Inside the offices of Australian youth broadcaster Triple J, the results of the Hottest 100 – which will be counted down on Saturday – are a closely guarded secret.
Mornings host Lucy Smith says presenters don’t see their section of the countdown until an hour before going live, with only a select few staffers ensuring the votes and statistics are tallied correctly inside a private “Triple J bunker” that is occupied from the day voting closes.
“Sometimes there’s no windows. They need to have specific snacks in there,” Smith says. “It’s a lot of NDAs signed, essentially.”
It’s been a landmark year for the national youth broadcaster, which celebrated its 50th anniversary, reshuffled its presenter lineup and went on tour. As part of the celebrations, the station staged a special mid-year retrospective poll, the Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, which drew 2.6m votes and saw INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart named the greatest Australian song of all time. The all-Australian countdown offered a feelgood corrective to the 2024 Hottest 100, which featured the lowest number of Australian artists since 1996.
In December, Triple J published its year-in-review statistics, reporting 3% year-on-year growth in weekly metro listeners, up to 1.83 million, and more than a billion views across its digital content. While the station’s reach remains small compared with commercial radio, and streaming algorithms continue to fragment listening habits, the Hottest 100 endures as a cultural touchstone – so much so that Anthony Albanese was again compelled to share his votes.
Triple J confirms the final 2025 vote tally will exceed 2m – but as for the music itself, what surprises might be in store?
It’s all about the vibes
While pop is well established on the Hottest 100 now – Billie Eilish and Charli xcx each scored eight entries in last year’s poll – this year’s international frontrunners skew more smooth than spiky. “I think we’re still in a kind of post-post-pandemic lockdown era,” Smith says. “People are still leaning into those elements of buoyancy, nostalgia and escapism; music that feels warm, classic and familiar.”
This is the first countdown in nearly a decade without the go-to prediction site 100 Warm Tunas, which founder Nick Whyte has put on pause because of the increasing difficulty of gathering data from social media posts. However, a clear favourite has emerged in Olivia Dean’s supremely likable throwback hit Man I Need, which has continued its streak atop the Aria singles chart into 2026. Dean was also Triple J’s third most-played artist in 2025 and cemented her Australian bona fides with a performance at the Aria awards.
Journalist and Hottest 100 obsessive Tyler Jenke, whose meticulous chronicling of the poll includes tracking down tape recordings of old broadcasts, is anticipating another pop-heavy year. “The party line has always been that Triple J is youth radio, and it reflects the tastes of youth. And I think the youth now happen to be a lot more into pop music.”
Other international hopefuls tipped by Reddit prognosticators include the easy-going stylings of Raye and Sombr, the grabby dance music of Fred Again … and Disco Lines’ pool party-ready take on Tinashe’s No Broke Boys.
In the absence of the brash, can’t-be-ignored presence of an album like Charli xcx’s Brat, these predictions offer a window into the listening habits of younger voters, where TikTok is a powerful engine - last year, Triple J reported that more than 70% of voters were under 30.
Where to for Australian music?
After last year’s disappointing showing for Australian artists, signs point to a stronger return in 2025; Jenke believes a new feature on the voting page – allowing users to search by Australian artists only – could provide a welcome boost to local artists too.
There are multiple contenders from Triple J favourites like Spacey Jane (the station’s most-played artist last year), Tame Impala, G Flip and Ocean Alley, whose single Confidence won the 2018 countdown. Then there’s Keli Holiday’s ubiquitous Dancing2. Despite Holiday not appearing anywhere in the station’s Top 50 most-played artists last year, the song sparked a wholesome TikTok trend.
One area likely to see strong Australian representation is electronic music. Leading the charge are multiple Aria winner and Triple J’s second most-played artist of 2025 Ninajirachi, whose strikingly original debut album I Love My Computer has several songs in play; and globe-trotting DJ-producer Dom Dolla, who became the first solo Australian electronic artist to headline a stadium show, playing to 40,000 people in Sydney last month.
And it wouldn’t be the Hottest 100 without an underdog outlier. This year, that role falls to Playlunch’s “bogan funk” anthem Keith, a fitting entry in an irreverent lineage that includes the likes of TISM and Regurgitator. “Sure, everyone loves Olivia Dean,” says Jenke, “but we also like having a bit of fun yelling at the neighbours.”
The Triple J Hottest 100 countdown begins at noon AEDT on Saturday
