Harry Potter beat Star Wars in worldwide Google searches in 57 of the last 61 months. In the U.S. they're dead even, and Potter's big fall lead turns up every single year.
Harry Potter hasn't had a movie in theaters since 2022. Star Wars opened one in May. You'd think that would settle which one is bigger right now.
It doesn't. When we pulled five years of Google Trends data, the first surprise was how lopsided the worldwide numbers are: Potter beat Star Wars in search interest in 57 of 61 months, and all four of Star Wars' wins came in May or June. In the U.S., the two average 35 out of 100 apiece.
We checked search interest, box office, streaming, games, merch, and theme park wait times to find out.
Worldwide, Potter is bigger, and it has been in every year we looked at. In the U.S. it's a coin flip. Star Wars really is slumping at the box office, but the Potter "surge" is mostly a bet on HBO's new series, which premieres Dec. 25.
Potter takes video games and theme park lines without much of a fight, while Star Wars hangs on to Lego, streaming shows and lifetime box office (that last one comes with an asterisk).
HBO Max's official teaser for the series, if you haven't seen it yet:
Is Harry Potter more popular than Star Wars on Google?
Worldwide, yes, and Potter won every year. Over five years it averaged about 34 on Google's scale to Star Wars' 21. The U.S. is messier. Both brands average 35 there, but counted month by month, Potter won 36, Star Wars won 22 and three were ties.
Google Trends doesn't count searches, which trips a lot of people up. It gives interest a score from 0 to 100, and 100 is the single busiest week for either term in that region. We used the English terms, so searches typed in other alphabets don't count for either brand.
The two fan bases search on completely different calendars. Star Wars peaks every May around Star Wars Day, while Potter climbs every holiday season and jumps for big events.
Potter's five-year U.S. high was the week after HBO Max's Return to Hogwarts reunion premiered on New Year's Day 2022, and the Hogwarts Legacy launch in February 2023 made another big spike.
Five years of U.S. search interest, month by month, looks like this:
Potter has led Star Wars in the U.S. every month since September: 38 to 29, then 37 to 28, then 39 to 24 so far in November. Look only at this fall and the surge story sounds right.
So we went back and checked the same three months in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Potter won that stretch all four times, by similar margins. Potter in the fall is basically pumpkin spice. It comes back every year, and every year somebody calls it a comeback.
Line up January through October instead, and Potter's 2026 U.S. average is up about 6% from the same months of 2025. Star Wars is down about 2%.
The number that stuck with us was Star Wars' May. The Mandalorian and Grogu opened May 22, and U.S. Star Wars interest for the month scored 57. May 2025 scored 63 and May 2023 scored 61, and neither of those years had a new movie at all. June trailed too, 40 to 45.
Worldwide, Potter's lead is still big, but it's shrinking, and not because Star Wars picked up any ground. Potter's yearly average slid from about 37 in 2022 to about 30 this year, while Star Wars has sat near 20 since 2023. The 2026 figure only runs through early November, though, so Potter's usual December bump isn't in it yet.
Average worldwide search interest for each brand, year by year:
Which makes more money at the box office, Harry Potter or Star Wars?
Star Wars, if you count everything. We added up The Numbers' figures for all 13 Star Wars movies and got about $10.7 billion worldwide. The Numbers puts the 11 Wizarding World films, meaning the eight Potter movies plus three Fantastic Beasts, at about $9.5 billion.
That's the asterisk. Star Wars had two more movies and a 24-year head start. Divide by the number of films and Potter actually averages more per movie, roughly $860 million to Star Wars' $820 million.
Both franchises have a recent-movie problem, though. The Mandalorian and Grogu made about $346 million worldwide on a reported $165 million budget. That's the lowest of any live-action Star Wars movie, below Solo's $393 million.
Its roughly $82 million three-day opening was the weakest of the Disney era, too, a little under Solo's $84 million, Boxoffice Pro reported. On Disney's Aug. 5 earnings call, CEO Josh D'Amaro put it among franchise films that "don't meet our box office expectations."
Potter's most recent movie had the same problem. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore made $407 million in 2022, about half what the first Fantastic Beasts made in 2016, and it's the lowest-grossing Wizarding World film. No new Wizarding World movie has come out since, and the franchise's next big swing is on TV.
