October 2026 Ranking Germany

Last month we closed on a question. Whether Thomas Kehl holds the seat is the October question. He is out of the Top 10, and Carsten Maschmeyer is back at #1 with a Score of 8.4, the highest he has posted since we started recording Scores in July.

Top Personal Brands Germany October 2026

We also wrote that Maschmeyer had the better month in September and Kehl had the bigger one. October is what a second better month looks like. Maschmeyer's reactions, comments and engagement went up for the second month in a row, and this time nobody had a bigger one.

Four names leave and four arrive. Three of the arrivals are in the German Top 10 for the first time, and all three are executives. With Christian Sewing of Deutsche Bank in and Christian Klein back on the podium, five sitting DAX CEOs hold seats again, which matches the August high.

New Entrants & Drop-outs in the Germany Top 10

Christian Kampf, a healthcare executive, enters at #8 with 235,321 followers on Thriving activity. His 143 average comments are the second highest on the board after Maschmeyer, on 1,830 average reactions. Daniel Grieder, CEO of HUGO BOSS, enters at #9 with 143,033 followers and 0.95% engagement. Christian Sewing, CEO of Deutsche Bank, takes #10 with 128,654 followers, the smallest audience in the Top 10, and a 1.06% engagement rate.

Frank Thelen is the one returnee. He was #7 in June and comes back at #6 with 538,512 followers and 95 average comments.

Kehl leaves after one month at the top. Thomas Müller leaves from #3, and his path since April now reads #9, #4, #2, out, #10, #3, out. Friedrich Merz leaves a month after his return. Herbert Diess keeps an exact rhythm. He has been in the Top 10 every other month since March, in March, May, July and September, and out in April, June, August and October.

Biggest Movers of the Month

Carsten Maschmeyer (#2 → #1) led every month from February to August, lost the seat for one month, and takes it back with 540,615 followers. His average reactions rose from 3,134 to 3,705, comments from 385 to 419, and engagement from 0.68% to 0.78%. He sits four tenths ahead of #2.

Christian Klein (#7 → #2) climbs five places, the largest jump in the Top 10. The SAP CEO's average reactions rose from 1,555 to 2,321 and his engagement from 0.49% to 0.74%, on 339,193 followers. He was #2 in April and May as well.

Ola Kaellenius (#9 → #5) climbs four places with 389,524 followers, 1,228 average reactions and 0.33% engagement.

Florian Palatini holds #4, his highest placement so far, for a second month. His audience grew to 733,018, the largest in the Top 10 by almost 200,000, while his engagement fell from 0.23% to 0.14%, the lowest on the board together with Thelen.

Christian Bruch (#10 → #7) is in the Top 10 for a third month and has the highest engagement rate on the board at 1.07%.

The Core Insight

The four highest engagement rates in the German Top 10 belong to Bruch, Sewing, Grieder and Kampf, all between 0.90% and 1.07%. They hold seats #7 to #10. Every name from #1 to #6 sits at 0.78% or below, and two of them at 0.14%.

In Germany engagement buys a seat at the bottom of the Top 10. Everyone in the top six has more than 330,000 followers, with Klein's 339,193 the smallest audience among them. Below them, Sewing and Grieder got in with less than half of that, on engagement.

Kehl showed in September that one outsized month can beat that structure for a while. Maschmeyer showed in October that the structure comes back once the spike is gone.

A spike won September. Two good months in a row won October.

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