Time Person of the Year 2026 Odds: Who Will Be Named?

Time Person of the Year 2026 is about a month away, and the betting market looks nothing like it did in the spring. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the favorite at +250 at BetOnline, but newly elected Texas Senator James Talarico is right behind him at +275. Back in March, Donald Trump was the clear favorite.

Update, November 9: The race at the top has tightened. Mamdani has drifted from +180 to +250, while Talarico has shortened from +350 to +275, leaving the two almost level. The most surprising move of the week belongs to Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been cut from +3300 to +1000 and now sits sixth in the market. Abdul El-Sayed (+700 to +600) is also shorter, while Pope Leo XIV (+525 to +700) and Mark Carney (+600 to +700) have both drifted.

This page covers the latest Time Person of the Year odds, how the market has moved this year, the case for every serious contender, how TIME makes its pick, and every past winner, including the 2025 Person of the Year.

Odds from BetOnline as of November 9, 2026.

Time Person of the Year 2026 Odds

Contender	Odds	Implied probability
Zohran Mamdani	+250	28.6%
James Talarico	+275	26.7%
Abdul El-Sayed	+600	14.3%
Pope Leo XIV	+700	12.5%
Mark Carney	+700	12.5%
Benjamin Netanyahu	+1000	9.1%
Donald Trump	+1200	7.7%
Dario Amodei	+1200	7.7%
AI	+1600	5.9%
Jon Ossoff	+1600	5.9%
ChatGPT	+2200	4.3%
Marco Rubio	+2500	3.8%
Elon Musk	+2500	3.8%
Sam Altman	+2800	3.4%
Taylor Swift	+2800	3.4%
Reid Wiseman	+2800	3.4%
Bad Bunny	+3300	2.9%
Jeremy Hansen	+3300	2.9%
Christina Koch	+3300	2.9%
Victor Glover	+3300	2.9%
Shehbaz Sharif	+4000	2.4%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez	+4000	2.4%
Jerome Powell	+5000	2.0%
Vladimir Zelensky	+5000	2.0%
Peter Magyar	+5000	2.0%

Implied probability shows the chance the odds suggest, before the sportsbook’s margin. In a market this open, the margin is big: the full board adds up to about 175%.

When Is Time Person of the Year 2026 Announced?

TIME usually announces Person of the Year in the first half of December. The 2025 pick was revealed on December 11, and the 2024 pick on December 12. Expect the 2026 announcement around the same time. TIME tends to publish a shortlist a day or two beforehand, and that can move the odds sharply.

How the Time Person of the Year Odds Have Moved

When we first priced this market in March, it looked completely different. Here’s how the main names have moved since:

Contender	March 2026	Now
Zohran Mamdani	+700	+250
James Talarico	+1400 or bigger	+275
Abdul El-Sayed	+1400 or bigger	+600
Pope Leo XIV	+1400 or bigger	+700
Mark Carney	+1400 or bigger	+700
Benjamin Netanyahu	+1400 or bigger	+1000
Donald Trump	+250	+1200
AI	+600	+1600
Elon Musk	+1000	+2500
Marco Rubio	+1200	+2500
Sam Altman	+1000	+2800
Taylor Swift	+1000	+2800
Vladimir Zelensky	+800	+5000

The biggest drop belongs to Trump. He was the clear favorite in March at +250, an implied 28.6%, and he has drifted out to +1200. The AI options have gone the same way. “AI” was +600 in March, but the market has since decided that TIME won’t repeat its 2025 theme.

Mamdani has gone from +700 to favorite, and four names that weren’t even among the leading prices in March are now in the top five.

Two of those four, Talarico and El-Sayed, won Senate races in last week’s midterms, and the results have clearly reshaped this market. The question for bettors is whether TIME’s editors will see it the same way, because history says they don’t usually reward a midterm result (more on that below).

One name has dropped off the board completely. David Attenborough was +800 in March, ahead of his 100th birthday in May, and BetOnline no longer prices him.

The Leading Contenders

Zohran Mamdani: +250

Mamdani has been the national story of New York politics since his upset mayoral win in 2025, and he took office on January 1. His profile has kept growing all year, well beyond New York, and he still leads the market at an implied 28.6%. That lead has almost gone, though: he was +180 a week ago.

The question for bettors is timing. Mamdani’s breakthrough moment, winning the election, came last year, and TIME didn’t pick him then. Even after drifting, +250 is a short price for someone whose defining moment has already passed.

James Talarico: +275

Talarico has the freshest story on the board, and the market is warming to him. He has shortened from +350 to +275 in the past week. He beat Ken Paxton to flip a Texas Senate seat, and he’s the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since 1988. He’s 37, a former teacher and seminarian, and he has gone from state representative to national figure in a single year.

Abdul El-Sayed: +600

El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate race, beating Mike Rogers to hold the seat for Democrats, and he has shortened from +700 this week. The 42-year-old former Michigan health official becomes the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, which is a historic first that TIME will notice.

