Name: The 2026 World's Most Admired Companies List
Uploaded: 2026-01-20
Duration: 3 min 29 s
Description: Fortune's annual survey of corporate reputation hosted by Fortune's Matt Heimer.

Fortune's annual survey of corporate reputation hosted by Fortune's Matt Heimer.

The 2026 World's Most Admired Companies List

Franchise_Lists

The world's most admired companies list is Fortune's annual survey of corporate reputation. It's really designed to let the business world know who is getting respect. Hi, my name is Matt Heimer. I am the executive editor for features at Fortune. This year's list kind of reinforces the idea that big tech companies, Microsoft, Amazon, and of course, Apple, who's our number one, are big for a reason, and that reason is strong, strong execution. Amazon and Apple and Microsoft have all had their ups and downs in recent years, but they've stayed at the top of the survey. In fact, they've occupied the top 3 slots for this is the 7th year in a row, because other people in business really understand that the fact that they're able to keep growing even though they're already huge, and the fact that they're able to manage their incredibly complicated. Uh, employee bases and supply chains and all of those things is just a sign of how well they're run. You know, the other big story with this year's list, uh, just as it's a big story anywhere in the business world right now is of course AI. Uh, Nvidia is number 4 this year on our all-star list. They were also in that same spot last year, but just a few years ago they weren't even on the list at all. Uh, and the fact that they've risen so quickly is a reflection of how, uh, dominant they've become in producing the chips that power AI and again, how well they've executed to make sure they stay dominant. There are a couple of newcomers on the list this year who also kind of owe their presence to AI, uh, one. AMD, uh, Advanced Micro Devices, and the other is Workday, which provides a whole kind of range of business services software, but again, it's AI driven and that's one of the reasons that they're gaining admiration. There is some overlap between the most American companies list and the companies that might be consumer favorites. Certainly, if you drop the ball on customer service, or you seem to alienate consumers in some way. That's going to cost you in this survey. Interesting example this year is Target. They have tended to rank pretty high on this list, uh, but this year they fell out of the top 50 completely, and that had something to do with the fact that for whatever reason, and you can learn more about this unfortune.com, but they've kind of lost their consumer popularity a little bit, and to our survey participants, that's sort of a sign that something went wrong managerially. I should add that there are companies on here of which consumers are kind of mostly unaware. You know, one great example that's there almost every year is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing or TSMC. They make so many of the chips that are in so many devices that everybody uses every day, including chips that are used by other companies, but a consumer isn't really ever aware that they're buying something from TSMC. That's not why they're admired. Another newcomer this year, uh, is GE. Aerospace, and that's kind of a great story. A few years ago, GE, the famous old conglomerate, uh, ran into some rough times. They were number one on the all-star list as recently as the late 2000s. Then they got hit hard by the financial crisis, they ran into problems with debt, they invested in some bad businesses. Finally, 3 or 4 years ago, the company essentially decided to break up into smaller companies. And GE Aerospace is the first of those smaller companies to make it onto the most admired companies list, and they are debuting this year. To check out the full all-star list, you want to go to fortune.com and there under most admired companies, you can also find some of the more detailed industry rankings.