Sports internet

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

ESPYs 2026

The 2026 ESPY Awards, aired on ESPN in July from the David H. Koch Theater in New York and hosted by Marcello Hernández. A sports awards show hosted by a sketch comedian in a ballet theatre. The record files the venue, the host and the month.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

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Ferran Torres 106th Minute

The only goal of the 2026 World Cup final, scored by Ferran Torres in the 106th minute of extra time to beat Argentina 1–0 and give Spain a second title. A number that became shorthand within the hour: '106th minute' now means the late, single, decisive thing. The record's entry for a minute that got a name.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Glasgow 2026

The Commonwealth Games held in Glasgow, Scotland, from 23 July to 2 August 2026. A multi-sport event that ran in the shadow of a World Cup that had ended four days before it began, and that the internet covered as a slightly damp encore. The record's entry for the Games that Glasgow got twice.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

India's Third T20 Title

India's win over New Zealand in the final of the 2026 Men's T20 World Cup on 8 March 2026, securing the country's third title. The tournament was hosted by India and Sri Lanka from 7 February. The record's entry for a final that produced a month of edits and one very large number of posts.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

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Josh Kerr's Mile

The mile world record set by British runner Josh Kerr at the London Athletics Meet on 18 July 2026: 3:42.66, beating Hicham El Guerrouj's mark, which had stood since 1999. A record older than most of the people watching it fall. The record's entry for the day the mile got a new number.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Le Mans 2026

The 24 Hours of Le Mans run on 13 and 14 June 2026. One day of racing, one night of people posting that they are still awake, and a Sunday afternoon of people admitting they were not. The record keeps the two dates.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Milan-Cortina 2026

The Winter Olympics held in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, from 6 to 22 February 2026, with the Winter Paralympics following from 6 to 15 March. A 2026 meme roundup names Villain Turned Hero and Covered A Lot Of Ground as the formats that took over feeds after the Games. The record's entry for the fortnight that supplied two templates and one slogan.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

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Nations Championship

A new rugby union competition whose inaugural Southern Hemisphere Series ran from 4 to 18 July 2026, with a Northern Hemisphere Series to follow in November. The first rugby tournament to be explained to the internet before it was played. The record keeps the two windows.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Poland Volleyball Nations League

Poland's win in the FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League final on 2 August 2026 in Ningbo, China, beating the United States 3–2. A five-set final, a Polish victory and a short, loud evening on Polish social media. The record keeps the score.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Romo Steps Back

CBS Sports's announcement in July 2026 that lead NFL analyst Tony Romo had stepped back, made eight days after he was arrested in Milwaukee on suspicion of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. The record files what was announced and no more; the source available to it is incomplete on the terms of the step back.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

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Russia Back at the Olympics

The decision of the International Olympic Committee on 7 July 2026 to lift its ban on the Russian Olympic Committee, allowing Russian athletes to take part in future Games. The record files the date and the decision.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

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Semenyo Chant

The 2026 fan chant for Manchester City striker Antoine Semenyo, set to the tune of Milky's 2002 song Just the Way You Are. The record's entry for a chant that shared its tune with a TikTok remix and lent it a stadium.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

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Viking Row

The Norwegian football chant in which a whole stand rows an invisible longship: a horn sounds, a drum sets the beat, and thousands of supporters perform an exaggerated rowing motion while shouting 'ro' in unison. Performed by Norway fans at the 2026 World Cup, including the Group I match against France, and copied by everyone with a camera. The record's entry for choreography with a drum section.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Women's T20 World Cup 2026

The Women's T20 World Cup played in England and Wales from 12 June to 5 July 2026 and won by Australia. Three and a half weeks of cricket, a home tournament and an Australian trophy, which is a sentence the record has filed before. The record keeps the dates.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

World Baseball Classic 2026

The World Baseball Classic held in Japan and the United States from 5 to 17 March 2026. Thirteen days in which baseball's internet remembered it had national teams and everyone else learned what a pool stage is. The record files the dates and the two host countries.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

World Cup 2026

The FIFA World Cup held across sixteen host cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States from 11 June to 19 July 2026. Spain beat the defending champions Argentina 1–0 in the final after extra time, Ferran Torres scoring in the 106th minute for Spain's second title, sixteen years after the first. The record's entry for the tournament that ran in three time zones and every group chat.

