Most Olympic Medals of All Time

Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 28 total medals won across four Games from 2004 to 2016. His haul includes a record 23 gold, and both figures stand far beyond anything else in Olympic history.

The Olympics gather the world’s best athletes every few years, yet a handful of competitors have turned the Games into a personal collection of hardware. The all-time medal list favors sports with many events per Games, which is why swimmers, gymnasts and Winter Games endurance stars dominate it. Here is the full leaderboard of the most decorated Olympians, the Games behind their totals, and why Phelps sits so far ahead. All figures are as of the 2025 season.

The record holder: Michael Phelps and 28 medals

Phelps competed at four Olympics, and at his peak he was almost unbeatable in the pool. At the 2008 Beijing Games he won eight gold medals in a single Olympics, itself a record, and he kept adding to his total through 2016. His 28 medals and 23 gold rewrote a record book that had stood for nearly half a century.

The margin is staggering. His 23 gold medals are more than double the next-best tally, and his 28 total are 10 clear of second place. In a sport offering many events per Games, Phelps combined that structure with sustained dominance across a dozen years, a combination unlikely to be matched.

The full leaderboard of most decorated Olympians

The table below ranks the athletes with the most total Olympic medals across their careers.

Rank	Medals	Athlete	Sport
1	28	Michael Phelps	Swimming
2	18	Larisa Latynina	Gymnastics
3	15	Marit Bjørgen	Cross-country skiing
4	15	Nikolai Andrianov	Gymnastics
5	13	Ole Einar Bjørndalen	Biathlon
6	13	Edoardo Mangiarotti	Fencing
7	13	Boris Shakhlin	Gymnastics
8	13	Takashi Ono	Gymnastics
9	12	Paavo Nurmi	Athletics
10	12	Birgit Fischer	Canoeing

Totals count all medals, gold, silver and bronze. The list blends Summer and Winter Games and spans a full century of competition, from Paavo Nurmi in the 1920s to Marit Bjørgen in the 2010s, but every athlete on it competed in a sport with many medal events.

Larisa Latynina and the record she held

Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina held the medal record for 48 years, from 1964 until Phelps passed her in 2012. Her 18 medals, won across three Games, still make her the most decorated female Olympian in history and the leading gymnast on the list. For decades her total looked untouchable, which is part of why Phelps’s surge past it was so remarkable.

Winter stars and the endurance events

The Winter Games are well represented, led by Norway’s Marit Bjørgen in cross-country skiing (15) and Ole Einar Bjørndalen in biathlon (13). Endurance sports contested over multiple distances and relays offer the same medal-rich structure as swimming and gymnastics, which is how these athletes climbed so high. The gold-medal side of Olympic history is charted separately on our most gold medals at the Olympics leaderboard.

Why the record matters

Total medals measure the fullest kind of Olympic greatness: excellence sustained across multiple Games in a high-event sport. Phelps’s 28 capture a swimmer who was both historically dominant and extraordinarily durable, and the record’s scale makes it one of the safest in all of sport. For where the next generation will chase these marks, see our guides to the 2028 Olympics venues and the most popular Olympic sports.

The short version: Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian ever, with 28 medals including a record 23 gold. Larisa Latynina (18) and Marit Bjørgen (15) follow far behind. As of the 2025 season, no active athlete is within range of Phelps’s total, and the record looks secure for decades.