There are some wars that are fought along the border. But the perception battle wields its own soft power. The most admired men in the world are renown global figures whose influence and impact transcends borders. YouGov compiled the list from the combination of responses to two questions – whether a respondent admires the figure at all and then whether they are the figure the respondent admires the most. Each country’s results in the global compilation are also weighted to represent the country’s population size.
Here are the top 20 most admired men in the world.
| Rank | Name | Title | Share of admiration |
| 1. | Barack Obama | Former US president | 8.9% |
| 2. | Bill Gates | Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist | 8.3% |
| 3. | Xi Jinping | Chinese president | 5.1% |
| 4. | Narendra Modi | Indian prime minister | 4.7% |
| 5. | Jackie Chan | Actor and martial artiste | 4.7% |
| 6. | Cristiano Ronaldo | Football player | 4.5% |
| 7. | Jack Ma | Alibaba founder | 4.3% |
| 8. | Dalai Lama | Tibetan spiritual leader | 4.0% |
| 9. | Elon Musk | Tesla and SpaceX CEO | 3.6% |
| 10. | Keanu Reeves | Actor | 3.6% |
| 11. | Lionel Messi | Football player | 3.5% |
| 12. | Vladimir Putin | Russian president | 3.3% |
| 13. | Michael Jordan | Basketball player | 3.1% |
| 14. | Amitabh Bachchan | Actor | 2.8% |
| 15. | Donald Trump | Former US president | 2.8% |
| 16. | Virat Kohli | Cricketer | 2.2% |
| 17. | Shah Rukh Khan | Actor | 2.1% |
| 18. | Pope Francis | Head of the Catholic Church | 2.0% |
| 19. | Recep Tayyip Erdogan | Turkish president | 1.2% |
| 20. | Joko Widodo | Indonesian president | 0.9% |