▸ 2026peak 2026still up

☠ Deadn.

Coldplay Kiss Cam

Two executives ducking out of frame at a stadium. Their company had accepted the CEO's resignation within days; the sports teams staging parodies had done so within one.

▸ 2025peak 2025†2025

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Happy Black History Month (Video)

The fight-week interview clip in which Nina-Marie Daniele, the UFC's roving interviewer known online as Nina Drama, wishes Dricus du Plessis a happy Black History Month and asks him about it. Du Plessis, the white South African middleweight champion, answers with a straight face, and Daniele ends the exchange crying with laughter. Posted in February 2025 around UFC 312, the clip went round TikTok, YouTube Shorts and X within days and now comes back every 1 February as a reaction video, a sound and a reply. On file as a video because the two faces, not the sentence, are the meme.

▸ 2025peak 2025still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Mbappé Turtle

The memes that followed Kylian Mbappé's broken nose against Austria at Euro 2024 (17 June) and the black protective mask he wore afterwards — a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Zorro, a fencing lesson, a Batman villain — and the record's entry for a facial injury becoming a costume. It died with France's semi-final exit on 9 July 2024.

▸ 2024peak 2024†2024

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Bottle Job Season

A whole season of bottling rather than one match: a title challenger that leads for months and folds in April. Arsenal in 2023, then again in 2024, were the model, and the phrase now waits for whoever is second in March. The compound of Bottled It, upgraded from an event to a calendar.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

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Drunk Grealish

Jack Grealish across three days of celebrations after Manchester City's treble in June 2023 — sunglasses, a bucket hat, a bottle in each hand, asleep on a plane, still going at the parade — the internet's favourite footballer for about a week. The record notes he later said he 'didn't sleep for three days' and that the internet believed him.

▸ 2023peak 2023still up

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LeBron Glazing

The 2023–24 TikTok phenomenon of teenage boys posting worshipful LeBron James edits — slow motion, 'You Are My Sunshine', 'I love this man', memes of a LeBron on the bedroom wall — half-ironic devotion so complete that 'glazing' became the word for over-praising anyone. The record's entry for a 39-year-old basketball player as a religion for people who never saw him lose.

▸ 2023peak 2024still up

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Tush Push

The Philadelphia Eagles' short-yardage play — quarterback Jalen Hurts snapped, then shoved forward by two teammates — nicknamed the 'tush push' or the 'brotherly shove' in 2022, over 90 per cent successful, and the subject of a league ban vote in May 2025 that fell two votes short. The record's entry for a rugby scrum that became an NFL culture war.

▸ 2022peak 2025still up

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Ben Simmons Passing Up the Dunk

The moment Ben Simmons, alone under the basket in the fourth quarter of a Game 7 against Atlanta on 20 June 2021, passed instead of dunking — the clip that ended his Philadelphia career and became the internet's shorthand for a man declining the obvious. The record notes his coach was asked afterward whether Simmons could be a championship point guard and said 'I don't know', and that the pause was the meme.

▸ 2021peak 2021still up

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Bald Fraud

Pep Guardiola, as named by football Twitter every spring his Manchester City side went out of the Champions League — 'bald fraud', 'the fraud is bald' — a joke that survived a treble in 2023 because it had stopped being about the result and started being about the head. The record's entry for the most successful fraud in the history of the word.

▸ 2019peak 2023still up

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Drive to Survive

Netflix's Formula 1 documentary series, from March 2019, that turned a European engineering sport into an American soap opera with Guenther Steiner as the lead — and, by 2021, the stated reason a new generation of fans owned Red Bull hoodies. The record notes 'DTS fan' is now an insult on F1 Twitter, used by people who found the sport in 2020.

