TIME Person of the Year 2026 carries roughly $898K in cumulative volume across 25 named contracts, up from $446K at the June review. The field runs from politicians and a pope to the four Artemis II astronauts and two non-person entries, artificial intelligence and ChatGPT. The live board above ranks the current price on every name; the market resolves when TIME publishes its 2026 selection in December 2026.
A single name has separated from the TIME Person of the Year 2026 field. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani now leads the board outright, and he does it on real depth rather than a thin quote: his contract alone carries $329K of the market's $898K in cumulative volume, better than a third of everything traded on this question. Donald Trump led this board at its late-June review and now sits third, behind Mamdani and Pope Leo XIV. Cumulative volume has roughly doubled since then and the field has grown to 25 named contracts. The live board above is the only current price snapshot worth trusting.
The top of the board is a four-name group with a clear order to it. Mamdani is the outright favorite, a first-year mayor whose administration has driven national coverage since he took office in January 2026. Pope Leo XIV holds second, running through the first full year of an American papacy that began in May 2025. Trump sits third, and that is the genuinely new information on this page: a sitting president is normally the gravitational center of a TIME field, and he has drifted behind two names that were not treated as serious contenders at the last review. Elon Musk holds fourth, five years after his own 2021 selection.
TIME's own precedent explains why an incumbent president does not automatically own this board. TIME named Trump in 2016 and again in 2024, and a third selection would be unusual without a new defining story attached to it. The magazine's editors reward the year's dominant narrative, not the year's most powerful office, which is exactly how the mayor of one city outprices a president.
Depth is lopsided across the two books. Kalshi carries roughly $883K of the $898K traded here, with Polymarket at about $15K. Twenty-one of the 25 names are priced on both platforms, and four (Mojtaba Khamenei, Lionel Messi, Péter Magyar, and Xi Jinping) trade only on Kalshi. A thin Polymarket book on a long-shot name will show a wider gap against Kalshi than the top of the board does, and that is a liquidity artifact rather than a signal about the outcome.
The board carries two non-person contracts, artificial intelligence and ChatGPT, priced alongside the people building them. That is not a quirk of the listing. TIME has gone non-human before, naming the computer its 1982 Machine of the Year, "You" in 2006, and group selections such as the Silence Breakers in 2017. Artificial intelligence is the second-highest-volume contract on the entire board at $129K, ahead of Trump, though its price has slid out of the top tier since June. Among the founders, Dario Amodei now trades ahead of Sam Altman, a reversal from the last review. Readers tracking that lane can compare it against the best AI model 2026 odds.
The most distinctive bloc in the field is four astronauts. Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman are the Artemis II crew, assigned to the first crewed flight around the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972. All four are priced inside a narrow band of each other and together they form the largest cluster in the market's middle tier. The precedent is direct: TIME named the Apollo 8 crew its 1968 Men of the Year for the first flight around the Moon, and traders are pricing the Artemis II four as effectively one editorial outcome split across four contracts.
The rest of the tail runs through global politics and culture. Two Iranian figures, Mojtaba Khamenei and Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, sit in the single digits, as do Benjamin Netanyahu, Shehbaz Sharif, Marco Rubio, Xi Jinping, and Péter Magyar. Culture is represented by Bad Bunny, Lionel Messi, Taylor Swift (already the 2023 selection), and figure skater Alysa Liu, the cheapest name on the board. None of them is a favorite. All of them stay live in a market decided by an editorial committee rather than a scoreboard.
The market resolves on TIME's official announcement of its 2026 Person of the Year, traditionally published in early-to-mid December 2026, with the contract settlement window dated to January 1, 2027. The winning name is determined solely by TIME's published selection. There is no vote, no points system, and no appeal: whoever TIME's editors put on the cover wins, and every other contract settles at zero.
The factors below move the TIME Person of the Year 2026 board more than anything else between now and the December reveal.
For a parallel committee-decided honor with its own deep field, the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 odds run on the same kind of editorial guesswork this board does. On the culture side, the Spotify top artist 2026 market tracks Bad Bunny's streaming crown and the Best Picture 2027 Oscars odds cover the next awards cycle. Traders following the astronaut bloc should also watch the human moon landing 2026 market, which prices the spaceflight timeline that keeps the Artemis II crew live here. Browse the full slate of entertainment prediction markets for awards, streaming, and pop-culture contracts.
Resolves to the individual or entity named TIME magazine's Person of the Year for 2026, as published by TIME, with a settlement window dated to January 1, 2027. TIME traditionally reveals the selection in early-to-mid December 2026. The source of truth is TIME's official announcement; there is no vote or scoring system. Each named contract pays out if that name is selected and settles at zero otherwise. A concept or group (for example, artificial intelligence or ChatGPT, both listed on this board) can win if TIME names it. If TIME does not name a 2026 Person of the Year, the market resolves per the platform's stated rules for that contingency.
As of August 17, 2026, Zohran Mamdani leads the 25-name field at 31c, with Pope Leo XIV at 17c and Donald Trump at 14c. The live board above updates continuously across Kalshi and Polymarket.
It resolves when TIME publishes its 2026 Person of the Year, traditionally revealed in early-to-mid December 2026, with a settlement window dated to January 1, 2027. TIME's official announcement is the sole source of truth.
The question trades on both Kalshi and Polymarket, with 21 of the 25 named contracts priced on both books and roughly $898K in cumulative volume. Kalshi carries about $883K of that depth, so tail names quote far thinner on Polymarket.
As of August 17, 2026, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is the outright favorite at 31c, having passed Donald Trump since the June review. His contract alone holds $329K of the board volume, more than a third of the market.
Watch the Artemis II schedule, which moves four crew contracts at once, and the artificial intelligence storyline heading into December 2026. TIME names whoever most shaped the year, so the November and December news cycle reprices the top tier fast.