, 26 September 2026 and 7 November 2026, read the same day: both songs' totals and Carey's season-by-season counts for 2019 to 2024 match. The run table, the 58 percent share, the dates on which "Choosin' Texas" passed 19 and 22 weeks, the "Old Town Road" streak, the seasonal average and the projection are our own counts and arithmetic. The projection assumes future holiday seasons look like the last seven; one unusual December could change it. The streaming, airplay and sales figures are Luminate data as published by Billboard. This article uses the chart dated 7 November 2026, the latest published when we wrote it. How Mymyin checks its numbers is set out on the About page.

Sources

• Billboard, "Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' No. 1 on Hot 100 for 26th Week", with the Hot 100 dated 7 November 2026.
• Billboard, "Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' No. 1 on Hot 100 for 23rd Week", with the Hot 100 dated 26 September 2026.
• Billboard, "Mariah Carey's 'Christmas': Record-Breaking 20th Week No. 1, Hot 100", with the Hot 100 dated 20 December 2025.
• Wikipedia, read 4 November 2026: "List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 2026", "List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 2019", the lists for 2020 to 2025, and "List of Billboard Hot 100 chart achievements and milestones".