Top 25 Brands Sponsoring YouTube Creators in 2026

If you run a YouTube channel, you already know the question that nags at every creator eventually: which brands are actually spending money on sponsorships right now?

Not which brands used to sponsor creators three years ago. Not which ones send free products and call it a “collab.” Which companies are writing checks to YouTubers in 2026, and how many creators are they working with?

We pulled the data from SponsorRadar’s database to answer that question directly. Below you’ll find the 25 most active YouTube sponsors ranked by creator count, plus context on what each brand is actually looking for.

How We Compiled This List

SponsorRadar tracks sponsored segments across hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos. Our system detects brand mentions, verifies them against known sponsor databases, and links each integration back to the brand that paid for it.

For this ranking, we pulled every brand in our database and sorted them by unique creator count — meaning the number of distinct YouTube channels each brand has sponsored. A brand that sponsors one creator 50 times still counts as one creator relationship. This gives you a clearer picture of how broadly each company is investing across the ecosystem.

The data updates daily. What you see below is a live snapshot from our database, not a static list that goes stale in a month.

The Top 25 YouTube Sponsors in 2026

Here they are. Every brand name links to its full profile on SponsorRadar, where you can see exactly which creators they’ve worked with, the types of videos they sponsor, and their sponsorship history.

This table updates as our database grows. If a brand you expected to see isn’t listed, it likely means their creator count hasn’t reached the threshold of the current top 25 — but you can still search for them on our brands page.

The Brands That Keep Showing Up

Some patterns are hard to miss when you look at the data.

Ground News: The Volume King of 2025

Ground News came out of nowhere to claim the top spot by sponsorship volume in the first half of 2025. According to data reported by creators and tracked across sponsorship platforms, they logged 1,863 integrations with a staggering +202% year-over-year increase (Source: SponsorRadar tracking data, H1 2025). That’s not a typo.

Their playbook is simple: sponsor as many mid-size creators as possible across every niche imaginable. Tech, politics, education, gaming — if you have an engaged audience, Ground News is probably interested. Their cost-per-acquisition math clearly works, because they haven’t slowed down.

NordVPN: The Longest-Running YouTube Sponsor

NordVPN has been sponsoring YouTubers since 2012. Over 3,000 unique creators have run NordVPN integrations at some point (Source: SponsorRadar historical data). They’re the brand that essentially wrote the playbook for YouTube sponsorships.

What’s interesting is that NordVPN hasn’t just stuck with the same pool of mega-creators. They continuously rotate through new channels, testing smaller creators alongside household names. If you’ve been growing your channel and haven’t heard from a VPN brand yet, you probably will soon.

HelloFresh: Betting Big on Creator Diversity

HelloFresh ran sponsorships with 303 unique creators in 2022 alone (Source: SponsorRadar tracking data, 2022). They’ve continued that strategy into 2026, spreading their budget across lifestyle, family, cooking, and even gaming channels.

The meal-kit model thrives on YouTube because the integration is natural. Creators can show the box, cook the food, and talk about it for 60 seconds without it feeling forced. HelloFresh figured that out early and doubled down.

Key Trends in the 2026 Sponsor Landscape

VPNs and Software Still Dominate

Look at the top 25 and you’ll notice that software and digital service companies make up a disproportionate share. VPNs, browser extensions, cloud tools, and mobile apps are everywhere. The economics make sense: digital products have near-zero marginal cost, so every new customer acquired through a YouTube sponsorship is almost pure margin.

Physical product companies like HelloFresh and AG1 are the exception, not the rule. They can afford it because their subscription models generate enough lifetime value to justify the cost-per-acquisition.

The Mid-Size Creator Boom

The biggest shift we’ve tracked is brands moving downstream. Three years ago, most of these top 25 brands focused on channels with 500K+ subscribers. Now, channels in the 50K–200K range are getting the majority of new sponsorship deals.

Why? Engagement rates. A creator with 80,000 subscribers who gets 30,000 views per video often converts better than a creator with 2 million subscribers who gets 200,000 views. The math has shifted, and brands have noticed. If you’re in that mid-size range, you’re in the sweet spot.

We wrote a full breakdown on this in our guide to YouTube sponsors for small channels.

Category Expansion Is Real

Brands that used to only sponsor tech channels are now appearing on finance, education, and lifestyle content. Squarespace, for example, used to be almost exclusively a tech/design sponsor. Now they sponsor business channels, travel vloggers, and even fitness creators. The category lines are blurring because brands are optimizing for audience demographics, not content categories.

Sponsorship Frequency Is Increasing

The total number of sponsored integrations on YouTube rose roughly 54% between 2024 and 2025 (Source: SponsorRadar aggregate tracking data). That’s not just more brands entering the space — existing brands are sponsoring more frequently. The average top-25 brand is now running multiple sponsorships per week, up from a few per month just two years ago.

How to Get Sponsored by These Brands

Knowing which brands are active is useful. Knowing how to actually land a deal with them is what pays the bills. Here’s what we’ve learned from watching thousands of sponsorship deals go through.

1. Study Their Existing Sponsorships

Before you pitch any brand, look at who they’re already sponsoring. Every brand in the table above has a full profile on SponsorRadar showing their recent creator partnerships. Study the types of channels they work with, the video formats they prefer, and the audience sizes they target.

If a brand sponsors 90% gaming creators and you run a cooking channel, that’s probably not your best first pitch. But if you see them branching into lifestyle content, that’s your opening.

2. Match Their Audience, Not Their Product

Brands don’t just sponsor creators who use their product. NordVPN doesn’t only sponsor cybersecurity channels. HelloFresh doesn’t only sponsor food creators. They sponsor channels whose audiences match their target customer demographics.

Think about it from the brand’s perspective: they want 25–34-year-olds with disposable income who make purchasing decisions online. If your audience fits that profile, the brand doesn’t care whether you review phones or play Minecraft.

3. Build a Real Media Kit

Every brand on this list receives hundreds of sponsorship requests per month. The creators who stand out are the ones who make it easy for the brand to say yes. That means having a media kit with your audience demographics, engagement rates, past sponsorship examples, and pricing.

We cover this in detail in our guide to finding YouTube sponsors.

4. Don’t Wait for Them to Find You

Most of these top 25 brands have internal teams or agencies managing their YouTube sponsorships. They use tools like SponsorRadar (and yes, we built it for exactly this reason) to find creators, but they also respond to cold outreach.

The key is sending a pitch that’s specific. Don’t say “I’d love to work with you.” Say “I noticed you recently sponsored [Creator X] on a video about [topic]. My channel covers similar content and my audience is [X% in the 25–34 age range]. Here’s what a 60-second integration on my channel could look like.”

5. Start With Brands That Sponsor Broadly

If you’re a smaller creator looking for your first deal, focus on brands near the top of the list. Companies like Ground News, NordVPN, and HelloFresh work with thousands of creators across every size range. They’re far more likely to take a chance on a 50K-subscriber channel than a brand that only does five sponsorships per year.

The Bottom Line

YouTube sponsorships are not slowing down. The brands on this list are spending more, working with more creators, and expanding into more niches than ever before. If you’re a creator who hasn’t explored sponsorships yet, the door is wider open than it’s ever been.

The biggest advantage you can give yourself is information. Know which brands are active, what they’re paying, and who they’re working with. That’s exactly what SponsorRadar was built to provide.

This list updates daily. Bookmark it, check back, and when you’re ready to pitch, you’ll know exactly who to contact.