US President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, world’s richest man, Elon Musk and the chief executive officer of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg have been penciled in as finalists for TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2024.
The others are Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, Russian economist Yulia Navalnaya, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and American podcast host and comedian, Joe Rogan.
The candidates were revealed today on NBC’s Today show.
Since 1927, the magazine has named a person, group, or concept that had the biggest impact—for good or for ill—on the world over the previous 12 months.
In 2023, TIME selected pop superstar Taylor Swift as Person of the Year. Other previous selections include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the “spirit of Ukraine” in 2022, tech titan Elon Musk in 2021, the Ebola fighters in 2014, and former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008.
Trump won the 2024 election after he lost the 2020 election to Biden and repeatedly refused to accept the results. His 2024 win is history-making in multiple ways: he will be the oldest President in U.S. history, and he was convicted earlier this year by a New York jury of 34 counts of fraud, making him the first convicted felon to be elected President.
During his 2024 campaign, he identified the economy and the border as his top priorities and promised to implement tariffs on America’s top trading partners—Mexico, Canada, and China—once he takes office.
Trump was previously named TIME’s Person of the Year in 2016, the year he won the presidency for the first time.
Harris became the Democrat presidential standard bearer in the 2024 election after President Joe Biden announced he was ending his presidential campaign and endorsed her to take over.
She centred her campaign on reproductive rights, slamming Trump for his role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and suggested that Trump is a threat to democracy.
However, she lost to Trump and conceded the race on November 6. Harris, along with Biden, was previously on the Person of the Year cover in 2020—the year that they defeated Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Netanyahu has been one of the most influential and controversial world leaders this year. Defying criticism of his war on Hamas, the terrorist organisation that killed 1,200 people in an attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, Netanyahu continued his military assault on the Gaza Strip this year, even as the death toll there rose to 44,056, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. In September, Netanyahu expanded the war to Lebanon in the north, as Israel killed much of the leadership of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, with air strikes and using explosives hidden in pagers.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, and Hamas’ military chief, on allegations of crimes against humanity. Netanyahu was on the TIME100 list in 2019.
Musk has long been an innovative disrupter. In 2022 he purchased and revamped the social media platform previously known as Twitter, rebranding it as X in 2023. But 2024 was the year that Musk—the richest person in the world, according to Forbes—stepped into the world of politics. He endorsed Trump, appeared at rallies, promoted pro-Trump content on X, and helped Trump form his presidential agenda. He was previously named TIME Person of the Year in 2021.
Zuckerberg was under the microscope this year as the billionaire Meta CEO dealt with government scrutiny into Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
Forbes estimated that, as of December, Zuckerberg’s net worth reached $210 billion, making him the fourth richest person in the world.
He made the list for TIME100 AI in 2024, and was named TIME’s Person of the Year in 2010, the year that Facebook surpassed more than half a billion users.
Middleton made international headlines this year and stirred a conversation about privacy and health for public figures. In January, she was hospitalised for two weeks for a “planned abdominal surgery” and Kensington Palace said she would be out of the public eye until Easter.
The Princess of Wales was previously on the TIME100 list of Most Influential People in 2013 and one of the runners-up for Person of the Year in 2011.
Navalnaya has been in the spotlight this year after her husband and the country’s leading dissident, Alexei Navalny died in February.
The Russian economist accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of killing her husband.
Dubbed the “first lady” of the Russian opposition, Navalnaya also made the list of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024.
Powell has been chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve since 2018, serving under both the Trump and Biden administrations. He’s been on the TIME100 list twice—in 2019 and 2020—and was on the shortlist for Person of the Year in 2023.
In October, Sheinbaum made history when she was sworn in as Mexico’s first-ever female President. Sheinbaum, a lifelong leftist, is also the first Jewish leader in the country’s more than 200 years of independence. Sheinbaum focused her campaign on fighting for the poor, and has taken office at a time when Mexico faces issues ranging from a struggling economy to rising organised violence.
After Trump announced his plan to impose a 25% tariff on all products from Mexico coming into the U.S., Sheinbaum was quick to issue a firm response, indicating that Mexico would retaliate with tariffs against the U.S. Sheinbaum was also on the TIME100 Climate list this year.
Podcaster Joe Rogan anchors The Joe Rogan Experience—a podcast where he talks about current events, comedy, politics, and everything in between.
He was the top podcast on Spotify in 2024 for the fifth year in a row, and averages 11 million listeners per episode, mostly young men. In August, Netflix aired his live stand-up special, Joe Rogan: Burn Your Boats. In the days leading up to the election, Rogan released a three-hour interview with Trump, who Rogan later endorsed, with some voters saying that the interview influenced their decision.
With TIME report
