An Aussie Single Hasn’t Topped The Charts Since 2022
Mid-season report 2026: There’s good news and bad news.
by JEFF JENKINS
– We’re six months into 2026 and just one Australian song has cracked the Top 10.
– Just one local album has topped the charts this year.
– An Australian song hasn’t hit number one for more than four years.
They’re the key takeaways of our review of the ARIA charts as we hit half-time in 2026.
Last September, ARIA introduced some chart changes “to help remove some barriers to Australian music achieving chart success”, predicting “a marked increase in the number of Australian acts appearing on the charts”.
Titles more than two years old were no longer eligible for the main charts.
Have the changes worked? Well, yes and no.
We’ve had 26 charts this year; three of them have failed to feature an Australian song in the Top 40.
Just four homegrown hits have entered the Top 40 in 2026 (compared to five for the same period last year, and eight in 2024).
Leading the way is Tame Impala’s Dracula, which has spent 14 weeks in the Top 10.
Dracula is the first Australian single to reach the Top 10 since Dom Dolla’s Saving Up spent one week at number 10 in February 2024.
The other local singles to hit the Top 40 this year:
Keli Holiday’s Dancing2, which spent one week at number 24.
G Flip’s Bed On Fire – two weeks in the Top 40, peaking at 28.
The Kid LAROI’s 2024 single Girls, which returned to the charts, spending one week at number 40.
The singles chart remains a wasteland for Aussie artists. But it’s a better story on the albums chart.
Sixty-five Aussie albums have cracked the Top 40 so far this year (compared to 30 for the same six-month period last year, and 27 in 2024). And 18 Aussie albums have reached the Top 10 (compared to 14 in 2025, and 11 in 2024).
Halfway through 2025, three local albums had hit number one; this year has seen just one homegrown chart-topper – Karnivool’s In Verses, which spent one week on top in February.
In Verses is the only Australian album to have spent more than one week in the Top 10 this year.
Of the 65 local entries, only 13 have spent more than one week in the Top 40.
Again, Tame Impala is leading the way, with their 2025 album Deadbeat spending 11 weeks in the Top 40 this year.
The weekly Top 40 chart has not featured more than two Aussie singles in 2026. The high-water mark for local albums was the March 2 chart, which included eight Aussie releases.
This week’s Top 40 features just one local single – Dracula at number 10. It includes 28 singles by American artists, six from the UK, three from Canada, one from South Korea, and one from Israel.
The year’s longest-running chart-toppers have both been by UK artist Olivia Dean. The Art of Loving has enjoyed a nine-week reign on top of the albums chart (following four weeks on top last year), while the single Man I Need has spent 15 weeks at number one (after six weeks on top at the end of last year).
The last Australian song to top the charts was Joji’s Glimpse of Us, which spent one week at number one in June 2022. Though he was born in Osaka and grew up in Japan, ARIA classifies Joji as an Australian artist because his dad is an Aussie.
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