MrBeast’s latest $1 million challenge has become the biggest 24-hour launch of his YouTube career, setting a new personal viewership record after four contestants spent months attempting to eat their way through an entire grocery store.
After 17 years of making YouTube videos, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has just broken one of his own biggest records.
His latest upload, Eat Everything In A Grocery Store, Win $1,000,000, became the most-viewed video of his career during its first 24 hours on YouTube, surpassing roughly 72 million views during that opening period.
Donaldson confirmed the milestone after the video went live, describing it as his biggest 24-hour performance ever and highlighting an equally remarkable figure behind those views: audiences had already spent more than one billion minutes watching the challenge. According to MrBeast, the average viewer watched for more than 20 minutes, an unusually high level of retention for a video running close to an hour.
MrBeast’s grocery store challenge broke his 24-hour record
The achievement represents a personal record for MrBeast rather than the all-time YouTube record across every category. That distinction matters because several major music releases have generated more than 100 million views within their opening 24 hours. BTS’s Butter, for example, recorded 108.2 million views during its first day according to YouTube’s official figures.
Within MrBeast’s own enormous catalogue, however, the grocery-store experiment has now produced his strongest opening ever. That is particularly notable considering the scale at which Donaldson already operates. His main YouTube channel has more than 500 million subscribers, while individual uploads routinely attract audiences comparable to major television and sporting events.
The record-breaking upload is not an entirely new challenge. It is the second chapter of an experiment MrBeast began earlier in 2026.
In April, Donaldson uploaded Last To Leave Grocery Store, Wins $250,000, placing contestants inside a fully stocked grocery store and challenging them to remain there longer than everybody else. The competition lasted far longer than a conventional MrBeast shoot. After 67 days, four contestants were still inside. Instead of simply continuing until one remained, Donaldson offered the remaining group an entirely different deal.
He would restock the grocery store and increase the prize to $1 million. In return, the four contestants would have to work together and eat everything inside. They accepted.
They had to eat through 4.3 million calories
The resulting challenge transformed a last-person-standing competition into something closer to a long-form endurance experiment. The grocery store contained approximately 4.3 million calories of food, leaving the four contestants with an absurdly straightforward objective: consume everything required by the challenge and collect the $1 million prize.
MrBeast had previously said the challenge could potentially continue for as long as a year, and the production was adapted accordingly. Beds and showers were introduced, while contestants were given access to resources including a nutritionist, personal trainer and gym. The extended timeline also meant the participants were giving up considerably more than a few days for a YouTube shoot. Family, work and ordinary life outside the store became part of the cost of continuing.
Joey Chestnut even joined the challenge
As the grocery-store experiment continued, MrBeast brought competitive eating legend Joey Chestnut into the production for another challenge. Chestnut was tasked with consuming 16 pounds of baked beans while MrBeast and the four contestants attempted to finish eight pounds collectively. The contestants’ side finished first, earning each of them a car.
MrBeast described Chestnut’s 16-pound performance as a world record during the video, although no official certification from Guinness World Records or Major League Eating was shown.
The raw view count tells only part of why the video’s launch is significant. MrBeast said viewers collectively consumed more than one billion minutes of the video during its early performance, with average watch time exceeding 20 minutes. For long-form YouTube content, that metric can be particularly important. Generating a click is one challenge; persuading tens of millions of people to remain for a substantial portion of an hour-long production is another.
The grocery-store video’s performance therefore demonstrates something beyond MrBeast’s ability to generate enormous thumbnails and titles. His audience is increasingly willing to consume videos approaching television-episode or movie-like lengths.
MrBeast says his best days are still ahead
Donaldson celebrated the record by pointing to the reaction underneath the video, saying thousands of comments were describing it as his best upload yet. The milestone also arrives remarkably late into his career by internet standards. MrBeast has been uploading videos for approximately 17 years, evolving from low-budget experiments and endurance challenges into productions with budgets and audiences approaching traditional entertainment.
Yet Donaldson says he does not believe the channel has peaked. Even after setting another personal YouTube record, MrBeast said he still believes his best days are ahead. For a creator already operating the largest individual channel on YouTube, finding another record to break is becoming increasingly difficult. Apparently, eating an entire grocery store was enough to find one.