The official trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu, the movie behind most of the "decline" talk:
Is Star Wars or Harry Potter bigger on TV and streaming?
Star Wars, for now, mostly because Potter's show hasn't started yet. Nielsen counted about 33 billion minutes of Star Wars viewing in the U.S. in 2025, in a report put out for Star Wars Day. We looked for a comparable Potter figure and came up empty.
Andor led the live-action shows. Its finale week topped Nielsen's entire streaming chart in May 2025 with 931 million minutes, nudging past Bluey for No. 1.
The movie didn't bring that energy home. The Mandalorian and Grogu hit Disney+ on Sept. 2 and logged about 727 million minutes in its first week, second among movies.
As we reported in September, Masters of the Universe pulled 1.17 billion minutes in its own first week, which is how Mando got outstreamed by He-Man. Masters did reach streaming after a much shorter theatrical window, Gizmodo noted.
Ahsoka season 2 is next on Disney+, on Jan. 20, 2027. The animated Maul: Shadow Lord already ran this spring.
Potter's TV bet is enormous. HBO's Harry Potter series premieres Dec. 25 on HBO and HBO Max, and the plan is seven seasons, one book per season. Only two are officially greenlit so far. TheWrap went through UK filings and estimated that spending has already passed $200 million.
The first trailer drew more than 277 million views in 48 hours, more than double HBO's previous record, Warner Bros. Discovery said. Trailer views aren't viewers, though, and until Nielsen numbers come in, Potter's streaming case is all promise.
Is Hogwarts Legacy bigger than Star Wars games?
Yes, by a mile. Of everything we compared, this was the least competitive. Hogwarts Legacy has sold more than 40 million copies since its February 2023 launch, Warner Bros. said last December. Circana ranked it the best-selling game of 2023 in the U.S., which snapped a 14-year run of Call of Duty and Rockstar games at No. 1.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor came in No. 9 that same year. EA said in 2024 that more than 40 million fans had "connected with" hero Cal Kestis across its two Jedi games. That counts players, not copies sold, so you can't really line it up against the Hogwarts Legacy number.
Ubisoft said Star Wars Outlaws "underperformed sales expectations" in 2024. EA's new tactics game, Star Wars Zero Company, passed 1 million copies about six weeks after its August launch, the company said in October.
Warner Bros. Discovery's August shareholder letter lists "the second installment of Hogwarts Legacy" in its games pipeline. No title or date yet.
Who sells more merch, Star Wars or Harry Potter?
This is where our digging hit a wall, because nobody publishes clean sales totals brand by brand. License Global's 2026 ranking put Disney at No. 1 among the world's licensors, with an estimated $63 billion in retail sales, and Warner Bros. Discovery at No. 7. Those figures cover every brand each company owns, from Mickey to Batman.
Lego gave us a cleaner comparison. Lego Star Wars made the toymaker's list of its five bestselling themes for 2025. Lego Harry Potter made the 2024 list and then dropped off for 2025, replaced by Botanicals. So yes, Hogwarts got bumped from the top five by a line of fake flowers.
Disney also says Star Wars merch got a lift this year. D'Amaro said The Mandalorian and Grogu "drove healthy growth in retail sales for the Star Wars franchise." Grogu didn't fill theaters, but the little guy still moves merch.
On the Potter side, the merch push is lined up behind the show. The Noble Collection renewed its Potter film license in April and picked up global rights to the HBO series, starting with wands based on the show's new designs, License Global reported. Hasbro, which already makes Star Wars toys, becomes Potter's main global toy licensee in 2027.
Until the show and Hasbro's line arrive, the evidence we could find leans Star Wars.
Which is more popular at the theme parks, Potter or Star Wars?
Potter, by a lot, if you go by the wait-time signs. We pulled 2025 averages from Queue-Times, which tracks posted waits. Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, the headliner of Epic Universe's Ministry of Magic, averaged 119 minutes, the longest at the park. Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Islands of Adventure averaged 110.
Disney's top Star Wars ride, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, averaged 52 minutes at Hollywood Studios and 56 at Disneyland. Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run averaged 26 and 23.
The Epic numbers need some context. The park opened May 22, 2025, and drew about 4 million visits in that partial year, the Themed Entertainment Association estimated, so those were brand-new-park lines. This year, Battle at the Ministry's average has cooled to 91 minutes, second at Epic behind Donkey Kong's Mine-Cart Madness.
