By Monica Anderson, Paul Hitlin and Michelle Atkinson

See our related post: Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in hundreds of languages.

Data for this report come from Pew Research Center analyses of publicly available sources. Data for the number of overall page views for different language versions were compiled from stats.wikimedia.org, and only the 10 language versions of Wikipedia with the most page views in 2015 were included. For the data regarding the top pages by language, Pew Research Center compiled and analyzed the hourly raw page count files posted by Wikimedia, the foundation that runs Wikipedia. Additional analysis was performed using data compiled by Johan Gunnarsson and Wikitrends. Only articles were included, as the home page and search pages were excluded. Researchers also checked each page count total for abnormalities in the data. 

Top 10 articles in English

Rank	Article title		Page Views
1	List of deaths by year		20,764,610
2	Wikipedia		12,032,767
3	Facebook		11,051,093
4	Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)		10,686,129
5	List of Bollywood films of 2015		10,211,130
6	Star Wars: The Force Awakens		10,043,055
7	United States		9,596,130
8	87th Academy Awards		9,496,256
9	Google		9,307,762
10	Game of Thrones		9,169,916

Top 10 articles in Japanese

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	HKT48	Japanese pop group	1,930,377
2	SKE48	Japanese pop group	1,899,463
3	AKB48	Japanese pop group	1,885,675
4	NMB48	Japanese pop group	1,859,064
5	山口組	Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest organized crime group	1,752,063
6	ウィキペディア	Wikipedia	1,588,899
7	アルスラーン戦記	The Heroic Legend of Arslan, an anime series	1,580,877
8	ダンジョンに出会いを求めるのは間違っているだろうか	Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, an anime series	1,543,222
9	日本	Japan	1,479,574
10	スター・ウォーズ・シリーズ	Star Wars	1,479,574

Top 10 articles in Spanish

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Wikipedia		6,531,391
2	Voleibol	Volleyball	3,097,606
3	Baloncesto	Basketball	3,057,037
4	Arroba (símbolo)	Symbol used to represent a unit of mass, widely known as the @ symbol	2,959,188
5	Tabla periódica de los elementos	Periodic table of elements	2,935,342
6	Segunda Guerra Mundial	World War II	2,847,674
7	Copa América 2015	Soccer tournament	2,713,045
8	Estados Unidos	United States	2,696,082
9	Primera Guerra Mundial	World War I	2,683,398
10	Piratas del Caribe	Pirates of the Caribbean	2,586,918

Top 10 articles in German

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Nekrolog_2015	Deaths of 2015	5,694,946
2	Deutschland	Germany	4,575,197
3	Game of Thrones		2,778,905
4	Unix-Shell	User interface for Unix computer operating system	2,584,872
5	Wikipedia		2,383,413
6	Islamischer Staat (Organisation)	ISIS	1,795,835
7	Berlin		1,535,434
8	Vereinigte Staaten	United States	1,488,794
9	Schweiz	Switzerland	1,447,448
10	The Walking Dead (Fernsehserie)	The Walking Dead TV series	1,431,033

Top 10 articles in Russian

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Россия	Russia	3,731,154
2	ВК(VK)	Prominent Russian-language social network	2,814,944
3	Список умерших в 2015 году	Deaths in 2015	2,514,702
4	Игра престолов (телесериал)	Game of Thrones	2,477,666
5	YouTube		2,411,574
6	Путин, Владимир Владимирович	Vladimir Putin, President of Russia	2,295,549
7	Википедия	Wikipedia	2,268,401
8	Левиафан (фильм,_2014)	Leviathan, Russian film	1,966,168
9	Одноклассники (Classmates)	Prominent Russian-language social network	1,945,199
10	Украина	Ukraine	1,944,727

Top 10 articles in French

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Wikipedia		3,656,945
2	État islamique (organisation)	Islamic State (ISIS)	3,148,282
3	France		2,072,668
4	Charlie Hebdo		1,850,171
5	Game of Thrones		1,763,600
6	Liste des épisodes de Naruto Shippuden	List of episodes of Naruto Shippuden, an animated Japanese TV series	1,739,740
7	Facebook		1,569,784
8	Molière	French playwright	1,486,043
9	Victor Hugo	French writer	1,358,510
10	Wiki	Wiki as a web application	1,213,570

Top 10 articles in Italian

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Italia	Italy	1,158,364
2	Il Trono di Spade (serie televisiva)	Game of Thrones	1,065,128
3	Sergio Mattarella	President of Italy	1,059,588
4	Stato Islamico	Islamic State (ISIS)	1,037,341
5	Grey’s Anatomy	Grey’s Anatomy TV series	1,011,676
6	Calendario dei santi	Calendar of Saints	962,151
7	The Walking Dead (serie televisiva)	The Walking Dead	882,224
8	The Vampire Diaries	TV series	868,088
9	Guerre stellari	Star Wars	835,224
10	The Big Bang Theory		738,591

Top 10 articles in Chinese

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Running Man	South Korean TV variety show	4,321,334
2	中华人民共和国	People’s Republic of China	1,804,375
3	朝鲜战争	Korean War	1,208,933
4	巴黎	Paris	1,182,743
5	习近平	Xi Jinping, President of China	1,182,270
6	六四事件	1989 Tiananmen Square protests	1,148,457
7	武则天	Wu Zetian, former Emperor of China	1,141,285
8	英语	English	1,096,379
9	日本	Japan	1,046,509
10	臺灣	Taiwan	1,024,608

Top 10 articles in Portuguese

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Coca-Cola		1,864,490
2	Brasil		1,528,042
3	Lista de episódios de Naruto Shippuden	List of episodes of Naruto Shippuden, an animated Japanese TV series	1,149,292
4	Basquetebol	Basketball	974,937
5	Tamanho de papel	Paper size	875,076
6	Estados Unidos	United States	872,226
7	Segunda Guerra Mundial	World War II	822,658
8	Star Wars		728,514
9	Stephen Hawking		720,339
10	Portugal		705,690

Top 10 articles in Polish

Rank	Article Title	English Translation	Page Views
1	Polska	Poland	1,902,752
2	Andrzej Duda	President of Poland	1,339,472
3	Warszawa	Warsaw	837,834
4	Jan Paweł II	Pope John Paul II	770,840
5	Harry Potter		760,642
6	Gwiezdne wojny	Star Wars	757,077
7	Niemcy	Germany	723,786
8	James Bond		722,886
9	Państwo_Islamskie	Islamic State (ISIS)	713,391
10	Paweł Kukiz	Polish singer and activist	709,788

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of Wikipedia data