Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Climbs to No. 2 on the Billboard 200
Michael Jackson's Thriller jumps from No. 13 to No. 2 on the Billboard 200, the main U.S. album chart, in the list dated Nov. 14, 2026. Billboard reported the move on Nov. 8, 2026.
It is the album's highest rank since April 1984, when it spent its 37th and final week at No. 1. It is also Jackson's highest Billboard 200 placing in more than a decade, since Xscape debuted and peaked at No. 2 in May 2014. Thriller has appeared on the chart every year since 2009, when Jackson died in June of that year.
The jump is driven by a big week of listening and buying. In the tracking week of Oct. 30 to Nov. 5, 2026, which included Halloween, the album earned 55,000 equivalent album units, up 89%. Equivalent album units are a way of adding up different kinds of activity, from streams to sales, into a single figure that can be compared with an album's sales.
Most of that total came from streaming. Streaming equivalent album units, which convert plays into album-sale equivalents, made up 32,000 of the 55,000, up 37%. Billboard said that works out to 34.34 million on-demand streams of the album's songs.
Actual purchases also rose sharply. The album sold 22,000 copies in the week, up 335%, its largest weekly sales total since the chart dated Dec. 31, 2022, when it sold 23,000. Vinyl made up 19,000 of those sales. That is the album's biggest vinyl week since Luminate, the company that compiles Billboard's sales data, began tracking sales electronically in 1991.
The vinyl surge followed a reissue. On Oct. 30, the album was released in three new vinyl versions, two colour editions and a liquid-filled version, along with a cassette tape.
The album also holds a long-running chart record. It has spent more weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 than any album by a solo artist. Only the West Side Story soundtrack, with 54 weeks at No. 1 in 1962 and 1963, has spent longer on top.
Billboard will publish the full Nov. 14, 2026 Billboard 200 chart on its website on Nov. 10. That list will show where Thriller and the rest of the week's albums finished.
