January 26 is the birthday of 49 notable people we've found so far, including authors, actors, politicians and entrepreneurs, and 2 of them are billionaires.
Eric L. Smidt is an American businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of Harbor Freight Tools, a tool retailer with more than 1,600 stores across 48 states and annual revenue of $9 billion as of 2026.
Gayle Marie LaJaunie Bird Benson is an American businesswoman who is the owner of the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League (NFL) and the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Share of the 49 people we list, by documented field. People can belong to more than one.
Authors31% (15 people)
Actors24% (12 people)
Politicians22% (11 people)
Entrepreneurs20% (10 people)
Athletes18% (9 people)
Creators18% (9 people)
Musicians16% (8 people)
Countries
19 countries, most often United States
Citizenship as recorded on Wikidata, one country per person.
United States17 (17 people)
France10 (10 people)
Italy2 (2 people)
Japan2 (2 people)
Kingdom of Prussia2 (2 people)
Serbia2 (2 people)
United Kingdom2 (2 people)
Life timeline
What were people born on January 26 doing at your age?
Dated milestones from Wikidata (company foundings, awards, top jobs, notable works), placed at the age each person reached them. Add your birth year above to see the ones you have passed.
José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix is a Portuguese professional football manager and former player who is the head coach of La Liga club Real Madrid. Nicknamed "The Special One", he is one of the most decorated managers of all time.
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, filmmaker, racecar driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He has been described as "one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars".
Unknown authorUnknown author, dedicated to Bettmann Archive, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American comedian, actress, television host, writer, and producer. She began her career in stand-up comedy in the early 1980s, gaining national attention with a 1986 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian politician who was the second and last leader of Communist Romania as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 until his overthrow and execution in 1989.
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was an American musician and songwriter. He was the guitarist, keyboardist, backing vocalist, and one of the primary songwriters of the rock band Van Halen, which he founded with his brother Alex Van Halen in 1972.
Seán MacBride was an Irish republican activist, politician, and diplomat who served as Minister for External Affairs from 1948 to 1951, Leader of Clann na Poblachta from 1946 to 1965 and Chief of Staff of the IRA from 1936 to 1937.
Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980), in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention.
Bernard Roger Tapie was a French businessman, politician and occasional actor, singer, and TV host. He was Minister of City Affairs in the government of Pierre Bérégovoy.
Michaël Bemelmans, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
José Simón Azcona del Hoyo was President of Honduras from 27 January 1986 to 27 January 1990 for the Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH). He was born in La Ceiba in Honduras.
Robert Scott Lazar is an American businessman and conspiracy theorist who, since 1989, has claimed to have been part of a classified US government project concerned with the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology; he also purported to have read government briefing…
Jörg Haider was an Austrian politician. He was Governor of Carinthia on two occasions, the long-time leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and later Chairman of the Alliance for the Future of Austria, a breakaway party from the FPÖ.
Die Freiheitlichen in Kärnten - BZÖ, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. Known for his leading roles on stage and screen, he has often portrayed historical figures including Edward R. Murrow, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William H. Seward, and John Dos Passos.
Angela Yvonne Davis is an American Marxist feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, author and social theorist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Florian Tristan Mariano Thauvin is a French professional footballer who plays as a right winger for Ligue 1 club Lens, whom he captains, and the France national team.
Alex Sandro Lobo Silva, better known as Alex Sandro is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as a left-back for Campeonato Brasileiro Série A club Flamengo.
Hwang Hee-chan is a South Korean professional footballer who plays as a forward for Bundesliga club Schalke 04, on loan from EFL Championship club Wolverhampton Wanderers, and the South Korea national team.
Sebastian Giovinco is an Italian former professional footballer who played as a forward. A quick and creative player on the ball, Giovinco was a versatile attacker capable of playing in multiple offensive positions but mainly operating behind a lone striker as a trequartista.
Original: HighlanderICT from Toronto, Canada / Derivative work: Danyele This JPG graphic was created with GIMP., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a Danish politician who was the prime minister of Denmark from November 2001 to April 2009 and the secretary general of NATO from August 2009 to October 2014.
Christian Ursilva from København, Danmark, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Catherine Martin Luhrmann is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer, best known for her frequent collaborations with director Baz Luhrmann.
Patrick Dewaere was a French film actor. Born in Saint-Brieuc, Côtes-d'Armor, he was the son of French actress Mado Maurin. An actor from a young age, his career lasted more than 21 years until his suicide in Paris, in 1982.
Fabiàn Cevallos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk, writer, poet, philosopher, and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. He is also known as Dōgen Kigen (道元希玄), Eihei Dōgen (永平道元), Kōso Jōyō Daishi (高祖承陽大師), and Busshō Dentō Kokushi (仏性伝東国師).
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a Turkish filmmaker and actor. His films usually explore Turkish society in the 21st century, featuring long takes and lengthy runtime.
Cines del Sur Granada Film Festival from Spain, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, and one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States.
James Van Heusen was an American composer. He wrote songs for films, television, and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his compositions later went on to become jazz standards.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Sir Christopher James Hampton is a British playwright, screenwriter, and translator. He is best known for his play Les Liaisons Dangereuses based on the novel of the same name, and for the film adaptation.
Григорий Ганзбург, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jeremy Rifkin is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 23 books about the influence of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment.
Heinrich Böll Stiftung from Berlin, Deutschland, Foto by Stephan Röhl, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style.
Agence de presse Meurisse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Marie-Joseph "Eugène" Sue was a French novelist. He was one of several authors who popularized the genre of the serial novel in France with his very popular and widely imitated The Mysteries of Paris, which was published in a newspaper from 1842 to 1843.
François Gabriel Guillaume Lépaulle, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ernst Moritz Arndt was a German nationalist historian, writer and poet. Early in his life, he fought for the abolition of serfdom, later against Napoleonic dominance over Germany. Arndt had to flee to Sweden for some time due to his anti-French positions.
Johann Ferdinand Bender (* 1814, Königsberg; † 1905), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Carl Joachim Friedrich Ludwig von Arnim, better known as Achim von Arnim, was a German poet, novelist, and together with Clemens Brentano and Joseph von Eichendorff, a leading figure of German Romanticism.
This page lists 49 people born on January 26, every one traced to a Wikidata record and, where shown, a Wikipedia summary (CC BY-SA) and a licensed Wikimedia Commons photo. 2 of them carry a dated net-worth estimate citing Forbes or Bloomberg; combined wealth is the sum of the low end of those estimates, the newest as of 2025. Rankings compare all 366 dates in the dataset built on 2026-09-28. Milestone ages come from dated Wikidata statements; a tilde marks year-only dates. Nothing on this page is a prediction about anyone born on January 26. Read the full methodology.
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