Pope Leo XIV: +700

This is our value pick, and it’s an even better price than it was a week ago. Leo XIV became the first American pope in May 2025, and 2026 is his first full year in the job. TIME has picked a new pope before: Pope Francis was named Person of the Year in 2013, his first year as pope. Leo lost out to AI in 2025, the year he was elected, and he’s the kind of global figure TIME’s editors keep coming back to. At +700, he’s a solid price.

Mark Carney: +700

Canada’s prime minister climbed the market through the fall, and even after a small drift from +600, he’s still the leading non-American politician on the board. TIME hasn’t chosen a Canadian leader before, but a world leader at the center of a big international story is a classic Person of the Year profile.

Benjamin Netanyahu: +1000

This is the move of the week, and it’s a hard one to explain. Netanyahu was +3300 a week ago and is now +1000, but the news hasn’t obviously gone his way. His bloc fell short of a majority in Israel’s election last month, leaving the country heading for coalition deadlock, and he remains at the center of the conflict in the Middle East and the diplomatic fallout around the world.

TIME does pick people who shaped the year “for better or worse”, so a figure who dominates the headlines is never ruled out. Still, we can’t find a clear reason for a cut this size. In a thin specials market like this one, prices often move because of where the money has gone rather than because a contender’s real chances have changed. A handful of big bets can be enough to drag a long shot into the top six. Treat this one with caution until the news backs it up.

Donald Trump: +1200

Trump has won Person of the Year twice, in 2016 and 2024. A third win would put him in rare company. With Democrats taking control of the House in January and impeachment talk building, he’ll be in the headlines through December. TIME has already picked him twice in the past decade, though, and that’s the main reason for the long price.

AI, ChatGPT and the AI Leaders

Four AI options are on the board: Dario Amodei at +1200, “AI” at +1600, ChatGPT at +2200 and Sam Altman at +2800. Together they come to about 21% before the margin. The problem is that TIME named the Architects of AI as its 2025 Person of the Year, and it rarely picks the same theme two years running. Amodei is the shortest of the four after Anthropic’s very public standoff with the Pentagon over military use of AI in February.

Jon Ossoff: +1600

Ossoff won re-election in Georgia by about 18 points, and he’s now the favorite in the 2028 Democratic nominee odds. He’s on the board here for the same reason as Talarico and El-Sayed: the midterms put him in front of the whole country.

The Artemis II Crew

Reid Wiseman (+2800), Christina Koch (+3300), Victor Glover (+3300) and Jeremy Hansen (+3300) flew Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years, splashing down in April. It was a historic mission. Koch became the first woman to fly to the Moon, Glover the first Black astronaut, and Hansen, a Canadian, the first non-American.

There’s a catch. TIME would almost certainly honor the crew together, but BetOnline prices them individually, so check the rules on how a group pick settles before you bet on any one of them.

Longshots

Marco Rubio and Elon Musk are +2500, Taylor Swift +2800, and Bad Bunny +3300. Musk (2021) and Swift (2023) have both won before. Peter Magyar, who ended Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power in Hungary’s April election, is +5000.

How TIME Picks Its Person of the Year

TIME’s editors choose the person, group or idea that most influenced the news over the year, for better or worse. Two patterns matter for betting.

TIME often picks groups. The Architects of AI (2025), Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (2020), The Guardians (2018) and The Silence Breakers (2017) were all group picks. When a group wins, how your bet settles depends on the sportsbook’s rules, so read them first.

TIME rarely picks midterm winners. In midterm years, TIME has gone elsewhere: Volodymyr Zelensky and the Spirit of Ukraine in 2022, The Guardians in 2018, the Ebola Fighters in 2014 and Mark Zuckerberg in 2010. That’s a real warning for this market, because three of the top ten prices (Talarico, El-Sayed and Ossoff) are midterm winners, and together they now come to about 47% before the margin.

Time Person of the Year 2025

The 2025 Time Person of the Year was the Architects of AI, the group of tech leaders building artificial intelligence. It was announced on December 11, 2025. It was the latest in a long run of non-individual picks, and it’s the main reason the AI options are priced so long this year.

Past Time Person of the Year Winners

Year	Person of the Year
2025	The Architects of AI
2024	Donald Trump
2023	Taylor Swift
2022	Volodymyr Zelensky and the Spirit of Ukraine
2021	Elon Musk
2020	Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
2019	Greta Thunberg
2018	The Guardians
2017	The Silence Breakers
2016	Donald Trump
2015	Angela Merkel

How to Bet on Time Person of the Year

State-licensed sportsbooks in the US don’t offer entertainment or political specials like this, so you won’t find Time Person of the Year odds on the big domestic apps. Offshore sportsbooks like BetOnline do.

Choose a sportsbook from the list below, sign up, and make a first deposit to claim the welcome bonus. The Time Person of the Year market sits with the specials, usually under Entertainment or Politics in the sports menu. Choose your contender, enter your stake, and confirm.

This market settles on TIME’s official announcement in December. Check the rules for how group picks are settled before you bet, because that’s where most disputes happen. For more political markets, see our guide on how to bet on politics.

Where to Bet on Time Person of the Year

Our odds on this page come from BetOnline, but all of these sportsbooks accept US players and offer entertainment and specials markets, plus a welcome bonus for new players.

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