Time Person of the Year


Person of the Year, called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year until 1999, is an annual issue of the American news magazine and website Time featuring a person, group, idea, or object that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year". The Time website or a partner organization also runs an annual online reader's poll that has no effect on the selection, although no poll was held in 2023 or 2024.

Background

The tradition of selecting a "Man of the Year" began privately in 1927, with Time editors contemplating the news makers of the year after a series of "slow news days" leading up to New Year's Day. The idea originally focused on a Man of the Week before it was decided to use Charles Lindbergh to represent the predominant story of 1927, with the magazine listing him as Man of the Year being published in early 1928. The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Lindbergh on its cover following his historic transatlantic flight. By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes. Before the online poll was instituted, "readers were invited to weigh in by mail."

Selection

State leaders

Since the list began, every serving president of the United States has been a Man or Person of the Year at least once, with the exceptions of Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford. Most were named Man or Person of the Year either the year they were elected or while they were in office; the only one to be given the title before being elected was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1944, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Invasion Force, eight years before his first election. He received the title again in 1959 while in office. Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first chosen US president and is the only person to have received the title three times, first as president-elect and later as the incumbent president. Below is a list of all countries' heads of state or government to have been chosen as Man, Woman, or Person of the Year.
Number of selectionsOfficeName
24 President of the United States ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; and
6 General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ; ; ; and
4Chancellor of Germany ; ; ; and
3Pope John XXIII ; John Paul II ; and Francis
2 Paramount leader of the People's Republic of China
2Prime Minister of France ; and
1Premier of the Republic of China
1President of Egypt
1Emperor of Ethiopia
1Prime Minister of Iran
1Supreme Leader of Iran
1Prime Minister of Israel
1President of the Palestinian National Authority
1President of the Philippines
1President of Russia
1King of Saudi ArabiaFaisal
1State President of South Africa
1President of Ukraine
1Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realmsElizabeth II

; Notes
Winston Churchill was chosen a second time for the special "Man of the Half-Century" edition in 1949 while serving as Leader of the Opposition before his second premiership; Charles de Gaulle was chosen while being elected President of France before formally taking office; Lech Wałęsa and Nelson Mandela were chosen before being elected President of Poland and President of South Africa, respectively.

Women

Before 1999, four women were granted the title as individuals: three as "Woman of the Year"—Wallis Simpson, Queen Elizabeth II, and Corazon Aquino —and one as half of "Man and Wife of the Year", Soong Mei-ling in 1937. "American Women" were recognized as a group in 1975. Other classes of people recognized comprise both men and women, such as "Hungarian Freedom Fighters", "U.S. Scientists", "The Inheritors", "The Middle Americans", "The American Soldier", "You", "The Protester", and "Ebola Fighters". However, the title on the magazine remained "Man of the Year" for both the 1956 "Hungarian Freedom Fighter" and the 1966 "Twenty-five and Under" editions which both featured a woman standing behind a man, and "Men of the Year" on the 1960 "U.S. Scientists" edition which exclusively featured men on its cover. It was not until the 1969 edition on "The Middle Americans" that the title embraced "Man and Woman of the Year".
In 1999, the title was changed to the gender-neutral "Person of the Year". Women who have been selected for recognition after the renaming include "The Whistleblowers" in 2002; Melinda Gates in 2005; Angela Merkel ; "The Silence Breakers" ; Greta Thunberg ; Kamala Harris in 2020; Taylor Swift ; and "The Architects of AI" in 2025. To celebrate International Women's Day in 2020, Time editors released 89 new magazine covers, each showing women, in addition to the 11 already chosen, as counterparts to the Man of the Year choices from the past century. Since 2022, Time has awarded a separate "Women of the Year" title to a number of women each year, in a similar fashion to Time 100.

Groups and non-humans

Despite the name, the title is not just granted to individuals. Pairs of people such as married couples and political opponents, classes of people, and inanimate objects have all been selected for the special year-end issue.
Multiple named people
Classes of unnamed people
Inanimate objects
  • The Computer
  • The Endangered Earth
Abstract concepts
In 1949, Winston Churchill was named Man of the Half-Century, and the last issue of 1989 named Mikhail Gorbachev as "Man of the Decade". The December 31, 1999 issue of Time named Albert Einstein the "Person of the Century". Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi were chosen as runners-up. Aside from Einstein, the December 31 edition also named Persons of the Century for every century of the 2nd millennium: William the Conqueror for the 11th century, Saladin for the 12th century, Genghis Khan for the 13th century, Giotto for the 14th century, Johannes Gutenberg for the 15th century, Elizabeth I for the 16th century, Isaac Newton for the 17th century, Thomas Jefferson for the 18th century, and Thomas Edison for the 19th century.

Controversial choices

Despite the magazine's frequent statements to the contrary, the designation is often regarded as an honor and spoken of as an award or prize, simply based on many previous selections of admirable people. Time observes that controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Ayatollah Khomeini have also been granted the title for their impact on events. Nevertheless, as a result of the cancellation of subscriptions from the American audience for naming Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979, following the Iran hostage crisis, the magazine's editors have since shied away from using figures who are controversial in the United States, fearing reductions in sales or advertising revenue.
Times Person of the Year for 2001, immediately following the September 11 attacks, was Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the attacks. The stated rules of selection—the individual or group of individuals who have had the bigger influence on the year's events—made Osama bin Laden the more likely choice that year; however, Giuliani was selected for symbolizing the American response to the attacks, in the same way that Albert Einstein was selected Person of the Century for representing a century of scientific exploration and wonder instead of Adolf Hitler, who was arguably a stronger candidate.

Withdrawn and alleged selections

In 1941, the fictional elephant Dumbo from Walt Disney's animated film of the same name was selected to be "Mammal of the Year", and a cover was created showing the title character in a formal portrait style. However, the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 pre-empted the cover. The U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was named Man of the Year for a record third time, although Dumbo's Mammal of the Year profile still appeared on the inside pages of the magazine.
Filmmaker Michael Moore claims that director Mel Gibson cost him the opportunity to be Person of the Year alongside Gibson in 2004. Moore's controversial political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 became the highest-grossing documentary of all time the same year Gibson's The Passion of the Christ became a box-office success and also caused significant controversy. Moore said in an interview "I got a call right after the '04 election from an editor from Time Magazine. He said,' Time Magazine has picked you and Mel Gibson to be Time's Person of the Year to put on the cover, Right and Left, Mel and Mike. The only thing you have to do is pose for a picture with each other. And do an interview together.' I said 'OK.' They call Mel up, he agrees. They set the date and time in LA. I'm to fly there. He's flying from Australia. Something happens when he gets home ... Next thing, Mel calls up and says, 'I'm not doing it. I've thought it over and it is not the right thing to do.' So they put Bush on the cover."
U.S. president Donald Trump claimed on Twitter in November 2017 that Time editors had told him he would "probably" be named Person of the Year for a second time, conditional on an interview and photo shoot, which he had refused. Time denied that they had made any such promises or conditions to Trump, who was named a runner-up.