Talk about prolific: Whereas for many comics, churning out one special a year is a lot of work, Ali Siddiq is poised to release his third of the year in Mondays on December 21. Siddiq’s other two specials this year, My Two Sons and Rugged, have done over 10.5M and 6.3M views on YouTube, respectively. These are major numbers rivaling those of many a Netflix special — in fact, per Nielsen numbers reviewed by Deadline, My Two Sons was the third most-viewed special on any platform in the last year. As ambitious as Siddiq is in putting out his own original material, he’s equally passionate about using his platform to support up-and-coming comics. Thus, this year, he’s exec produced and released two other comics’ specials on his YouTube channel: Marcus D. Wiley: Marriage Is Major Surgery, which has been viewed by more than 4.6 million since February, and Ryan Davis: Under-Rated, which has over 2M views since October. (The latter comic just made our list of 20 Stand-Ups to Keep an Eye On in 2026). Remarkably, Siddiq has seven stand-up specials on the list of the top 50 biggest YouTube specials of all time, per Nielsen, as well as one he exec produced (Marcus D. Wiley: Marriage Is Major Surgery). The biggest of those, The Domino Effect, has over 18M views. Siddiq has had the third biggest impact of any comedian this year, in terms of viewership on streaming, behind only Nate Bargatze and Jeff Dunham. Already, he has shot another three specials of his own for release next year — and in February, he’ll film three more. In Q1 2026, he’ll release another special from Wiley, as well as one from Malik S. And late last month, he filmed The Jive Turkeys — an ensemble special of Houston comics for 2026 release. Born in Houston, Siddiq began performing stand-up in the late ’90s, famously developing his voice while incarcerated. Recently, he’s sold over 135,000 tickets to his In the Shadows theater tour, which has one more leg to go. This year, he’s done over 82 million views on his YouTube page — up from 64 million in 2024 with weeks left to go. During his first theater tour, Siddiq found himself selling out 750 to 1,500-seat rooms, selling 102K tickets in total over a 14-month period. On pace to sell 50% more tickets this year than he did on that first tour, he’s recently jumped up to 2,000-3,000 cap venues while adding shows in some markets. Siddiq now has 975K followers on YouTube, along with 1.5M on Facebook, 715K on Instagram, 1.4M on TikTok, and 35K on X.
Reps: Irreverent Character Management; Hansen, Jacobson, Teller
