The United States has a brand new top-selling beer. According to a Monday press release from Anheuser-Busch, Michelob Ultra is the No. 1 selling beer in America by volume.
Bud Light, a fellow Anheuser-Busch portfolio member, long held the crown for America’s top-selling beer, but following conservative boycotts over a partnership with influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023, sales slipped. In June of that year, Constellation-owned Modelo overtook Bud Light in off-premise dollar sales, a shift that led many to frame it as the “No. 1” beer in America. After experiencing what seemed like unstoppable growth, however, Modelo has struggled with the ongoing turmoil caused by the Trump Administration’s tariffs. Now, Michelob Ultra has officially taken the top spot in on- and off-premise volume sales. (Modelo remains the number-one beer in off-premise dollar sales, for now.)
First introduced in 2002, Michelob Ultra isn’t a new commodity, but sales volume has ramped up significantly in the past five years. The macro brew has swelled 15 percent since 2020, gaining over two percent of the market share. And now, it’s the country’s top seller.
Anheuser-Busch cited the most recent round of Circana data, which tracks consumer purchasing behavior for packaged goods in retail channels. In the latest read — which tracked consumer behavior for 52 weeks ending on Sept. 14, 2025 — Michelob Ultra was identified as the top-performing beer.
“Consumers are buying more Michelob Ultra than any other beer in America,” executive vice president of category insights at Circana Scott Scanlon said in the release. “The brand stands out as the growth leader in the industry, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.”
To continue the momentum, Michelob Ultra solidified several partnerships with major sporting events. Next year, Michelob Ultra will serve as the official beer of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America as well as the exclusive beer sponsor for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Milano Cortina. Plus, it will act as the official beer sponsor for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
“For more than 20 years, Michelob Ultra has connected with its fans during the occasions they love. The brand’s playbook has been simple and relentless: invest, learn, and execute as the Official Beer Sponsor of America’s most prominent sports and active-lifestyle moments […],” Anheuser-Busch chief commercial officer Kyle Norrington remarked. “This approach has turned Michelob Ultra into an absolute rocket ship, and we’ve got tremendous opportunity ahead of us.”
VP Pro Take
“It’s been a long climb to the top for Mich Ultra. From those promising first trials at Arizona country clubs in the aughts to the throne so recently vacated by its erstwhile portfoliomate Bud Light in two decades. It was the category’s first ‘active lifestyle brand’ before we even really had schlocky buzzwords to describe such a thing. And now it’s the best-selling beer in the country. (I mean, it probably was already, at various points in time over the past few months, but for the vagaries of reporting periods and data compatibility and so forth.)
This is hard-fought victory for ABI at a time when it desperately needed one, what with the angst over its efforts to terminate some distributors and pivot towards mega-distributor/-interloper Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, and the generally dogged sales malaise of the trade it has led for six decades. Credit is due to its mighty red network, too, for rallying around Mich Ultra hard after the Bud Light fiasco put rank-and-file distributor workers on the front lines of a culture war that corporate execs at the mothership were fundamentally ill-equipped to fight. (And after the stupendous flop Bud Light Next turned out to be, no less.) So, sure, snaps all around.
Still, I’d be remiss to ignore the big red Republican elephant in the room. Mich Ultra has been in a dogfight with Modelo Especial for the past couple years, with the two jockeying for the top spot in off-premise dollars since 2023. (ABI’s brands have long had more national depth in the on-premise, though Reyes Beverage Group and other ‘gold network’ distributors are certainly working on it.) That ABI’s de facto flagship has locked in a lead across channels, format, etc. nine months into 2025 — the year of federal kidnapping raids on immigrant communities scaring loyal Modelo customers away from America’s beer aisle and Trump’s trade war disrupting the U.S.-Mexican border across which Constellation Brands’ standout lager must flow — is conspicuous timing indeed. Mich Ultra’s long-term growth has been trending in this direction for years, so it’s not as though its ascent is the direct product of Modelo’s misfortune. But much like the latter beer overtook Bud Light in off-premise dollars sooner than it otherwise might have because ABI let itself get Gamergated by the American right in the summer of 2023, the former beer may have cemented its place at the front of the (six)pack a little faster due to the MAGA of it all two years later.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” —Dave Infante, VinePair columnist and contributing editor
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