This is a list of the world's largest paid daily newspapers by recently published circulation. Circulation here means copies distributed (sold or otherwise qualified), not unique readers. Figures are drawn from national audit bureaux where they exist, from publisher statements when no independent audit is available, and from secondary compilations by trade publications and industry associations such as the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
No single global audit exists. Rankings that present one numbered list therefore mix incompatible series: morning versus evening editions, print-only versus print-plus-e-paper, weekday versus Saturday averages, and calendar periods that can be more than two years apart. The tables below keep those distinctions visible rather than collapsing them into a false precision.
Scope and definitions Circulation is not the same as readership. A sold copy may be read by several people; readership surveys (for example India's Indian Readership Survey or Germany's Media-Analyse) therefore produce much higher figures than ABC- or IVW-style audits. Circulation is also not the same as digital audience: unique visitors, app users and bundled digital subscribers are reported separately and are omitted from the main print table unless a source explicitly folds e-paper into "sold circulation".
This article follows the convention used on the previous version of this page and by WAN-IFRA historical lists:
Included: paid daily newspapers; morning editions are preferred when a title also prints an evening paper. Usually excluded: free commuter titles (for example Metro in the United Kingdom), weeklies, magazines, and unaudited "claimed" print runs except where they are the only public figure for a major state newspaper. Digital: treated in a separate section. Combining print copies with website subscribers produces a different ranking dominated by a handful of English-language titles.
Why global totals cannot be added up WAN-IFRA's World Press Trends Outlook series no longer publishes a single official top-20 title list comparable to its mid-2010s reports. The 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 outlooks instead give industry aggregates. For 2024-2025 they put worldwide print circulation of daily and weekly publications at about 490.5 million copies, down 2.4% year on year, with a paying audience (print plus paid digital) of about 564 million. Those aggregates cannot be reconciled title-by-title with national ABC files.
Print still supplies most circulation revenue in many markets even as it has fallen below half of total publisher revenue among WAN-IFRA survey respondents. The geographic pattern is sharp: Japan and India continue to support multi-million print runs; China maintains large party and reference dailies whose figures are not independently audited; North America and most of Western Europe have seen paid print fall into the low- and mid-hundreds of thousands for even their largest titles.
Largest paid daily newspapers The following table lists titles that recent public sources place above roughly one million paid copies a day, plus a short second tier of the largest papers outside Asia so that Europe and North America remain visible. Rank numbers are indicative only: they order the figure shown, not a harmonised worldwide audit.
+ Selected paid daily newspapers by recently published circulation Rank Newspaper Country Language Circulation Period and basis Source type 1 Yomiuri Shimbun Japan Japanese 5,367,089 August 2025; Japan ABC publisher report (national paper series) Independent audit (ABC Japan), via secondary report 2 Asahi Shimbun Japan Japanese 3,212,827 August 2025; Japan ABC Independent audit, via secondary report 3 Dainik Bhaskar India Hindi 3,050,064 July-December 2025; ABC India average qualifying sales Independent audit, via trade press 4 People's Daily China Chinese ~3,000,000 Combined domestic and overseas print; year not independently dated in 2025 citations Publisher / state-media compilation; not a Western-style ABC audit 5 Dainik Jagran India Hindi 2,330,313 July-December 2025; ABC India Independent audit, via trade press 6 The Times of India India English 1,837,731 July-December 2025; ABC India Independent audit, via trade press 7 Chunichi Shimbun Japan Japanese 1,614,901 Morning edition; ABC Japan average July-December 2025 Publisher media kit citing ABC 8 Malayala Manorama India Malayalam ~1,566,000 Average copies to 30 September 2025 (H1 FY2026) Rating-agency summary of ABC trajectory 9 Amar Ujala India Hindi 1,489,970 July-December 2025; ABC India Independent audit, via trade press 10 Hindustan India Hindi 1,465,947 July-December 2025; ABC India Independent audit, via trade press 11 Nikkei (Nihon Keizai Shimbun) Japan Japanese 1,277,296 August 2025; Japan ABC Independent audit, via secondary report 12 Rajasthan Patrika India Hindi 1,240,340 July-December 2025; ABC India Independent audit, via trade press 13 Mainichi Shimbun Japan Japanese 1,176,751 August 2025; Japan ABC Independent audit, via secondary report — Bild / B.Z. Germany German 922,991 Q2 2026 sold circulation (print + e-paper), IVW; combined Germany booking unit Independent audit (IVW), publisher rate card — Sankei Shimbun Japan Japanese 796,577 August 2025; Japan ABC Independent audit, via secondary report — Daily Mail United Kingdom English 531,607 Weekday average, October 2025; ABC Independent audit, via trade press — Ouest-France France French 581,505 2025 paid France diffusion (ACPM); includes digital editions in the paid total Independent audit (ACPM) — The Wall Street Journal United States English 391,200 Average daily print circulation, six months to 31 March 2026; AAM Independent audit, via trade press — The New York Times United States English 222,700 Average daily print circulation, six months to 31 March 2026; AAM Independent audit, via trade press
