It’s that time again! The 2026 Sanrio Character Ranking site is open for voting now to find out which characters are the favourites, plus you can vote for some new friends and buy some cute merch.
This year’s theme is ‘You All Try! We All Cheer! Smiling Ovation!’ with the characters cheering everyone on with pom-poms, megaphones, and flags.
In the 2025 ranking results, Pompompurin took a surprise win for the first time, with Cinnamoroll and Pochacco filling out the podium. This year there’s 90 Sanrio characters to choose from again, including the biggest names, some nostalgic older characters and a few newer friends, and you can vote every day to spread the cheers around.
There’s an extra voting section this year too, for the Happilinafriends. These are 10 brand new characters and presumably the most popular will get to join the regular gang. There’s 3 awards to assign and all the characters have little profiles to help you decide. There’s some really adorable ones, including a strawberry chinchilla, ice cream unicorns, decoden dolphin, fairy bear and grumpy bunny.
Sanrio Japan (requires forwarding service) have also released some new products to celebrate and it’s always a good time for fans of less popular characters. There’s colourful rubber cord keychains for 40 different characters available individually and you can also try your luck with the blind bags for a compact mini brush & mirror. There’s also some Happilinafriends merch coming on the 15th.
How to vote
You can vote every day in both rankings until the 24th of May and Sanrio will be releasing regular updates on how the voting is going on the special Twitter/X account. It’s also worth following the official Instagram accounts @hellokittyeu (EU & UK) and @sanrio (US) for regional updates and offers. If you’re near the ARTBOX Cafe in Brighton UK, make sure to visit during the voting period as they’ll have a new themed menu, plus free badges, exclusive merch and more fun stuff. Check their Instagram for more details.
Who are you voting for?
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