Africa's Biggest

The artists topping African music by the numbers — year-by-year streaming leaderboards, with Burna Boy in context

Burna Boy was the most-streamed African artist on Spotify globally in both 2024 and 2025 — and his ~1.99 billion streams in 2025 set a record for the biggest streaming year ever by an African artist. The leaderboards below track who tops African music each year — rankings only, since per-artist stream totals vary by source.

Most-streamed African artist

Total Spotify streams · global · per year
2026*
  1. 1Tems

Year in progress — Tems leading so far; final order not yet set.

2025
  1. 1Burna Boy
  2. 2Wizkid
  3. 3Tyla
  4. 4Tems
  5. 5Rema

Burna Boy's ~1.99 billion streams set a record for the biggest streaming year ever by an African artist on Spotify.

2024
  1. 1Burna Boy
  2. 2Tyla
  3. 3Ayra Starr
  4. 4Rema
  5. 5Tems

Ranked by total Spotify streams each year, sourced from streaming trackers. Covers 2024 & 2025; earlier years are added as they're confirmed.

Highest monthly-listeners peak

Spotify · African artists · all-time peak
  1. 1Tyla46.58M
  2. 2Tems45.5M
  3. 3Burna Boy42.63M
  4. 4Rema40.01M
  5. 5Ayra Starr32.19M

Burna Boy holds the highest monthly-listeners peak ever for a male African artist on Spotify — and it's still climbing.

Peak Spotify monthly listeners, from Spotify artist pages and monitoring trackers, as of June 2026. Burna Boy's figure is his current peak and still rising, so it updates as Spotify's numbers change.

More leaderboards are on the way — most-streamed African song each year, most Spotify monthly listeners, biggest streaming debuts and more.

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