Notes on the table Japan. ABC Japan figures are widely treated as the national standard, but they include copies supplied to sales agents that critics describe as oshigami (pushed papers): unsold stock billed to newsagents. Court cases and specialist reporting have argued that actual household delivery can be substantially lower than the ABC headline. Morning and evening editions are separate products. Yomiuri's own media data for July-December 2023 put the morning edition at 6,182,228 and the evening edition at 1,548,030. Press Gazette's August 2025 world ranking still used those 2023 morning figures (6.2 million for Yomiuri; 3.57 million for Asahi). The August 2025 monthly series above is more recent and shows the continuing decline. India. ABC India reports "average qualifying sales" by half-year. Hindi titles dominate unit volume; The Times of India remains the largest English-language daily in the country and, on these figures, in the world. ABC certified 29.74 million average daily qualifying sales across member dailies in January-June 2025, up 2.77% on the previous half-year — a rare expansion among large print markets. China. People's Daily is the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. State Media Monitor and Press Gazette both repeat a combined domestic-plus-international circulation "around three million". That number is not an ABC-equivalent audit. National statistics for the whole Chinese newspaper industry (2,389 titles, 24.40 billion copies issued in 2024) are published by sector reports but are not broken out title by title in a form comparable to ABC files. Germany and France. IVW and ACPM sold-circulation totals often include paid e-paper. Bilds 922,991 figure is the combined Germany unit of Bild and B.Z. Ouest-France remains the largest French paid daily by ACPM diffusion. United States. AAM print averages for the six months to March 2026 put the Wall Street Journal first (391,200) and the New York Times second (222,700). Across the 50 largest audited titles, combined daily print copies were about 1.99 million, down 15% year on year. Those print figures are an order of magnitude smaller than the same brands' digital subscriber bases.
By country and region Japan Japan remains the only large wealthy country whose biggest dailies still print several million copies. The Nihon Shinbun Kyokai October survey put total newspaper circulation (counting a morning-plus-evening set as two copies) at 28.24 million in 2025, or 234 copies per 1,000 people, down from 71.90 million and 570 copies per 1,000 in 2000. Home delivery of a morning paper, and in many households an evening paper as well, is still a mass habit, which is why Japanese unit circulations dwarf those of newspapers in the United States or Britain.
The five national papers' August 2025 ABC totals were:
Newspaper ABC copies (August 2025) Year-on-year change Yomiuri Shimbun 5,367,089 −438,006 Asahi Shimbun 3,212,827 −150,385 Nikkei 1,277,296 −82,974 Mainichi Shimbun 1,176,751 −262,406 Sankei Shimbun 796,577 −47,910 Five-paper total 11,830,540 −981,681
Chunichi Shimbun, based in Nagoya, reported a morning edition of 1,614,901 and an evening edition of 156,593 for the July-December 2025 ABC average. The Chunichi group, including Tokyo Shimbun, is often ranked just behind Yomiuri and Asahi when sister titles are added together.
India India is the other pillar of world print circulation. ABC member dailies averaged 29.74 million qualifying copies a day in the first half of 2025. Hindi papers supply most of the volume; English, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and other language papers fill out the rest.
Selected ABC India figures:
Newspaper Language H1 2025 H2 2025 Dainik Bhaskar Hindi 3,040,724 3,050,064 Dainik Jagran Hindi 2,353,778 2,330,313 The Times of India English 1,640,418 1,837,731 Amar Ujala Hindi 1,550,356 1,489,970 Hindustan Hindi 1,463,341 1,465,947 Rajasthan Patrika Hindi 1,244,708 1,240,340 Hindustan Times English 619,280 742,091
Malayala Manorama was certified at 1,816,081 daily copies for the 2023 calendar year and has since declined: CARE Ratings cites 1,655,000 for July-December 2024 and about 1,566,000 by 30 September 2025. Older Wikipedia and WAN-IFRA lists that still show Manorama above two million copies are out of date.
China Comparable title-level audits are scarce. People's Daily is repeatedly listed among the world leaders on a claimed combined circulation of about three million. Reference daily Cankao Xiaoxi appeared near the top of WAN-IFRA lists in the mid-2010s but no audited 2024-2026 figure of similar quality was located for this revision. Official industry totals for 2024 report 2,389 newspapers, 24.63 billion copies printed and 24.40 billion issued. Those national totals confirm that China remains a very large print market; they do not license a ranked list of individual titles.
United States Paid print is now a minority of how the largest American newspapers reach paying customers. AAM figures supplied to Press Gazette for the six months to 31 March 2026 included:
Newspaper Average daily print circulation The Wall Street Journal 391,200 The New York Times 222,700
In the six months to 30 September 2025 the same source had the Journal at 412,428 print copies, the Times at 228,755, the New York Post at 117,037, USA Today at 89,215 and The Washington Post at 87,576. USA Todays multi-million print figure from the mid-2010s WAN-IFRA tables is obsolete.
Digital scale is the other half of the American picture. At the end of 2025 the New York Times reported 12.21 million digital-only subscribers and the Wall Street Journal 4.29 million. Those counts are not print circulation and are not added into the world print table.
United Kingdom