The Most Popular Warhammer Factions (Backed by Actual Sales Data)

Ask ten hobbyists which Warhammer faction is the most popular and you'll get ten confident answers, none of which are based on anything. Forums say one thing. Tournament results say another. YouTube says whatever got clicks that week.

We've got something slightly more reliable: a till. So we pulled twelve months of our own sales data — every Games Workshop kit, boxed set, Combat Patrol and codex that walked out of the shop or shipped from the website — and ranked the factions by how many boxes people actually bought. No vibes. Just receipts.

How we worked this out

Before anyone reaches for the comments box, here's the method, warts and all.

• The window: twelve months of sales, running to the start of August 2026.
• What counts: units sold of anything carrying a faction's name — kits, character models, Combat Patrols, Battleforces, codexes and battletomes.
• What doesn't: paints. Ultramarines Blue sells by the crate to people who have never owned a Space Marine, and including it would have made the whole thing useless.
• Chapters and sub-factions: folded in. Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Black Templars and the rest all count towards the Space Marines total, because that's how the army list works.
• The honest caveat: this is one shop in South Wales. It's a big sample, but it's our customers, not the entire hobby. Treat it as a very well-informed snapshot rather than gospel.

The 10 most popular Warhammer 40,000 factions

Ranked by units sold over twelve months.

• 1. Space Marines — 2,367 units: all chapters combined. Not close. Not remotely close.
• 2. Orks — 486 units: cheap, cheerful, and buoyed by a very good year of releases.
• 3. Necrons — 471 units: the reliable second-army choice, and the easiest big robot to paint badly and still get away with.
• 4. Emperor's Children — 456 units: a faction that barely existed as a standalone army eighteen months ago.
• 5. Astra Militarum — 456 units: a dead heat with the Emperor's Children, which nobody saw coming.
• 6. Aeldari — 439 units: smaller player base, but the ones who play them buy properly.
• 7. Chaos Space Marines — 408 units: seventh by boxes, second by money. More on that below.
• 8. Tyranids — 303 units: steady, and the go-to for anyone who wants a horde without painting power armour.
• 9. Death Guard — 274 units: the beginner's dream — slow, tough, and forgiving of a wobbly paint job.
• 10. T'au Empire — 223 units: a smaller crowd, but a fiercely committed one.

Just outside the top ten: Thousand Sons (173), World Eaters (166), Leagues of Votann (165), Adepta Sororitas (155), Adeptus Custodes (126), Adeptus Mechanicus (110) and Grey Knights (92). Custodes and Grey Knights sell fewer models by design — you need about forty of them to field an army, not two hundred.

Space Marines outsell the next five factions combined

This is the headline, and it's worth sitting with. Space Marines shifted 2,367 units. Orks, Necrons, Emperor's Children, the Astra Militarum and the Aeldari together managed 2,308. Five entire factions, and the blue lads still edge it.

The meme is real, then. But it isn't just brand loyalty. Space Marines have more kits available than anyone else, more starter boxes built around them, and they're the default recommendation every shop and every YouTube channel gives to beginners. Popularity compounds: more products, more visibility, more new players, more products.

If you've been avoiding them because they're the obvious pick, that's a perfectly good reason to avoid them. Just don't kid yourself that everyone secretly wants to play Votann.

Shown: Space Marines: Assault Intercessors

The plot twist: Chaos sells fewer boxes but takes more money

Chaos Space Marines came seventh by units, but second by revenue. Work out the average spend per box and it's obvious why: the typical Chaos box costs around half as much again as an Ork one.

Chaos players buy big. Forgefiends, Lords Discordant on Helstalkers, terminators. Ork players buy in quantity — twenty Boyz here, some Gretchin there — and Ork kits are cheaper per box, so the till reads very differently to the shelf.

It's a useful reminder that “popular” depends entirely on what you're counting. By bodies on the table, Orks win the mid-table. By money spent, Chaos does. Both are true.

Emperor's Children came from absolutely nowhere

The four best-selling Games Workshop kits in the shop this year were all Emperor's Children: the Lord Exultant (71 units), Tormentors (66), Lucius the Eternal (52) and Noise Marines (48). Not a single Space Marine kit beat them individually.

That's what a proper faction launch does. Emperor's Children went from a footnote — a handful of legacy models and a lot of lore — to a full army range, and hobbyists piled in. It's the clearest evidence in the whole dataset that release schedules, not lore popularity, drive what actually sells in any given year.

