The UK budget tops the list, with the top 10 being international in preference to UK news and events.
On a weekly basis during 2025, YouGov has sustained a survey asking the public what news story they had heard most about.
The 2025 Budget came top, peaking at 64%. Seven of the top 10 stories were international.
Throughout the year, small numbers consistently cited immigration, Gaza, and Ukraine as top stories. This occurred alongside notable peaks in responses to specific events.
Britons consistently cited the controversial actions of Donald Trump as a top story throughout the year.
During 2025, approximately once a week, YouGov asked the British public to tell them the single news story they had heard most about recently. Research respondents answered in their own words. YouGov’s AI-powered language model sorted into categories.
YouGov had compiled the survey results into a timeline. This was to examine the stories & topics that achieved the most cut-through with the public.
Asking the question every 7 days or so inherently presents an incomplete snapshot. News stories invariably fluctuate in popularity between survey waves.
Whenever there are multiple major stories in a given week, the single-story methodology ultimately serves to divide the vote’. This suggests that people may have overlooked such stories. This data was compared with those in other survey waves conducted on weeks that contained only a single dominant news story.
YouGov’s study is subject to these limitations. However, it should have captured the very most significant stories of the year.
The most dominant news story of the year was the 2025 budget. This was not due to Rachel Reeves’s initial unsuccessful attempts to prepare for tax increases. The budget story had peaked at 64% in the survey wave, which was following the fiscal event. Even at much lower rates, it was also the top story in survey waves.