Epic hasn't been all good news for Universal. Comcast said its theme park profit fell 17% last quarter and pointed in part to capacity and ride throughput problems at Epic Universe.
Disney keeps tinkering with Star Wars at its parks. It closed the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel in September 2023, about 19 months after it opened.
This year it brought Darth Vader, Luke, Leia and Han into Disneyland's Galaxy's Edge, loosening that land's sequel-era timeline. Disney World's land is keeping its sequel-era focus. Smugglers Run also got a new Mando and Grogu mission on both coasts.
Potter belongs to Warner Bros., and its theme park lands are Universal's, which means every hour somebody spends in line for Battle at the Ministry is an hour spent at Disney's biggest Orlando rival. Star Wars, of course, is Disney's own.
What's next for Harry Potter and Star Wars?
Potter's next 90 days are stacked. The HBO series premieres Dec. 25, with Season 2 production starting this fall.
On Broadway, Tom Felton plays Draco in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child through Jan. 3, and Rupert Grint arrives as Ron on Feb. 2. The play was Broadway's top grosser in early March, at about $2.45 million in a single week.
Warner Bros. Discovery also plans a Harry Potter tour in Shanghai next year and a Harry Potter land in Abu Dhabi within a few years, and it expects the show to "boost the demand for the Harry Potter Experiences and consumer products."
Star Wars heads into its 50th anniversary year under new management. Dave Filoni became Lucasfilm's president and chief creative officer in January, with Lynwen Brennan as co-president, as Kathleen Kennedy stepped down to go back to producing.
Their 2027 opens with Ahsoka season 2 on Jan. 20, followed by Star Wars Celebration in Los Angeles for the 50th, April 1 to 4. Then Star Wars: Starfighter, Shawn Levy's movie with Ryan Gosling, opens May 28, 2027. That's Memorial Day weekend. Yes, again, the same slot where Mando stumbled.
Then there's the corporate drama. Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to be bought by Paramount Skydance in a roughly $111 billion deal, and lawsuits from 12 states and the Writers Guild have it on hold until as late as June 1, 2027, NPR reported. Potter could get a new corporate owner right in the middle of its reboot.
What could trip up Harry Potter or Star Wars?
Potter's risk is its author, J.K. Rowling. Her public comments about transgender people have drawn backlash for years, and her role as an executive producer on the HBO series drew fan criticism. HBO said in 2024 that she "has a right to express her personal views." No chart can tell us yet whether any of it costs the show viewers.
For Star Wars, it's fatigue, and you can see it in our search data. This year's U.S. Star Wars Day peak was 77, lower than in 2022, 2023 or 2025, and that was with a new movie three weeks away.
The Acolyte got canceled after one season in 2024. Solo and Mando both came up short on Memorial Day weekend. Andor's finale showed fans will still turn out when Star Wars gets it right, but they've stopped turning out for everything with the logo on it.
So, is Harry Potter bigger than Star Wars right now?
Worldwide, yes. Potter has led Star Wars in worldwide search interest for five straight years, and it's winning in the places where fans spend real hours: video games and theme park lines.
In the U.S., call it a tie. Potter's lead there right now is the same fall bump it gets every year, and Star Wars still has the bigger lifetime box office, Lego and original streaming shows.
So our editor was half right. Star Wars' decline is real at the box office and on Star Wars Day, but we didn't see it in Lego or in Andor's numbers. Potter's rise is mostly a forecast at this point, and the data can't see it yet.
For Disney fans, the biggest threat to Star Wars right now looks less like the Empire and more like a wizard down the road at Universal.
Check back in January, once HBO's show has had a few weeks to land. If it hits the way its trailer did, this won't be much of a debate. If it doesn't, Star Wars will still have Grogu, and Grogu will still be selling merch.
Article compiled and written by Kambrea Pratt (editor-in-chief), Derek Gibbs (beat editor) and the Pirates & Princesses newsroom. Pirates & Princesses is part of WebReef Media.
