The Official Albums Chart is the United Kingdom's industry-recognised national record chart for albums. Entries are ranked by sales and audio streaming. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts Company (OCC) on Fridays (previously Sundays). It is broadcast on BBC Radio 1 (top 5) and found on the OCC website as a Top 100 or on UKChartsPlus as a Top 200, with positions continuing until all sales have been tracked in data only available to industry insiders. However, even though number 100 was classed as a hit album (as in the case of The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums) in the 1980s until January 1989, since the compilations were removed, this definition was changed to Top 75 with follow-up books such as The Virgin Book of British Hit Albums only including this data. As of 2021, Since 1983, the OCC generally provides a public charts for hits and weeks up to the Top 100. Business customers can also require additional chart placings.
To qualify for the Official Albums Chart, the album must be the correct length and price. It must be more than three tracks or 20 minutes long and not be classed as a budget album. A budget album costs between £0.50 and £3.75. Full details of the rules can be found on the OCC website.
History According to the canon of the OCC, the official British albums chart was the Record Mirror chart from 22 July 1956 to 1 November 1958; the Melody Maker chart from 8 November 1958 to March 1960;Warwick, Neil; Kutner, Jon; Brown, Tony (2004). The Complete Book of the British Charts: Singles and Albums (3rd ed.). London: Omnibus Press. . the Record Retailer chart from 1960 to 1969; and the Official Albums Chart from 1969 on. For eight weeks in February and March 1971 no Official Albums Chart was compiled due to a postal strike – for this period, the OCC uses the chart compiled by Melody Maker instead.
In the 1970s the new album chart was revealed at 12:45 pm on Thursdays on BBC Radio 1, and then in the early 1980s moved to 6:05 pm (later 6:30 pm) on Wednesday evenings during the Peter Powell and Bruno Brookes shows. In October 1987 it moved to Monday lunchtimes, during the Gary Davies show, and from April to October 1993 it briefly had its show from 7:00–8:00 pm on Sunday evenings, introduced by Lynn Parsons. Since October 1993 it has been included in The Official Chart show from 4:00–5:45 pm on Fridays (previously from 4:00–7:00 pm on Sundays). A weekly 'Album Chart' show was licensed out to BBC Radio 2 and presented by Simon Mayo, until it ended on 2 April 2007.
Though album sales tend to produce more revenue and, over time, act as a greater measure of an artist's success, this chart receives less media attention than the UK Singles Chart, because overall sales of an album are more important than its peak position. 2005 saw a record number of artist album sales with 126.2 million sold in the UK.
In February 2015, it was announced that due to the falling sales of albums and rise in popularity of audio streaming, the Official Albums Chart would begin including streaming data from March 2015. Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams is divided by 1000 and added to the pure sales of the album. This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles. The final number one album on the UK Albums Chart to be based purely on sales alone was Smoke + Mirrors by Imagine Dragons. On 1 March 2015, In the Lonely Hour by Sam Smith became the first album to top the new streaming-incorporated Official Albums Chart.
The weekly Top 75 UK Albums Chart (albums described as hits in the case of British Hit Singles & Albums or The Virgin Book of British Hit Albums) were published in Music Week magazine until 2021. In 2018 Future (publisher of 'Louder Sound' publications such as Metal Hammer and Classic Rock) acquired Music Week publisher NewBay Media. Future decided that the publication would go monthly from March 2021, and so a bespoke monthly Official Albums Chart Top 75 (similar to album charts used by Top of the Pops in the early 1990s and Absolute 80s on Sundays) started to be published from this date alongside monthly singles charts and specialist/genre charts.
By 2022, the weekly album chart had started to regularly feature a pattern of acts getting a Top 10 new entry one week, followed by a dramatic decline the next, with most of these releases exiting the Top 75 completely. The majority of these acts would be indie and rock bands like the Wombats, Sea Power and Maxïmo Park, who would market their album to the type of people who would want to own the release via a physical format rather than streaming it.
The first number one on the UK Albums Chart was Songs for Swingin' Lovers! by Frank Sinatra for the week ending 22 July 1956. As of the week ending 8 October 2026, the UK Albums Chart has had 1449 different number one albums.
Record holders
Most time on the album charts
The most successful artists in the charts depend on the criteria used. As of February 2016, Queen albums have spent more time on the British album charts than any other musical act, followed by the Beatles, Elvis Presley, U2 and ABBA.
In July 2021, ABBA's Gold: Greatest Hits was officially recognised by the Official Charts Company as the first album to spend over 1000 weeks on the Albums Chart, but this total does not include 2014's Gold – 40th Anniversary Edition (which like Queen's The Platinum Collection is a 3-CD set also including More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits and The Golden B-sides) or additional weeks inside the Top 100 missing from the OCC's database before February 1994 (as with the singles chart, Music Week only published the Top 75 as this was the public chart for store owners to use in their record shops with the Top 150 Artist Albums Chart being for industry insiders/ChartsPlus subscribers).
