Seventy-Seven Per Cent of Trending Videos Are Seen in Only One Country

The 19 August 2026 snapshot covers 72 national charts and 1,985 distinct videos. Of those, 1,537 appear in exactly one country — 77 per cent. Fewer than five videos in a hundred reach ten charts or more, and only four exceed 30 countries. That figure alone corrects the most common assumption about YouTube: that trending is a global phenomenon with local variations. It is the reverse. Trending is overwhelmingly local, with a thin international layer on top. What varies enormously from country to country is the thickness of that layer, and the range is far wider than anyone would guess: Japan's chart is 94 per cent exclusive, Colombia's is 6 per cent.

01

Japan: 47 entries out of 50 appear nowhere else

Mrs. GREEN APPLE presents『CEREMONY』2026 [上白石萌音／メメント・モリ]

Mrs. GREEN APPLE

This concert film is number one in Japan and charts in no other country, like 47 of the 50 Japanese entries today. Japan is the most self-contained market of the 72, with 94 per cent exclusivity, and it combines that with a strongly domestic mix — 23 gaming entries and 18 music entries out of 50. A reader in Tokyo and a reader in Bogotá are effectively looking at two different platforms.

02

Cambodia: 90 per cent exclusive, and the slowest entries in the world

VANNDA - BLUE STORY (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

វណ្ណដា-VannDa Official

Cambodia posts 90 per cent exclusivity — 45 of 50 entries seen nowhere else — alongside the highest median entry age of the panel, 155 hours. This video, number one, has been online for eight days and appears in no other chart. Vietnam shows the same profile at 90 per cent. Exclusivity and slowness travel together in South-East Asia, but they are not the same thing, and elsewhere they come apart completely.

03

Colombia: 3 exclusive entries out of 50

Fuerza Regida — EXCESOS (Letra/Lyrics)

Richie Mexa

This lyric video is number one in Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico simultaneously. Colombia shows the lowest exclusivity of the panel at 6 per cent: 47 of its 50 entries also chart somewhere else, most of them in the rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America. Ecuador matches it at 6 per cent. These charts are not weak — they turn over 72 and 66 per cent daily — but almost nothing in them is theirs alone.

04

One video, twelve Spanish-speaking charts

CADA CLICK SOY MAS GORDO EN ROBLOX!🍔

ElAbrahaham

This Roblox video charts in 12 countries at once, all of them Spanish-speaking. A shared language creates a single de facto market that the country-by-country presentation hides: Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina and their neighbours import from each other constantly. Their individual charts look independent and are not.

05

Norway: 8 per cent exclusive, and open to everything

KATSEYE (캣츠아이) 'Hootie Frutti' Official MV

HYBE LABELS

Norway is the second least exclusive chart at 8 per cent, and this Korean-American release is number one there today, as it is in Denmark, Greece and Switzerland. Small European markets with strong English proficiency import almost their entire chart. That openness is what allowed an Arabic-language music video to spend 32 days in the Norwegian top 50 during the same period: an open chart is open in every direction, not only towards the United States.

The exclusivity figure turns out to be independent of chart speed. Japan is 94 per cent exclusive and turns over 79 per cent of its list daily; Cambodia is 90 per cent exclusive and turns over 18 per cent. Colombia is 6 per cent exclusive at 72 per cent turnover, Norway 8 per cent exclusive at 15 per cent. Across the 72 countries the correlation between the two measures is −0.08, which is to say none at all. They are therefore two separate axes worth reading together. Speed tells you how long a video can hope to stay; exclusivity tells you whether the chart is describing a domestic conversation or a regional one. A Japanese entry and a Colombian entry at the same rank on the same day are not comparable achievements: one has beaten 1,900 local competitors, the other has beaten a dozen and inherited the rest from its neighbours.

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