Pirates and Princesses is your destination for Disney news, theme park updates, and the pop culture you love. From Disney cruises and travel tips to Disney fashion, food, collectibles, and movie news, PNP covers it all. Visit us at piratesandprincesses.net for daily coverage. Follow PNP on Facebook and Instagram, and listen to the Pirates & Princesses podcast on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Hat Tips:
Google Trends (Nov. 5, 2026), our analysis of U.S. and worldwide search interest in "Harry Potter" and "Star Wars," November 2021 to November 2026
The Numbers (retrieved Nov. 5, 2026), Star Wars and Wizarding World box office totals and The Mandalorian and Grogu's gross and budget
Boxoffice Pro (May 24, 2026), The Mandalorian and Grogu's opening weekend compared with Solo
The Walt Disney Company (Aug. 5, 2026), Josh D'Amaro's earnings call remarks on box office and Star Wars retail sales
KATV (May 4, 2026), Nielsen's 33 billion minutes of Star Wars viewing in 2025 and the top titles
TheWrap (June 12, 2025), the Andor finale topping Nielsen's streaming chart
Gizmodo (Sept. 18, 2026), The Mandalorian and Grogu and Masters of the Universe streaming minutes and windows
Space.com (Aug. 17, 2026), Ahsoka season 2 premiere date
Engadget (Jan. 22, 2026), Maul: Shadow Lord's spring run
TheWrap (Oct. 23, 2026), the HBO series spending estimate and season plans
Warner Bros. Discovery (March 27, 2026), the trailer's 277 million views and the HBO and HBO Max premiere
Push Square (Dec. 17, 2025), Hogwarts Legacy passing 40 million copies
GameSpot (retrieved Nov. 5, 2026), Circana's 2023 U.S. best-sellers list
GamesRadar+ (Sept. 17, 2024), EA's Jedi player count
Shacknews (Oct. 30, 2024), Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws comments
Push Square (Oct. 9, 2026), Star Wars Zero Company passing 1 million copies
Warner Bros. Discovery (Aug. 6, 2026), second-quarter shareholder letter: the Hogwarts Legacy sequel, the HBO series outlook and the Shanghai and Abu Dhabi plans
Licensing International (Aug. 17, 2026), License Global's 2026 Top Global Licensors ranking
Spielwarenmesse (retrieved Nov. 5, 2026), Disney's estimated $63 billion in licensed retail sales
Brick Fanatics (retrieved Nov. 5, 2026), Lego's bestselling themes for 2024 and 2025
Fantha Tracks (March 12, 2026), Lego's 2025 full-year results
License Global (April 27, 2026), The Noble Collection's HBO series rights
Business Wire (Feb. 10, 2026), Hasbro's Harry Potter toy license
Queue-Times (retrieved Nov. 5, 2026), 2025 and 2026 average posted wait times at Epic Universe, Islands of Adventure, Hollywood Studios and Disneyland
Attractions Magazine (Oct. 27, 2026), TEA's 2025 attendance estimates and Epic Universe's opening date
BlogMickey (Oct. 22, 2026), Comcast's third-quarter theme park results
The Walt Disney Company (Jan. 29, 2026), Disneyland's Galaxy's Edge timeline changes
Disney Parks Blog (March 8, 2025), the Mando and Grogu Smugglers Run mission
Attractions Magazine (May 18, 2023), the Galactic Starcruiser closing and opening dates
Playbill (Nov. 4, 2026), Tom Felton's and Rupert Grint's Cursed Child dates
BroadwayWorld (March 10, 2026), Cursed Child's weekly gross
Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Studios via ILM (Jan. 15, 2026), the Lucasfilm leadership change
Engadget (April 20, 2025), Star Wars Celebration 2027 dates and location
TheWrap (April 17, 2025), Star Wars: Starfighter's Memorial Day weekend date
TechRadar (Aug. 18, 2026), Starfighter's director and star
NPR via VPM (July 24, 2026), the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery deal pause
TheWrap (Nov. 20, 2024), HBO's statement on J.K. Rowling
WDWNT (Aug. 19, 2024), The Acolyte's cancellation
AI Disclosure: All articles are assigned, edited and reviewed by an experienced human editor before posting. Like most modern newsrooms, WebReef Media uses a variety of AI tools to help with accuracy and efficiency. Ways AI may be used in article creation include research, grammar, fact-checking and ideation, as well as occasional AI generated or enhanced thumbnails or graphics. No articles are generated or posted without human oversight or involvement.