70,647,379 votes tallied, and one European nation apparently loves Sanrio’s often-forgotten grannie character.
Hello Kitty may be the face of Sanrio, but she’s far from the only adorable icon at Japan’s leading cute character company. As a matter of fact, Sanrio has so many loveable stars that every year fans make their favorites known in the Sanrio Character Ranking election.
This year the poll set a new record with 70,647,379 votes being cast, a 12-percent increase over last year. When those were all counted up, there was a very familiar face at the top of the ranking, Pompompurin.
This was the custard pudding-colored Golden Receiver’s second year in a row to finish in first place, and his fifth time to be there since Sanrio began conducting the poll. Pompompurin might have gotten an extra boost from fans fired up about 2026 being the 30th anniversary of the character’s debut, showering him with 7,135,114 votes, more than 800,000 more than second-place finisher…
…Cinnamaroll, who had 6,313,623 votes, and rounding out the top three was…
… Pochacco, with 3,967,689 votes.
This one-two-three order mirrors the results from the 2025 poll, and also finishing in the same spots as a year ago are Kuromi and Hello Kitty in fourth and fifth place. Making the biggest jump within the top 10 was Ahirunopekkle, who moved up from 10th to 6th, while My Melody slips one slot from 6th to 7th.
Rounding out the top 10 are Tuxedo Sam (up one rank compared to last year), Hangyodon (up one rank), and Little Twin Stars Kiki and Lala (down two ranks).
Also finding their way into the top 20 were Badtz-Maru (11th, same as 2025), Kerokerokeroppi (14th, same as 2025) and Gudetama (20th, down four ranks). Out of the top-20 finishers, the biggest improvement came for My Sweet Piano, who moved up five ranks to finish in 13th place, perhaps thanks in part to her appearance in the My Melody & Kuromi series that streamed on Netflix since the last Sanrio Character Ranking.
Surprisingly, while canine characters took the top three spots for the second year in a row for total votes, when Sanrio broke down the data by country, with the exception of Taiwan each demographic outside Japan had one non-dog among its three most popular characters.
Top three characters (first, second, and third) by country
● Australia: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Brazil: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, Kuromi (rabbit)
● China: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, My Melody (rabbit)
● France: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Germany: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Hong Kong: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Italy: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, My Melody (rabbit)
● Korea: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Hangyodon (fishman)
● Singapore: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Hangyodon (fishman)
● Spain: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Umeya Zakkaten
● Taiwan: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Pochacco
● Thailand: Yoshikitty (cat), Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin
● U.S.A.: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Chococat (cat)
● U.K.: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Usahana (rabbit)
An outlier in the foreign-country results is Yoshikitty, the fusion of Hello Kitty and J-rock star Yoshiki, who, like last year, is Thailand’s favorite of all Sanrio characters. The biggest surprise, though, is Spain’s love for Umeya Zakkaten, a grandmotherly general store shopkeeper who even some younger Japanese Sanrio fans might not recognize or know by name.
▼ Despite finishing 3rd in Spain, Umeya Zakkaten was 70th in overall votes
As for Hello Kitty, her highest individual foreign-country finish was 4th place in China, and she didn’t even crack the top ten for the Germany, Spain, the U.S., and the U.K. (despite being canonically born in England). Though Sanrio doesn’t publish Japan-specific rankings, odds are her overall fifth-place finish resulted from strong support from Japanese voters, but she hasn’t won the poll since 2019.
Source: Sanrio (1, 2), PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Sanrio (1, 2)
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