Which is also the honest caveat on this list: a top ten measured over twelve months is partly a measure of what Games Workshop chose to release. Ask again in two years and the Emperor's Children may well have settled back down.

The most popular Age of Sigmar factions

Age of Sigmar is a smaller pond in our shop — roughly a fifth of the volume of 40k — but the rankings are far more interesting.

• 1. Skaven — 145 units: rats win. Rats always win.
• 2. Soulblight Gravelords — 143 units: vampires on horseback do a lot of heavy lifting here.
• 3. Gloomspite Gitz — 95 units: the funniest army in the game, and people buy funny.
• 4. Slaves to Darkness — 91 units: big models, big spend per box.
• 5. Stormcast Eternals — 66 units: fifth. In their own game. On the box art.
• 6. Cities of Sigmar — 65 units: the thinking hobbyist's pick, and quietly excellent value.

Behind them: Ossiarch Bonereapers (47), Sylvaneth (46), Orruk Warclans (43) and Seraphon (42).

Stormcast Eternals are not the main character

Games Workshop has spent a decade putting Stormcast Eternals on every box, every trailer and every starter set. They are, by a distance, the most-promoted army in Age of Sigmar. They came fifth — outsold by rats, vampires and a pile of drunk goblins.

There's a lesson in there about the difference between what a company pushes and what people want. Age of Sigmar buyers, in our experience, come to the game specifically because it isn't 40k. They want something weird. Golden armour and lightning is a bit close to home.

Shown: Spearhead: Stormcast Eternals

What this actually means if you're picking a first army

Popularity is a useful signal, but only for some things. Here's what it's genuinely worth knowing.

Popular factions are easier to start

• More kits: more ways to build the army you actually want.
• More opponents: easier to find a game, easier to find advice.
• Better second-hand market: both to buy into and to sell out of.
• More tutorials: if you're stuck on how to paint something, someone has already filmed it.

Popularity tells you nothing about strength

• Rules change constantly: a faction's power level shifts every balance update. Sales don't track it.
• The best army is the one you'll finish: two hundred beautifully painted models you like beats four hundred you resent.
• Small factions aren't worse: Custodes and Grey Knights sell fewer models because you need fewer of them, not because they're bad.

If you're at the very start of this, our Warhammer 40k factions hub walks through every army in the game, and the faction personality quiz is a genuinely decent tiebreaker when you're stuck between two. If you already know which army you fancy, the whole Warhammer 40k range and the Age of Sigmar range are both sorted by faction.

Shown: Warhammer 40k Complete Starter Bundle (11th Edition)

Frequently asked questions

What is the most popular Warhammer faction?

Space Marines, by an enormous margin. Across twelve months of our sales they accounted for 2,367 units — more than the next five 40k factions combined. Every chapter counts towards that total, with Ultramarines, Space Wolves and Dark Angels leading the way.

Which Warhammer 40k faction is best for beginners?

Space Marines, Necrons and Death Guard are the three we recommend most often. All three have small model counts for a starting force, straightforward rules, and paint schemes that look good without airbrush-level skill. Necrons in particular are very forgiving — metallic drybrushing hides a multitude of sins.

What is the most popular Age of Sigmar army?

Skaven, narrowly ahead of Soulblight Gravelords. Both outsold the Stormcast Eternals, despite Stormcast being the game's flagship faction and appearing on most of the box art.

Does a faction being popular mean it's stronger in the game?

No. Sales track releases, aesthetics and beginner recommendations, not the current balance dataslate. Faction strength shifts with every rules update, so a bestseller list is a poor guide to competitive performance.

How much does it cost to start a Warhammer army?

A Combat Patrol box is the usual entry point and gives you a playable starting force in one purchase. Add paints, brushes and glue and most people are properly set up for a good deal less than the internet's horror stories suggest. Our starter sets guide breaks down which box makes sense for which player.

The data says Space Marines and it isn't close. But every one of those 2,367 boxes was bought by someone who liked the look of them, not someone consulting a sales chart. Pick the army that makes you want to sit down and paint on a wet Tuesday in Barry — that's the only ranking that matters.

Further reading: dig into the individual armies with our Necrons: Army Analysis and Orks: Army Analysis, or start from scratch with How to Build and Paint Your First Warhammer 40k Army.