Making History Again

Courtesy of Warner Music

The official results are in: Confessions II is Madonna’s 10th album to reach the top of the Billboard 200, the album chart of reference for the United States. 43 years after her debut album, Madonna becomes the first act with a No. 1 album in the 2020s to have also topped the chart in 3 other decades, the 1980s (3 No. 1s), the 2000s (4) and the ‘10s (two).

Confessions II launches with 134,000 equivalent album units in the week ending July 9, according to Luminate, marking the largest week for a dance album this year and Madonna’s own best week, by units, since the Billboard 200 transitioned to an equivalent album units-ranked list at the end of 2014.

In a world increasingly dominated by streaming, Confessions II debuts at the top of Billboard 200 largely thanks to 114,000 pure sales (in fact, it will also be No. 1 on Top Album Sales ). An additional 19,000 streaming equivalent albums equal 20.1 million on-demand official streams of the full set of songs – Madonna’s largest streaming week ever for an album – and 1,000 track equivalent albums. Date from the three different categories, compiled by Luminate, let the Billboard 200 chart rank the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption.

Of the album’s opening-week sales, purchases of the 15 vinyl variants reached 59,000 units, marking Madonna’s biggest week on vinyl since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991.

The complete July 18, 2026-dated chart will be posted by Billboard on July 14. Read more in the story by Keith Caulfield on Billboard.com.

With the Billboard 200 Top 10 albums announced today, Confessions II expands to the highly competitive U.S. market a success that has seen the new Madonna album enter straight to No. 1 the charts in major markets including Australia, France, Italy, and the UK as well as Austria, Finland, The Netherland, Belgium (Flanders and Wallonie have two separate charts) Scotland and Switzerland.

Madonna’s #1 albums in the U.S.

• Like a Virgin (1985)
• True Blue (1986)
• Like A Prayer (1989)
• Music (2000)
• American Life (2003)
• Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005)
• Hard Candy (2008)
• MDNA (2012)
• Madame X (2019)
• Confessions II (2026)

The Madonna albums that reached No. 2

• I’m Breathless (1990)
• The Immaculate Collection (1991)
• Erotica (1992)
• Evita (1997)
• Ray of Light (1998)
• Rebel Heart (2015)

With Confessions II, Madonna also becomes one of just four acts to have earned at least 10 No. 1s on both the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard’s two leading charts for albums and songs, respectively. Read the full story on Billboard.com.