Dalai Lama and Sadhguru top the Watkins’ 2026 list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People
January 9, 2026. Watkins Mind Body Spirit Magazine (based in London, UK) published their annual Watkins’ 2026 list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People – spiritual teachers, activists, authors, and thinkers who change the world.
According to the publishers, the three main criteria were taken into account when compiling the list:
1) The person has to be alive as of December 2025;
2) The person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale;
3) The person is frequently googled, appears in Nielsen Data, has a Wikipedia page, and is actively talked about throughout the Internet. By taking into account how many times a person is googled or how many times their Wikipedia profile is viewed, the list gains a highly democratic, transparent parameter.
| 1 – DALAI LAMA 2 – SADHGURU (JAGGI VASUDEV) 3 – POPE LEO XIV 4 – ECKHART TOLLE 5 – DAVID ATTENBOROUGH 6 – JOE ROGAN 7 – GWYNETH PALTROW 8 – YUVAL NOAH HARARI 9 – MEL ROBBINS 10 – DR JOE DISPENZA 11 – RAINN WILSON 12 – JAY SHETTY 13 – OPRAH WINFREY 14 – JORDAN B. PETERSON 15- ALAN MOORE 16 – URI GELLER 17 – TEAL SWAN 18 – DEEPAK CHOPRA 19 – GRAHAM HANCOCK 20 – ACHARYA PRASHANT 21 – PEMA CHÖDRÖN 22 – ALICE WALKER 23 – GABOR MATÉ 24 – AMMA – MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI 25 – PAULO COELHO 26 – MARIANNE WILLIAMSON 27 – SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR 28 – WIM HOF 29 – JULIA CAMERON 30 – ROBERT THURMAN 31 – GREGG BRADEN 32 –VANDANA SHIVA 33 – ARIANA HUFFINGTON |
34 – BARTHOLOMEW I 35 – ROWAN WILLIAMS 36 – ESTHER PEREL 37 – RICHARD ROHR 38 – RUPERT SHELDRAKE 39 – BESSEL VAN DER KOLK 40 –MARK MANSON 41 – ERICH VON DÄNIKEN 42 –MICHAEL POLLAN 43 – RUBY WAX 44 – ANTHONY WILLIAM 45 – PREM RAWAT 46 – JON KABAT-ZINN 47 – MARTIN SELIGMAN 48 –THOMAS MOORE 49 – ESTHER HICKS 50 – EDITH EGER 51 –GARY SNYDER 52 – KEN WILBER 53 – MICHAEL A. SINGER 54 – ROBIN SHARMA 55 – HAMZA YUSUF 56 – JOSEPH MERCOLA 57 – RICHARD BACH 58 – ROB BELL 59 – RHONDA BYRNE 60 – DANIEL GOLEMAN 61 –GEORGE NOORY 62 – BERNARDO KASTRUP 63 – KAREN ARMSTRONG 64 – BRUCE H. LIPTON 65 – ALEX GREY 66 – ELAINE PAGELS 67 – SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR |
68 – DON MIGUEL RUIZ 69 –BRIAN WEISS 70 –ANDREW WEIL 71 –IYANLA VANZANT 72 –STANISLAV GROF 73 –RUPERT SPIRA 74 –ANITA MOORJANI 75 –STEVE TAYLOR 76 –SWAMI RADHANATH 77 –EBEN ALEXANDER 78 –BYRON KATIE 79 –NEALE DONALD WALSCH 80 –CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS 81 –JACK KORNFIELD 82 –VISHEN LAKHIANI 83 –INDIA ARIE 84 –RONALD HUTTON 85 –MOOJI 86–PICO IYER 87 –GARY LACHMAN 88 –MATHIEU RICARD 89 –TARA BRACH 90 –RICHARD RUDD 91 –CAROLINE MYSS 92 –RAYMOND MOODY 93 –YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE 94 –THOMAS HÜBL 95 –THERESA CHEUNG 96 –FRITJOF CAPRA 97 –DR NICOLE LEPERA 98 –LISA MILLER 99 –SUZANNE GIESEMANN 100 –MATT KAHN |
Watkins’ Spiritual 100 List was first published in 2011 and has since become one of the most respected and trusted sources of information on Spiritual leadership worldwide. Watkins’s bookshop in London has been encouraging spiritual discovery and providing seekers with esoteric knowledge for over 120 years. It is one of the highly recommended publications of quantum thought. Find out more at https://www.watkinsmagazine.com
You can find more information about the spiritual teachers and leaders on the Watkins’ list in our Quantum Database – see Modern time mystics, leaders and spiritual teachers – https://enlightenmentmedianews.com/category/modern-time-mystics-spiritual-leaders-teachers/
Photo credit –This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Attribution: User:Ethan Doyle White
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