Asake Tops Nigeria’s H1 2026 Streaming Race: What Changed

Asake Is Nigeria’s Most-Streamed Artist in H1 2026 - Here’s What Changed

Asake led Nigeria’s H1 2026 streaming charts with 681 million streams, up 42.8% from 2025, driven by M$NEY, collaborations and his growing catalogue.

Sep 15, 2026

by Emmanuel Umahi

I have always found Nigerian music streaming numbers fascinating because they tell a slightly different story from what we see on social media. An artist can dominate TikTok, trend on X, sell out shows and still not necessarily be the artist Nigerians are listening to the most.

Streaming data- which shows the number of times an artist’s music was played on music-streaming platforms during a specific period–cuts through some of that noise. And the numbers from the first half of 2026 have given us a pretty clear answer: Asake was Nigeria’s most-streamed artist in H1 2026, with 681 million streams.

But the bigger story is how he got there. In H1 2025, Asake recorded 477 million streams, finishing behind Wizkid, who led with 505 million. Davido was third with 422 million, followed by Seyi Vibez with 408 million and Burna Boy with 308 million.

Twelve months later, the picture looks very different. Wizkid finished H1 2026 with 455 million streams, Seyi Vibez had 449 million, Fola recorded 374 million and Mavo reached 319 million.

Asake’s 681 million streams put him 226 million ahead of Wizkid and 232 million ahead of Seyi Vibez. More importantly, his H1 figure is roughly 42.8% higher than the 477 million streams he recorded in H1 2025.

For me, that is the more interesting part of the story.

The 681 million figure comes from the H1 artist-streaming ranking by Turntable Charts used for this comparison, rather than a Spotify-only figure. That distinction matters because the data also references platform-specific numbers from Spotify, Audiomack and other sources. Those figures measure different things and should not be combined as though they are part of one platform's total.

What the overall H1 ranking shows is that Asake did not simply have a big album. He created a bigger streaming ecosystem around himself. M$NEY created the spike, but his catalogue helped sustain it.