Number-one related records
By most weeks at number one, the Beatles lead with a total of 176 weeks. Robbie Williams is the artist with the most number one albums with 16 as of January 2026, with the release of his thirteenth studio album Britpop. This surpassed the previous record of 15 set by the Beatles. In third place, jointly, are The Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift, both with 14 number ones. Regarding the tally of number ones for some artists, the Official Charts Company has classed re-issues of The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and Goats Head Soup, as brand new hits/number ones due to the amount of bonus material available, formats released and the fact that the issuing record label had changed.
As of September 2022, Elvis Presley is still the male solo artist with the most weeks at number one with a total of 66 weeks and most top ten albums by any artist, charting 53 releases. Until this same month, he also held the record for the most number one albums by a solo artist in a tie with Robbie Williams, a record which Williams broke with the compilation album XXV.
Taylor Swift has the most number one albums by a female artist in the UK, with 14 as of October 2025. This puts her in joint third place (with The Rolling Stones) as the artist with the most number one album in UK chart history. Swift also jointly holds the record for the most consecutive number one albums with 10, a record she holds with Eminem. Adele is the female solo artist with the most weeks at number one, with a total of 37 weeks (23 of which were for her second album which is also the most weeks at number one for an album by a female artist). The Spice Girls are the female group with the most weeks at number one, with a total of 18 weeks (15 of which were for their debut album Spice).
The longest-running number one album, both consecutively and non-consecutively, is the soundtrack of the film South Pacific. It had a consecutive run of 70 weeks from November 1958 to March 1960, and had further runs at the top in 1960 and 1961, making a non-consecutive total of 115 weeks. The album chart was still in its infancy at this time and the methodology for collecting sales data was limited.
Most albums sold
For many years, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the best-selling album in UK chart history, but is now in fifth place after being supplanted by Queen's Greatest Hits, ABBA's Gold: Greatest Hits, Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and Adele's 21 (5.7 million). (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (6.1 million sales) is now the best-selling studio album in UK chart history (Queen and ABBA are compilation albums). Queen's Greatest Hits has sold over 7.8 million copies (including downloads and equivalent streams) as of July 2022. ABBA's Gold has sold over 7.1 million, and Sgt. Pepper has sold in excess of 5.6 million copies.
Age-related records The youngest artist to top the chart is Neil Reid, whose debut album topped the chart in 1972 when he was only 12 years old, while the youngest female artist is Billie Eilish who was 17 years old when she debuted at the top with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. The record for the oldest artist to top the charts is Vera Lynn, who was 92 years old when she was at number one with We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn, released in 2009 (though the album only contains material she recorded between 1936 and 1959). Lynn, who died in 2020 at the age of 103, also leads the list for the oldest artist to have a chart album, when the 2017 release of Vera Lynn 100, released to mark her 100th birthday (though again, this only contains material she recorded decades earlier), peaked at number 3. Currently, the oldest living male artist to have topped the UK albums chart is Paul McCartney, who reached the top in 2026 with new studio album The Boys of Dungeon Lane at the age of 83, while 95 year old Tony Bennett charted at number 6 on the chart of 8–14 October 2021 with his Lady Gaga duets album Love For Sale, becoming recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest person to release an album of new material.
Female solo artist records
In 1980, Kate Bush became the first British female solo artist to have a number-one album in the UK with Never for Ever, as well as being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at number 1. In August 2014, she became the first female artist to have eight albums in the Official UK Top 40 Albums Chart simultaneously, (altogether she had eleven albums in the Top 50 in one week). She is currently in fourth place for artists having the most simultaneous UK Top 40 albums, behind Elvis Presley and David Bowie who both tie for the most simultaneous Top 40 albums (twelve each, both immediately following their deaths in 1977 and 2016 respectively), and The Beatles who had eleven in 2009 when remastered versions of their albums were released.
Fastest sold albums The fastest selling album (first chart week sales) is 25 by Adele. Released in November 2015, it sold over 800,000 copies in its first week. However, the album Be Here Now by Oasis is a controversial second place, this is due to the fact its release date was irregular, being released on a Thursday instead of the usual Monday. The record was released on 21 August 1997 and sold around 813,000 in its first seven days, which surpasses the current claimant to the title, though this topic is still highly contested. Additionally, Adele's 25 became the fastest album to sell over one million copies in the UK by a clear margin. It achieved the feat within 10 days, beating the former record holder (again, Oasis's Be Here Now) which took 17 days.
Number ones over the span of decades