My Chemical Romance carried on, all the way to No. 1. The Black Parade (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) vaults from No. 139 to the top of the Billboard 200 dated Nov. 7, giving the band the first No. 1 album of its career, Billboard reports. The original edition peaked at No. 2 in 2006, behind the Hannah Montana soundtrack.
The numbers are a vinyl story. The set earned 78,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Oct. 29, up 653%, per Luminate, and 68,000 of them were pure album sales, up 2,082%. Vinyl accounted for 42,000, the band’s best week ever on the format. The reissue, out Oct. 23 via Reprise, came in more than 20 physical variants across vinyl, CD and cassette, including signed editions, and all of them combine for charting. Streaming added 10,000 units, or 10.14 million on-demand streams.
The 139-1 leap is the biggest to No. 1 since Taylor Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) went 157-1 in October 2021, Billboard says. It is also the longest wait ever for an album to reach the top: 20 years, passing the 15 years and nine months that Toby Keith’s 35 Biggest Hits took after his death in 2024. By Billboard’s count, the band itself went 22 years and four months from its chart debut with Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge to its first No. 1.
It had to beat a friend to get there. Midweek projections had MCR ahead of Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love by about a thousand sales, Rolling Stone notes, and Rodrigo, who met the band backstage at their Citi Field show earlier this year, posted a clip cheering them on. Her album had climbed to No. 2 behind Swift’s Showgirl earlier in October.
The band’s own reaction came with a joke. It reshared Billboard’s post on Instagram Stories set to Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” which Rolling Stone suggests may be a callback to the 2006 week Cyrus’ Hannah Montana album beat them to No. 1. Billboard says the reissue also gave the band its first U.K. No. 1, on the Official Albums Chart dated Oct. 30.
When the reissue arrived, the band said in a joint statement:
Twenty years ago, we wrote what would become The Black Parade, our third record and the follow up to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. At the time, we could never have imagined what the record would mean for the band.
My Chemical Romance, in a joint statement, Billboard
The deluxe edition adds six bonus tracks, three B-sides and three live cuts from 2007. The album’s hit, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 in January 2007. Watch the video below.
The band celebrated the anniversary with the animated short Prelude to the End last week. Its tour celebrating the album, which began in July 2025, is slated to end Nov. 22 in Indonesia.
- Chart
- Billboard 200 dated Nov. 7, 2026 (tracking week ending Oct. 29)
- Units
- 78,000, including 68,000 in album sales (42,000 on vinyl)
- Move
- No. 139 to No. 1; original edition peaked at No. 2 in 2006
- Also
- First U.K. No. 1 (Official Albums Chart dated Oct. 30)
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on November 10, 2026.