▸ 2019peak 2021still up

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Ferrari Strategy

The internet's name for whatever Ferrari's pit wall decides — 'Ferrari strategy', 'strategy masterclass', 'we are checking' — a genre of meme with its own liturgy since Monaco 2019, when they left Leclerc in the pit for Q1, and its own high mass at Monaco 2022, when they pitted him off the lead into fourth. The record's entry for the most beloved incompetence in sport.

▸ 2019peak 2022still up

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Fraud Watch

Football Twitter's habit of labelling a player or manager a 'fraud' the moment they lose — 'fraud watch', 'the fraud is exposed', 'fraud FC' — a courtroom in which the sentence is always guilty and the appeal is the next match. The record notes 'fraud' now covers anyone who has ever been praised, which is everyone.

▸ 2019peak 2023still up

● Alivephr.✎ 2

Here We Go

Fabrizio Romano's two-word confirmation that a transfer is done — 'Here we go!' — first used around 2019 and by 2023 the most anticipated phrase in football, waited for with the intensity of a papal announcement and imitated by every 'ITK' account with a grey tick. The record's entry for the journalist who became a sound effect.

▸ 2019peak 2023still up

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Maguire Slander

The three-year internet sport of mocking Harry Maguire — the £80 million fee, the head, the slow turn, the Ghanaian parliament speech in which an MP used his name as a byword for failure in February 2023 — and the record's entry for a footballer who took it, kept playing, and quietly became a decent story by 2024. The record notes the slander is now tinged with guilt.

▸ 2019peak 2022still up

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Influencer Boxing

YouTubers fighting YouTubers in a boxing ring, for money, in front of an audience who had watched them argue online — from KSI v Joe Weller in February 2018, through KSI v Logan Paul (2018, 2019), to Jake Paul v Mike Tyson in November 2024, the most-streamed fight ever. The record's entry for the sport built on beef, and for the boxing purists it has driven mad.

▸ 2018peak 2024still up

↺ Undeadphr.✎ 3

It's Coming Home

The chorus of 'Three Lions' (1996) reborn as an internet meme during England's run to the 2018 World Cup semi-final — 'it's coming home', on every video, every pub, every Steve in the country — dying at 2–1 to Croatia on 11 July 2018 and rising for Euro 2020's final in July 2021, where it died again. The record notes it will rise again, and will die again, and that this is the point.

▸ 2018peak 2018†2018

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Kawhi Laugh

Kawhi Leonard's laugh at his first Raptors media day, 24 September 2018 — 'I'm a fun guy', followed by a sound like a machine learning to laugh — clipped, remixed and ringtoned within hours, and adopted by Toronto as a good-luck charm through the 2019 title. The record's entry for the most human thing a famously quiet man has ever done on camera.

▸ 2018peak 2019still up

☠ Deadphr.✎ 2

Ole's at the Wheel

The Manchester United chant — 'Ole's at the wheel, tell me how good does it feel' — from Solskjær's caretaker honeymoon in December 2018 that turned, through three seasons of internet use, into the sarcastic caption for any organisation being driven confidently toward a wall. Died 21 November 2021, the day after a 4–1 defeat at Watford.

▸ 2018peak 2019†2021

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Undertaker 1998

The Reddit copypasta ending — 'in nineteen ninety eight, the Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell in a Cell, and plunged sixteen feet through an announcer's table' — hidden at the end of a plausible comment by user shittymorph since 2017, referencing the King of the Ring match of 28 June 1998. The record's entry for the bait-and-switch that turned a wrestling fall into the internet's best-known Rickroll successor.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

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Banter Era

The name football Twitter gives, with hindsight, to a club's years of comic mediocrity — most famously Arsenal's stretch from around 2011 to 2018, named by its own fans once the pain had turned into material. The record notes every club has a banter era and that Manchester United's began in 2013 and has yet to be officially closed.

▸ 2016peak 2019still up

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Ring Culture

The NBA argument that a player is only as good as their championship count — 'ringz', 'no rings, no argument' — sharpened by Kevin Durant joining a 73-win Warriors team in 2016 and the LeBron–Jordan war that followed. The record notes 'ring culture' is the name given to the argument by people losing it, and that Charles Barkley has zero rings and is doing fine.

