2025 marks the 40th character poll conducted by Sanrio. Each prior year for this poll, fans from around the world would vote for their favorite character and hope to see them come out victorious. With dozens of past polls, you may be wondering who won each year.

If you are, you’re in luck! Here, we will go over the winner of the Sanrio character popularity poll each year since it began in 1986. We’ll do our best to lay out the winners, as well as some country-specific winners, but it’s important to note that older polls happened before social media (and the internet) were widespread, so some information is limited.

The 2025 voting window for the Sanrio character poll goes from April 15 to May 25. The results for the poll will be announced on June 29. If you want to see results as votes are cast, you cancheck the voting site for the day-one results. Interim results will also be announced on May 13, allowing you to see how your favorite is doing.

The Sanrio Character Poll Winner By Year

The Sanrio character pollstarted in the magazine called Ichigo Shinbun(Strawberry Newspaper). This is a Sanrio magazine geared towards kids that wasfirst published in 1975.There was actually a character popularity contest starting in 1975,serving as the framework for the character poll that we know today.

Below, you’re able to find thewinner for each year, starting in 1986.It’s worth noting that until 2011, only the top ten slots were announced. Now, you can see all the way to last place!

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

TBA!

These stats are based on the global winners, but Sanrio hasoccasionally shared the winner by country for their ‘overseas ranking’.Below, you can find a table showing the winners based on country. This information isn’t too readily available for earlier years, sowe used all the data we could find on it.

Country and Winner

Thailand - Minna no Tabo

Spain - Cinnamoroll

Looking at the results by country for each year, it definitely looks like Cinnamoroll is taking over the world.

Who Has the Most Wins?

If we went by theglobal results,thenHello Kitty is a clear winner.From 1998 to 2009, she remained number one, and is the only character to hold the title for over a decade straight.

Looking at the results by country though, there is an obvious answer -Cinnamoroll.In the 2018 results, he was number one globally, but didn’t appear on the countries listed. Starting in 2019 though,Cinnamoroll’s popularity seemingly grows.Out of the 14 countries listed for 2014,Cinnamoroll is first in 11 of them.

Some other favorites include Yoshikitty and Pompompurin. If you’re just a bit familiar with Sanrio, you may have no clue who Yoshikitty is. This is actually acharacter created in 2009, based on the Japanese singer Yoshiki, who is a member of the band X Japan.

Interestingly, Yoshikitty is thefirst Sanrio character based on a real person,and is often more popular (on the polls) than Hello Kitty.