November is only a little over a week away, which means Mariah Carey is probably getting antsy for her annual emergence from her warm-weather cocoon to declare the start of the pop music holiday season. But this year, she may have to wait a little longer than normal to make it official: We’ve got another seasonal chart race to get through first in 2026.
Halloween has proven regularly impactful on the Billboard Hot 100 for nearly a decade now, ever since Michael Jackson’s horror-pop perennial “Thriller” first reentered the chart dated Nov. 10, 2018, at No. 31. It has since been joined by such other spooky season classics as Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers’ “Monster Mash” and Ray Parker, Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” as annual haunters of the listing, with The Citizens of Halloween’s “This Is Halloween” and Rockwell’s “Somebody Watching Me” also crashing the chart the past two years.
However, none of those songs have ever seriously threatened the chart’s top spot upon their yearly revisits. Two of them topped the chart upon their original runs — ”Monster Mash” in 1962 and “Ghostbusters” in 1984, the former even doing so for two weeks at the end of October — and in 2025, “Thriller” became the first of the seasonal staples to return to the top 10, reaching No. 10 last November (after originally peaking at No. 4 in ‘84).
This year, that might change. Not only could “Thriller” be in the mix for the post-Halloween No. 1, but so might a much newer song — one already not that far from the Hot 100’s top spot.
“Thriller” has, of course, been getting progressively closer to No. 1 since 2018 — although some variability in the timing of the chart week and the release schedule has kept it from being a straight line of progress. After reaching No. 31 in 2018, it spent the next two years returning to the 40s, before jumping to No. 19 in 2021, then returning to the 20s in 2022-24, before hitting the top 10 last year.
But this year, there’s reason to expect that more than just general upwards momentum will propel “Thriller” closer to the top spot. As covered extensively by writer Mikhail Grant on his Polytmus Substack earlier in the year — in an entry boldly titled “I Predict The Song ‘Thriller’ Will Go To #1 Soon on the Hot 100” — there are larger 2026 trends both within the Hot 100 and within Jackson’s own catalog to lend additional credence to the notion that the song will have a chance to truly contend for No. 1 this year.
First, in 2018, when “Thriller” began re-charting, its presence on the chart was still a significant anomaly. Back then, only a few catalog hits a year generated the streaming or sales interest to return to the chart, if that, and though holiday hits were becoming a significant part of the chart’s December, Carey’s “Christmas” hadn’t yet notched a single week at No. 1, let alone 22 total. But in 2026, we now see dozens of those reentries every year, with catalog titles taking up a bigger percentage of streaming consumption than ever before. And many of those new-old hits aren’t tied to a particular holiday or even a specific event — on the current Hot 100, you can find songs by bôa (“Duvet,” No. 86) and Mac Miller and Ty Dolla $ign (“Cinderella,” No. 44) that hail from past decades, but have gradually accumulated enough viral attention in 2026 to earn them Hot 100 reentrance.
And holiday bumps have already proven particularly potent in reintroducing catalog hits to the Hot 100 in 2026. Prior to this year, the 4th of July’s annual impact on the Hot 100 was relatively minimal, akin to Halloween in the late 2010s — just a couple returned titles at most, held to the chart’s 30s and 40s. But this year, we saw an unprecedented nine older songs swarming the post-4th of July Hot 100, with Toby Keith’s patriotic staple “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” getting all the way to No. 11, a new peak. There were several reasons for the larger presence of 4th of July-boosted anthems on the chart this year — including it being the country’s milestone 250th birthday — but perhaps none bigger than the macro trend of holiday-related gains and catalog titles being increasingly powerful on the chart in general, as the streaming era continues to flatten the popular music timeline and contemporary pop becomes increasingly diffuse.
What’s more, those catalog trends have already proven particularly beneficial for Jackson’s catalog in 2026; indeed, when “Thriller” inevitably returns to the Hot 100 this Halloween season, it won’t even be MJ’s first visit to the chart this year. He’s already notched six titles on there this year, following the April release of the blockbuster Michael film. That biopic inspired massive streaming gains for the late King of Pop’s catalog — leading to chart comebacks for prominently featured catalog classics like “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” and “Human Nature,” and even a first-time appearance for the posthumously released “Chicago,” thanks to spillover virality — which have gradually abated, but never completely subsided, throughout the rest of the year.
Consequently, “Thriller” — which also received a significant, lasting Michael bump, though not enough to return it to the Hot 100 — is starting from a much stronger place on streaming than it has in past years. For the tracking week ending Oct. 15 of this year, the song amassed 5.9 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, compared to 4.1 million during the equivalent week in 2025, a difference of 42%. Add an extra 42% to the 14 million streams “Thriller” amassed in its Halloween week last year and you’re up to 20 million — which would have made it the top-streamed song in the country last week.