▸ 2016peak 2023still up

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Shithousery

The British term for the dark arts done with style. A player who wins a free kick by falling over, then celebrates in the opponent's face, is engaging in shithousery. The word carries admiration: it is what you call gamesmanship when the man doing it is on your side and funny about it.

▸ 2016peak 2022still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 2

Deflategate

The controversy over under-inflated footballs in the Patriots' 45–7 win over Indianapolis on 18 January 2015 — the Wells Report, 'more probable than not', Tom Brady's destroyed phone, a four-game suspension, and two years of internet arguments about the ideal gas law. The record's entry for the scandal that taught NFL Twitter physics and taught nobody anything else.

▸ 2015peak 2015†2016

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Bottled It

To lose from a winning position through nerves — 'bottled it', 'bottlers', 'bottle job' — old British slang that became football Twitter's favourite verdict after Liverpool's 2014 title run ended in a Gerrard slip and a 3–3 draw at Crystal Palace. The record's entry for the word applied to every collapse since, fairly or not.

▸ 2014peak 2019still up

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Dame Time

Damian Lillard's wrist-tap — 'Dame Time' — for a late shot that ends a game, first properly named after his 0.9-second series-winner against Houston on 2 May 2014 and made permanent by the 37-foot shot over Paul George on 23 April 2019 and the wave goodbye that followed. The record's entry for a clock that only one man is allowed to read.

▸ 2014peak 2019still up

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Dark Arts

Time-wasting, tactical fouls, feigned injuries and the long walk off when substituted: the dark arts are the parts of football that win games and are not in the coaching manual. Praised when your team does them and condemned when the other team does. Atlético Madrid and Diego Simeone are the reference point.

▸ 2014peak 2024still up

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Mamba Mentality

Kobe Bryant's name for his own obsessive work ethic — 'Mamba Mentality', after his Black Mamba alter ego — used by him from the mid-2010s, titled onto his 2018 book, and turned by the internet after his death on 26 January 2020 into a universal caption for gym selfies, exam revision and getting up at 4 a.m. The record's entry for a philosophy that survived its author and was applied to leg day.

▸ 2014peak 2020still up

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Pessi and Penaldo

The insult names each side of the Messi–Ronaldo war gives the other — 'Pessi' for a Messi who has just had a bad game, 'Penaldo' for a Ronaldo who has just scored another penalty — in use since around 2014 and never once used by anyone who was undecided. The record's entry for the two nicknames that mean 'I have chosen'.

▸ 2014peak 2022still up

▲ Fossilinterj.✎ 3

Bwoah

'Bwoah' — the sound Kimi Räikkönen made instead of an answer, transcribed by F1 fans around 2013 and used for anything the Finn was asked and did not care about, which was everything. The record's entry for the most articulate non-word in motorsport, retired with its owner in December 2021.

▸ 2013peak 2018†2021

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Pack Opening

The video genre of a person opening virtual packs — FIFA, then Hearthstone, Pokémon, anything sealed — reacting to each card with a scream or a groan, at its height a whole career for YouTubers who spent thousands on camera so that viewers could feel the pull. The record's entry for gambling as content, and for the 'walkout' animation as a religious experience.

▸ 2013peak 2017still up

● Aliveinterj.✎ 3

Siuuu

Cristiano Ronaldo's jump-spin-and-shout celebration — 'siiiiuuu', Spanish for 'yes' stretched to breaking point — first performed at a Real Madrid friendly against Chelsea in August 2013, and now the sound a stadium, a classroom and a comment section make whenever anyone does anything at all. The record's entry for the noise that outlived the goals.

▸ 2013peak 2021still up

▲ Fossiln.✎ 3

Butt Fumble

Mark Sanchez running into his own lineman's backside, fumbling, and watching New England return it for a touchdown on Thanksgiving 2012 — the 'butt fumble' — the play that ESPN's 'Not Top 10' fans voted worst of the week for forty consecutive weeks until the network retired it. The record's entry for the most rewatched play in Jets history, which is the Jets' own fault.

▸ 2012peak 2013†2015