MrBeast Becomes the First YouTuber to Hit 500 Million Subscribers

Jimmy Donaldson, globally known to millions as MrBeast, has officially become the first individual creator to cross the staggering milestone of 500 million subscribers on YouTube.

WE HIT HALF A BILLION SUBSCRIBERS ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/18MujjJPhB

— MrBeast (@MrBeast) June 12, 2026

To celebrate the historic occasion, Donaldson did what he does best. He turned it into a massive digital event. The creator set up a live subscriber counter on his channel, allowing over 600,000 concurrent viewers to watch the final moments tick down in real time.

As the counter hovered at exactly 499,999,999 subscribers, mischievous fans decided to troll the creator by unsubscribing all at once, temporarily dropping the number before resubscribing a few moments later to push him over the finish line. It was a playful echo of his 100 million subscriber milestone back in 2022, when viewers pulled the exact same stunt.

This achievement cements Donaldson as an unmatched force in modern media. He initially took the crown as the most-subscribed individual creator in November 2022 after overtaking PewDiePie. By June 2024, his main channel surpassed the Indian music label T-Series to become the most-subscribed channel overall on the entire platform.

When he initially hit the 20 million subscriber mark years ago, he launched the #TeamTrees campaign, successfully raising over $25 million to plant more than 25 million trees around the world. He followed that success with #TeamSeas, raising $30 million to pull millions of pounds of plastic and trash out of beaches, rivers, and oceans.

Donaldson’s journey to half a billion subscribers is fueled by a relentless drive to reinvent online entertainment. Videos like his real-life recreation of Squid Game, which is currently nearing one billion views, proved that independent creators could match the production values of major Hollywood television networks.

While traditional television networks continue to see declining audiences, the rise of the MrBeast empire proves that digital-first creators are the new gatekeepers of global entertainment.