The weekly timing is also a little better for “Thriller” this year. Last year, Halloween fell on a Friday, which meant that it came at the very beginning of the tracking week (which Billboard measures from Friday to Thursday) — so the entire week of pre-Halloween streaming was counted for the prior tracking week. (“Thriller” was streamed 8.9 million times that week (Oct. 24-30), 57% of the 14 million total it was streamed on Halloween week (Oct. 31-Nov. 6) — the closest streaming disparity between any two Halloween-season weeks since the song started re-charting in 2018.)
However, this year, the holiday falls on a Saturday — which means both a full weekend of Halloween celebrations, and a day-before Friday that counts towards the same weekly tally as the day-of Saturday. (July 4th also fell on a Saturday this year, and ended up producing the most consequential Hot 100 bump in the holiday’s history.)
All of this points the way to “Thriller” being a major player in the race for the Hot 100’s top spot two weeks from now. But could it end up not even being the highest-ranking seasonal title?
It’s worth remembering, after all, that there’s another Halloween-appropriate title already ranking as one of the top songs in the country right now. “Dracula,” the nocturnal breakthrough dance-pop hit for longtime indie-psych favorite Tame Impala, has been around since October, when it reached the Hot 100’s top 40. Since then, the song has maintained on the chart, and was propelled to even greater heights this spring, following the addition of BLACKPINK’s JENNIE to its quickly viral new remix. It hit the chart’s top 10 for the first time in May, and reached its current No. 5 peak in July, which it returns to on this week’s (Oct. 24-dated) listing.
So from its current perch within the top five (and “Thriller” having yet to even appear on the chart this year), shouldn’t “Dracula” have the decisive edge in the race for No. 1? Potentially, but it’s tough to say how much Halloween will actually boost the song this year — or indeed, how much listeners currently associate the song with spooky season in general. Its title is certainly a good match for the holiday, as is its ominous-sounding production (complete with eerie organ-sounding synths, unsettling ah-ahs and even an evil chuckle or two) — but the song’s lyrics, more about an attack of late-night loneliness and yearning than anything particularly supernatural, make it a little less of a dead-center match for Halloween playlists than songs like “Thriller.”
“Thriller” also has history, and familiarity, on its side. As we see every year with Christmas, there is a major anti-recency bias when it comes to most listeners’ holiday playlists — which tend to significantly favor the widely recognized and long-established classics to any more recent favorites. Tellingly, the five Halloween-related titles that have returned to the Hot 100 in the past two years have all been from the 20th century, with the most recent coming from 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (“This Is Halloween”).
Will partygoers make an exception for a contemporary hit as big as “Dracula” this Halloween? After all, the song is likely much more familiar to listeners after having spent an entire year on the Hot 100 than it was last year — when Halloween helped propel it 39-30 on the chart, a significant but hardly game-changing bump.
If a major uptick is coming in the streams for it this year, however, there’s not much sign of it yet. The song drew a bit over 7 million official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending Oct. 15, up just 2% from the prior week, according to Luminate — while through the first five days of the following tracking week (Oct. 16-20), it’s actually down nearly 1% from the equivalent period the week before. That’s still about two weeks out from Halloween, of course, but compare it to the progress “Thriller” is already showing — up 22% from the prior week over that Oct. 16-20 period — and it suggests that “Dracula” isn’t in the same inner circle of Halloween songs just yet.
Of course, “Thriller” will have to majorly outstream “Dracula” to make up for the gap between the two in airplay audience. “Dracula” is currently the No. 1 radio song in the country — with about 10 times the presence that “Thriller” currently has — and while “Thriller” may close that gap a little as more and more stations embrace the Halloween spirit, it’s unlikely to get in range to be properly competitive with it. (An annual sales bump may also help “Thriller” make up for some of that radio loss, however — as the song sold around 3,000 copies both the week of and the week before Halloween last year, while “Dracula” has yet to 3,000 copies in a single week.)
But if either song really wants to challenge for the Hot 100’s No. 1 spot, the song to beat, as it has been all 2026, remains “Choosin’ Texas.” Ella Langley’s historic Hot 100-topper is only just behind “Dracula” on the airwaves, and has also held at No. 1 on Streaming Songs the past two weeks. (Even with that assumed 42% gain to 20 million official on-demand U.S. streams, “Thriller” would’ve only barely passed “Texas,” which posted 19.6 million streams last week.) And we also, of course, must mention the new chart-crashers we’re likely to be getting next week (for the Hot 100 dated Oct. 31), which should at least have the chance to remain competitive on the listing well into spooky season.
Regardless, even if one of the seasonal titles doesn’t make it to the top spot in 2026, this year’s Halloween showdown could very well be the start of a newly suspenseful annual race on the Hot 100, one likely to continue in 2027 and beyond. Let the ghoulish games begin.
