🚨 RESULT: Kylie Minogue won the 2025 UK Christmas Number One with XMAS, confirmed on Friday 19 December 2025. Wham!’s Last Christmas finished second, ending the pop duo’s run of consecutive Christmas Number Ones at two. Read on for the full odds breakdown and how the race played out.
The 2025 UK Christmas Number One delivered one of the most satisfying upsets in recent festive chart history. Kylie Minogue’s XMAS knocked Wham!’s Last Christmas off the top spot and ended what had looked, for much of December, like a procession towards an unprecedented third consecutive crown for the 1984 classic. Minogue’s win was confirmed by Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1’s Official Chart show on Friday 19 December, with the full Top 100 published on OfficialCharts.com shortly afterwards.
OddsBoom looks back at the full betting market, the stories behind each contender, and how the race played out across one of the most closely watched weeks in the UK singles chart calendar.
2025 Christmas Number One Result
| Position | Artist / Song |
|---|---|
| 1st (Winner) | Kylie Minogue: XMAS |
| 2nd | Wham!: Last Christmas |
| 3rd | Mariah Carey: All I Want for Christmas Is You |
2025 Christmas Number One Odds (Pre-Race)
Odds compiled by OddsBoom, correct as of 5 December 2025.
| Artist / Song | Odds | Implied Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Wham!: Last Christmas | 10/11 | 52.4% |
| Kylie Minogue: XMAS | 9/2 | 18.2% |
| Ed Sheeran | 9/1 | 10.0% |
| Alison Limerick | 9/1 | 10.0% |
| Mariah Carey: All I Want for Christmas Is You | 10/1 | 9.1% |
| KPop Demon Hunters | 11/1 | 8.3% |
| Taylor Swift | 14/1 | 6.7% |
| Sabrina Carpenter | 14/1 | 6.7% |
| The Pogues | 14/1 | 6.7% |
| Gracie Abrams | 18/1 | 5.3% |
| Band Aid | 18/1 | 5.3% |
| LadBaby | 18/1 | 5.3% |
Kylie Minogue Wins: A Historic Achievement
Kylie Minogue’s victory with XMAS rewrote several pages of pop history at once. The win gave her an eighth UK Number One single overall and made her the first female artist to score Number One singles across four separate decades in the UK, having previously topped the charts in the 1980s with I Should Be So Lucky, the 1990s with Spinning Around, the 2000s with Slow, and now the 2020s with XMAS. No other female artist in UK chart history has managed that across four decades.
It was also her first ever Christmas Number One, one of the few boxes left unticked across a remarkable four-decade career. Speaking to the Official Charts Company after the announcement, Minogue said it was hard to put into words how special the achievement felt and described the Christmas Number One as the most wonderful gift. The win came via an Amazon Music exclusive, with XMAS featuring on the 10th anniversary reissue of her 2015 Kylie Christmas album alongside three other new tracks. The single benefited from prime placement on Alexa’s default holiday playlists throughout December and a range of physical formats including gold 7-inch vinyl, a zoetrope vinyl and signed CD editions, all designed to maximise chart eligibility across both streaming and sales.
The music video, which featured Minogue teaching a festive dance to children and adults with a special appearance from ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus, generated considerable attention online and helped sustain interest in the track through the crucial final week of chart eligibility. Bright, upbeat and built around glittering synths and classic Christmas bells, XMAS leaned into the joyful side of the season rather than nostalgia, and that modern production helped it stand out in a chart often dominated by familiar holiday staples.
Wham! Finished Second: The End of a Two-Year Run
For Wham!, finishing second was a remarkable result in its own right, even if it denied them the hat-trick the bookmakers had been tipping throughout November and early December. Last Christmas had topped the Christmas chart in both 2023 and 2024, becoming the first song ever to secure consecutive Christmas Number Ones, and its odds-on price of 10/11 in early December reflected just how dominant the track had become in the festive streaming market over recent years.
The song originally missed out on the Number One in 1984, held off the top spot by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, a piece of chart history that makes its eventual dominance four decades later one of the more unlikely stories in pop music. In the 2025 race, Last Christmas briefly threatened to reclaim the crown mid-month as Kylie’s lead narrowed, before Minogue pulled clear in the final tally. Wham! finished the year with 12 non-consecutive weeks at Number One across the song’s chart lifetime and the track returned to the top of the singles chart in the week after Christmas once Kylie’s XMAS fell away, which said everything about how embedded it has become in the national festive conscience regardless of the Christmas week result.
