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- Apr 13, 2021

The World Leaders with the Most Followers on Twitter

This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Katharina Buchholz

The fact that Donald Trump is no longer a head of state (and not even a Twitter user) has led to some shake-ups in the list of the world leaders with the most followers on Twitter. As of November 9, 2020, Trump was still in the lead with more than 111 million followers between the two accounts @POTUS and @realDonaldTrump. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has been growing his followers continuously and is set to surpass Trump’s former record with currently 107.8 million followers and counting.

Trump's personal Twitter account was suspended indefinitely in connection with his comments made in person and on the social network leading up to the insurection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. on Jan 6. Trump has said that he is in the process of launching his own social network.

New U.S. President Joe Biden decided to archive Trump’s @POTUS account and start with a blank slate. This decision has set the current U.S. president back in the world leaders ranking. Biden comes third behind the Pope, counting 39 million followers. Three quarters come from his personal account, @JoeBiden.

Many heads of state use several Twitter accounts to promote themselves and their policies. Pope Francis actually has 52 million followers between nine different language accounts, the biggest being English (18.9m), Spanish (18.6m), Portuguese (5m) and Italian (5m).

The remainder of the top 8 ranking consists of Muslim leaders, the most-followed being Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Indonesian president Joko Widodo.

There are also heads of state, however, to whom the use of Twitter seems less important. German chancellor Angela Merkel leaves the tweeting to government spokesperson Steffen Seibert (@RegSprecher), who has a comparably meager 1 million followers.

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