September 17 audience snapshot · geography reviewed September 19, 2026
State of Minnesota Creators 2026
A historical September 2026 look at Minnesota's reviewed creator landscape, including geography, categories, platform audiences and the public dataset editions used for this report.
Geographic eligibility corrections dated September 19, 2026. Audience values and their individual observation dates remain from the September 17 source snapshot; they were not remeasured. Numerical positions were recalculated only after current-base eligibility holds. Unresolved current geography does not mean a confirmed move elsewhere.
35 reviewed statewide creators8 source datasetsCross-sectional snapshotHistorical report data
Current directory · reliability edition
Current directory findings, separate from the September report
The current 47-entity directory is a different edition from the original 35-entity September report below. No historical population growth, rank or account observation is inferred.
47creator entities
37 people and 10 creator organizations; groups count once.
31 of 47have documented metro geography
6 have other Minnesota locations; 10 have state-only evidence.
3source-supported additions in this edition
Technology, woodworking and sawmill publishing; no new audience ranking or statewide growth claim.
Recorded platform labels: Instagram 40, YouTube 32, Facebook 23 and TikTok 17. 25 entities carry both Instagram and YouTube labels; 8 carry all four. These overlap counts describe directory metadata, not active accounts, unique audiences or statewide adoption.
On narrow screens, scroll the table sideways to see all platforms.
Public geography and recorded platforms; selected directory denominator 47
Public geography
Entities
Instagram
YouTube
Facebook
TikTok
Minneapolis
14
11
10
3
4
St. Paul
5
4
3
2
2
Other Twin Cities metro
12
11
10
9
4
Other documented Minnesota locations
6
5
6
3
3
Minnesota; locality not established
10
9
3
6
4
Rows describe public evidence resolution, not population distribution. A state-only record must not be classified as Greater Minnesota. Existing record dates remain unchanged; a new directory entry is not a new creator or a change in the September audience cohort.
How many of the four recorded platform labels does each entity have?
Among the fixed 47 selected records, 13 carry exactly one label, 11 carry two, 15 carry three and 8 carry all four: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. These four groups are mutually exclusive, unlike the overlapping platform-pair counts. Each person or creator organization counts once.
A single label does not establish exclusive platform use, and an unlisted label does not prove an absent account. Website, Pinterest, writing and other labels are outside this four-network count. This view measures stored directory labels, not current activity, audience reach, business strategy, growth or statewide adoption. Individual evidence dates remain unchanged.
Where are the people and creator organizations documented?
The fixed 47-record edition includes 37 people and 10 creator organizations. The table separates those entity types within each recorded professional-base geography; an organization counts once, not once for each member.
On narrow screens, scroll this table horizontally.
The three metro groups contain 25 people and 6 organizations: 31 entities. The 10 state-only records are not automatically Greater Minnesota records. These are evidence-resolution categories, not a map of households or a statewide population estimate.
This report analyzes the original September 17, 2026 audience observations with September 19, 2026 current-geography eligibility decisions. It is not a census of every creator in the state. In the source editions used for that review, the statewide directory contained 35 Minnesota creator entities, and the narrower Minneapolis and Twin Cities dataset identified 27 of them at city or metro level. Current directory editions may differ; see the historical source-edition limits.
The snapshot shows a strong Twin Cities concentration, meaningful creator activity beyond the metro subset, a particularly visible food and culinary cohort, and platform rankings with materially different measurement rules. Those differences are preserved rather than blended into a synthetic statewide audience number.
77.1%
of the historical statewide cohort was also represented in the Twin Cities geographic subset.
11
creators fall into the normalized food and culinary family, 31.4% of the directory.
17
ranked Facebook records made it the deepest platform-specific ranking in this historical report.
8
ranked TikTok creators meet or exceed one million displayed followers.
9
ranked YouTube creators meet or exceed one million displayed subscribers.
0
year-over-year growth claims are made; this is a cross-sectional snapshot.
Where creators are based
The Twin Cities accounted for 27 of 35 reviewed records
Minneapolis and St. Paul are kept distinct where the sources support city-level classification. Suburban and other metro records are labeled Twin Cities metro, not Minneapolis.
Creators by verified geography
Mutually exclusive classifications in the report's historical statewide source edition.
Minneapolis13
St. Paul5
Other Twin Cities metro9
Verified Greater Minnesota3
Statewide-level location5
Minneapolis: 13
St. Paul: 5
Other Twin Cities metro: 9
Explicitly verified Greater Minnesota: 3
Current Minnesota, narrower location unresolved: 5
How to read the non-metro number
8 statewide records are outside the verified 27-record Twin Cities subset. That does not mean they are all confirmed Greater Minnesota creators.
3 have explicit non-metro evidence: CboysTV — Cormorant, Minnesota; Millennial Farmer — West Central Minnesota; The Braces Guy — Rochester, Minnesota. The other 5 have state-level evidence without a sufficiently resolved city or metro classification.
This distinction prevents broad state-level evidence from being turned into an unsupported rural, city or metro claim.
The reviewed directory spans diverse creator subjects
The directory preserves 29 detailed source categories. For report-level analysis, those labels are mapped into 6 documented families without changing the source directory.
Normalized creator-category families
One report-level family per statewide creator record.
Education and knowledge12
Food and culinary11
Family and community6
Arts, media and entertainment2
Lifestyle, fashion and wellness2
Outdoors and agriculture2
What the distribution shows
Education and knowledge is the largest normalized family in this reviewed directory. The food and culinary group includes recipe publishers, food media, restaurant discovery, culinary culture and food-focused wellness or travel creators.
Education and knowledge creators also span several formats: law, health, art, animal education, history, technology, construction and explanatory commentary. Family, community, lifestyle and entertainment records add further range.