Why Last Christmas Became a Modern Chart Force
Understanding why Last Christmas became such a dominant festive force in recent years requires a brief look at how the UK Christmas chart changed with the arrival of streaming. Prior to the mid-2010s, the Christmas Number One was almost entirely determined by physical sales during a single chart-eligible week. The expansion of streaming into the chart calculation changed everything, allowing catalogue tracks with enormous cumulative listener bases to compete with new releases for the first time.
Songs like Last Christmas and All I Want for Christmas Is You, which had been played billions of times across their catalogue lifetimes, suddenly became genuine chart contenders rather than nostalgic footnotes. Last Christmas crossed 10 million UK streams during December 2023, the year it first hit Number One, and its annual return to the upper reaches of the streaming charts has become as reliable a marker of the festive season as the John Lewis advert. The song’s journey from heartbreak in 1984 to three decades of gradual cultural canonisation and then two consecutive Christmas Number Ones makes it one of the great pop comeback stories.
Mariah Carey: The Perennial Bridesmaid
Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You finished third in 2025, continuing a pattern that has seen the song challenge for the top spot every December for over a decade without ever quite taking the crown. The track was originally released in 1994 and was beaten to Number One that year by East 17’s Stay Another Day. It has consistently appeared in the Top 5 every Christmas since the streaming era began but has never converted that annual presence into a Number One, a quirk of the modern festive chart that is unlikely to change given how entrenched Last Christmas and newer competitors have become at the top of the market.
Ed Sheeran, Alison Limerick and the Rest of the Market
Ed Sheeran at 9/1 was priced on the back of his 2021 success, when he collaborated with Elton John and LadBaby on Merry Christmas to take the Christmas Number One. No new Sheeran festive single materialised in 2025, which removed him from contention as the race developed through December. Alison Limerick was also priced at 9/1 at the same stage, reflecting some early betting activity around a potential festive campaign that did not ultimately gain enough traction to challenge at the top of the market.
Taylor Swift at 14/1 and Sabrina Carpenter at 14/1 were the most high-profile of the longer-priced contenders, acknowledging the streaming power both artists had demonstrated throughout 2025, though neither released a dedicated festive single in time to mount a serious challenge. The Pogues at 14/1 was the annual outside bet that appears in this market on the strength of Fairytale of New York’s streaming numbers each December, while LadBaby at 18/1 reflected the possibility of a return from the act holding the record for the most Christmas Number Ones, five between 2018 and 2022.
How the Christmas Number One Race Works
The official Christmas Number One is determined by the UK Official Singles Chart for the week covering sales and streams from the Friday to the Thursday of the week before Christmas Day. The winner is announced live on BBC Radio 1’s Official Chart programme on the Friday before Christmas, with the full Top 100 published on OfficialCharts.com the same afternoon. Both physical sales and digital streams count towards the total, with 100 streams of a track equivalent to one sale for chart calculation purposes. That format means well-established catalogue tracks with high seasonal streaming volumes can compete directly with new releases, which is why songs like Last Christmas and All I Want for Christmas Is You return to the top of the chart each year rather than simply appearing as seasonal curiosities.
Christmas Number One Records: Where Kylie Fits In
Kylie’s 2025 win added her to a list of artists who have claimed the Christmas Number One. LadBaby holds the record with five consecutive wins between 2018 and 2022. The Beatles hold four, the Spice Girls three, and Queen and Wham! both sit on two. Kylie’s first win placed her alongside dozens of other solo artists and groups who have taken the crown once, but the four-decade record that came with it placed her in a category of her own. The only previous international female solo artists to win the Christmas Number One were Winifred Atwell in 1954 and Whitney Houston in 1992 with I Will Always Love You, which gives a sense of just how rare an achievement Kylie’s victory represented in the context of the UK chart’s long history.
For more entertainment and TV betting analysis, take a look at our Next Strictly Come Dancing Presenter Odds and the latest Next James Bond Odds 2026.
All odds correct at time of original publication, December 2025. Please gamble responsibly. For help with problem gambling visit GambleAware.org. 18+.
