Oasis Overtakes The Beatles to Score U.K.’s Bestselling Studio Album of All Time
Oasis's 1995 album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? has been named the UK's bestselling studio album of all time, overtaking The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The new ranking was published by the Official Charts Company as part of its 70th-anniversary celebrations, and reflects an updated methodology combining traditional sales with a decade of streaming data. The recognition comes as Oasis enjoy a renewed surge in popularity following last summer's Live '25 reunion tour and "Wonderwall" re-entering the charts.
Queen's Greatest Hits and ABBA's Gold remain the two bestselling albums overall, with 7.8 million and 7.1 million chart units respectively, but Oasis's record ranks third with 6.2 million units, making it the highest-placed studio album. Adele's 21 sits fourth with 5.7 million units, the only 21st-century album in the top ten, pushing Sgt. Pepper's (5.6 million units) down the list. The rest of the top ten features Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Bob Marley & The Wailers' Legend and Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, while Ed Sheeran's Divide is the most recent album to make the wider top 70.
In short
- Oasis's Morning Glory? named UK's bestselling studio album, beating The Beatles
- New chart uses updated Official Charts Company data including streaming
- Queen and ABBA compilations still top the overall bestselling albums list
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The updated methodology more accurately reflects how people genuinely listen to music today. Streaming now represents the dominant form of music consumption, and excluding it creates an artificially incomplete picture of an album's reach and enduring popularity. By incorporating streaming data, the Official Charts Company provides a comprehensive measure that acknowledges how audiences actually engage with music in 2026, rather than being bound to outdated metrics that no longer represent consumer behaviour.
The case against
Retroactively changing the ranking methodology fundamentally alters what "bestselling" means and rewrites history unfairly. Traditional sales figures measured deliberate purchases where consumers spent money; streaming behaviour is far more passive and casual, making the metrics incomparable. Albums from recent decades automatically gain an advantage by being assessed with streaming data, whilst older classics cannot benefit from the same standard, creating an inherently skewed comparison across eras rather than an apples-to-apples measure of historical achievement.
Explained simply
Album charts measure how many times music has been bought or streamed, and the Official Charts Company tracks these figures in the UK. Its latest all-time ranking combines traditional sales with a decade of streaming data, so it reflects more than physical records and downloads.
Oasis are a British rock band whose 1995 album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? includes songs such as “Wonderwall”. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is another influential British album, released in 1967, and has long ranked among the country’s bestsellers.
The ranking distinguishes studio albums, made up of newly recorded songs, from greatest-hits collections. That matters because compilations by Queen and ABBA still lead the overall list, while the new record identifies the best-selling studio album.
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