The normalization is descriptive, not a judgment about the value or reach of a category. The complete source-to-family mapping is published in the report JSON to document how categories were grouped. Reproducing the counts also requires the historical source records.
Platform snapshot
Five datasets, five declared measurement rules
Each leader below comes from the historical source edition used for this report. The linked owner pages may now show later editions. These cards preserve the September results rather than reproducing full ranking tables.
Core 4 leader
Josh Liljenquist (Joshlilj)
~39.40M
Across qualifying TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook accounts.
Audience-count disclosure: Combined platform and account totals do not represent unique individuals. Multi-channel YouTube totals do not represent unique subscribers.
Josh Liljenquist leads each of the five bounded September 2026 datasets shown here. In the Core 4 dataset, his approximately 39.4 million total aggregates qualifying TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook accounts. The platform pages then apply their own rules: creator-controlled channel totals on YouTube, one primary account on TikTok and Instagram, and one primary creator presence on Facebook.
This report does not extrapolate those rankings to creators or accounts outside the verified cohorts.
Audience scale
The ranked cohorts differ in depth and concentration
Distribution statistics are calculated separately within each platform's ranked records. Unresolved candidates are excluded, never converted to zero.
Ranked-record depth
The number of creators with sufficiently resolved values to receive an ordinal rank.
Core 45
Youtube16
Tiktok11
Instagram12
Facebook17
Why depth matters
YouTube has 16 ranked records, compared with 11 on TikTok, 12 on Instagram, 17 on Facebook and 5 complete Core 4 records.
A creator can appear in the statewide directory yet remain outside a platform ranking when the relevant official account, count, ownership or geography evidence is unresolved. Directory membership and numerical ranking are intentionally different research decisions.
Selected September 2026 platform snapshots · ranked records only
Platform
Ranked records
Median ranked audience
At least 1M
At least 5M
Top five share
YouTube
16
1.13M
9
2
76.8%
TikTok
11
1.9M
8
1
78.0%
Instagram
12
772.1K
5
1
82.2%
Facebook
17
1.11M
9
3
78.2%
Top-five share is the share of the total measured audience within that platform's ranked cohort. It is not market share, reach, engagement or a count of unique people. Medians and shares inherit the approximation limits of displayed platform counts.
Twin Cities ecosystem
Minneapolis is one part of the metro picture
The historical geographic subset contained 13 Minneapolis records, 5 St. Paul records and 9 records elsewhere in the metro. That structure matters because a creator based in Chaska, Woodbury, Maplewood, Golden Valley or another metro community should not automatically be called Minneapolis-based.
The metro cohort includes creators working in food, family media, photography, art, law, health, gaming, technology, community storytelling and other subjects. The historical source edition supplied the geography for those 27 records; the current directory may reflect later reviews.
Beyond the metro subset
Creator work is also documented across Minnesota
The historical statewide cohort included 8 creators outside its verified Twin Cities subset. 3 have explicit Greater Minnesota locations, while 5 have state-level evidence only.
The documented non-metro examples are listed in the geography data. The report does not infer statewide economic or cultural trends from this limited cohort.
The JSON statistics, charts and visible totals describe the same historical report. Full reproduction requires the exact input editions identified by the stored hashes, not a substitution of current downloads.
Historical source editions: The report JSON preserves the SHA-256 hashes recorded for the historical input editions. The current download links below may return later editions and are not a complete frozen input bundle. Full historical reproduction has not been reverified from those links. The figures on this page remain the September 2026 analysis; they have not been recalculated from today's directories. Source-edition clarification: October 22, 2026.
Eligibility
Creator and Minnesota rules
The statewide directory requires sustained public digital creator work and a current public Minnesota residence, creator base or professional practice.
Identity
Canonical entities
Stable entity IDs connect records across directories and rankings. Group-owned audiences belong to the group once rather than being duplicated across members.
Geography
Only supported precision
City and metro labels require city or metro evidence. Broad Minnesota evidence remains broad, and private addresses are never published.
Accounts
Platform-specific rules
YouTube aggregates qualifying channels. TikTok and Instagram use one verified primary account. Facebook uses one primary creator presence.
Values
Approximate and unresolved data
Rounded displays remain approximate. Verified absence may be zero; an unknown account or count remains unresolved and is not ranked as zero.
Time
Snapshot, not trend line
Audience observations retain the September 17, 2026 source snapshot. September 19 geography corrections do not establish growth rates or fastest-growing creators.
Publisher disclosure: Josh Liljenquist publishes this website and appears in several of the datasets analyzed in this report. The same published eligibility, account and verification rules are applied to every creator or creator group included.
Download the historical report and browse current datasets
The report JSON preserves the historical derived statistics and source-edition hashes. The other links lead to current dataset owners or downloads, not a complete frozen input bundle.
Derived report
State of Minnesota Creators 2026
Summary, geography, category mapping, platform depth, leaders and audience distributions.
This report retains its original 35-creator analysis and 16-record YouTube cohort. Seven of its eight exact historical inputs have been located. The historical famous-people input is still missing, and three other inputs remain private. Full reconstruction is unavailable.
Josh Liljenquist. State of Minnesota Creators 2026. Source snapshot/review: 2026-09-17. Download edition reference-2026-10-28-f516209842c7. https://joshliljenquist.com/minnesota/state-of-creators-2026/
This is a version of the downloadable compilation, not a new audience measurement. Source and observation dates remain those in the data. It freezes the report statistics only; it is not the missing complete historical input bundle.
Published on Josh Liljenquist’s official website. Josh appears in several datasets; inclusion here is not independent recognition or an endorsement. Existing source rights still apply; these downloads grant no new open-content license.
