Mrbeast age is one of the most-searched facts about the internet’s biggest creator, and the answer is 28. Jimmy Donaldson turned 28 on May 7, 2026. That’s young for a man who runs a company valued near $5 billion.
So how does someone this young end up with 500 million subscribers? He’s explained part of the answer in his own words. Reporters have filled in the rest.
In brief: Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, was born May 7, 1998, in Wichita, Kansas, and raised mostly in Greenville, North Carolina. He’s 28 now, turning 29 on May 7, 2027, and he married Thea Booysen on Necker Island in July 2026. He leads Beast Industries, valued near $5 billion, and estimates put his own net worth near $2.6 billion at present.
This guide pairs every date with the person behind it. It also matches the figures in our [INTERNAL LINK: MrBeast net worth → full net worth breakdown], so the two pages never clash. Each claim below comes from his own words or from named reporting.
mrbeast age and Birthday: The Dates That Matter
Donaldson was born James Stephen Donaldson on May 7, 1998. Biography.com and Wikipedia both list Wichita, Kansas, as his birthplace. A few weaker sites say Greenville instead, but that’s where he grew up.
As of October 31, 2026, Mrbeast age is 28. His next birthday lands on May 7, 2027, when he turns 29. Some wedding coverage printed 27, yet he’d turned 28 two months earlier.
Here’s how Mrbeast age lines up with the biggest moments in his story:
- Age 13 (early 2012): He starts posting videos as MrBeast6000.
- Age 15: Doctors diagnose him with Crohn’s disease.
- Age 18: He graduates in 2016, then posts his count-to-100,000 video in January 2017.
- Age 21: He co-starts Team Trees on October 25, 2019.
- Age 23: He co-starts Team Seas on October 29, 2021, and announces Feastables in January 2022.
- Age 24: He hits 100 million subscribers on July 28, 2022.
- Age 26: He becomes a billionaire on paper in June 2024, debuts Beast Games in December, and proposes on Christmas Day.
- Age 27: He passes 400 million subscribers on June 1, 2025.
- Age 28: He crosses 500 million subscribers on June 12, 2026, then marries in July.
That timeline is the spine of this guide. The sections below fill in each stage.
Early Life and Family: Wichita, Greenville and a Military Household
Donaldson’s parents are Susan Parisher and Charles Donaldson, according to Wikipedia. Biography.com says both served in the U.S. military. Sportskeeda adds that his mother worked as a prison warden in Germany before a move to Fort Leavenworth.
Her long shifts changed daily life at home. Rolling Stone, as relayed by Biography.com, reported 12-hour workdays, so au pairs often looked after the kids. By the time he was seven, the family had lived in three cities.
Greenville, North Carolina, became his hometown. His parents divorced in 2007, and Biography.com says he isn’t in contact with his father.
He’s the middle child. His older brother, CJ, runs his own YouTube channel, MrBro. He also has a younger sister, and he hasn’t shared her identity publicly.
School, College and the Two-Week Detour
Donaldson played outfield for several years at Greenville Christian Academy, a private evangelical school. He also played basketball, per Biography.com. He graduated in 2016, so the “high school dropout” label is wrong.
Then came college, and it didn’t last. His mother had set a rule: go to college and keep your room, or drop out and leave. Biography.com says he enrolled at East Carolina University and quit after about two weeks.
Reporting differs on the details. Newer references, including the current Wikipedia entry, list Pitt Community College in Winterville instead. Every account agrees on one point: he left quickly.
Accounts also differ on how he moved out. Biography.com says his mother made him go. A retelling of his 2021 Colin and Samir interview says he’d earned enough from videos to move out himself.
Afterward, he and his friends spent hours on Skype calls trying to figure out why some videos spread. That obsession became the base of everything that followed.
mrbeast age and Crohn’s Disease: Health Since 15
Crohn’s disease is a long-term inflammatory bowel condition. Biography.com says Donaldson got his diagnosis at 15, and that he gave up sports afterward. Some retellings say ninth grade, others say sophomore year, so we use age 15.
He’s described what the illness took. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, he said he played baseball nonstop until Crohn’s hit, and then “I lost like 50 pounds.” Rolling Stone later reported that fatigue kept him home often, which pushed him toward YouTube.
The illness didn’t end at 15. In February 2025, he told Steven Bartlett that flare-ups and treatment still leave him sick and tired. His own summary: “I just live life on hard mode.”
From MrBeast6000 to YouTube’s Biggest Channel
He began posting in early 2012, at age 13, under the name MrBeast6000. Early uploads ranged from Let’s Plays to videos guessing other YouTubers’ earnings. By mid-2016, he had around 30,000 subscribers.
The turn came in January 2017. He posted a video of himself counting to 100,000, which took more than 40 hours. A count to 200,000 followed about a month later.
Then the channel took off. Wikipedia lists 1 million subscribers in 2017, 10 million in 2018 and 50 million in 2021. On July 28, 2022, he hit 100 million, the second individual creator to do it after PewDiePie.
Bigger productions followed. In 2021, his Squid Game recreation reportedly cost about $3.5 million. Our net worth guide notes that single main-channel videos can cost $3 million to $5 million.
By 2023, his team had passed 250 people. Forbes ranked him the top creator earner in 2022, at roughly $54 million. Its 2025 list put him on top again, with $85 million between April 2024 and April 2025.
The numbers kept climbing. He passed 400 million subscribers on June 1, 2025, and crossed 500 million on June 12, 2026. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan gave him a custom Play Button, since standard awards stop at 100 million.
Donaldson posted that he “had to update the play button wall.” It’s a small joke from a creator who has now collected every tier.
Giving Big: Team Trees, Team Seas and Beast Philanthropy
Team Trees started on October 25, 2019, with Mark Rober. The goal was 20 million trees, funded through the Arbor Day Foundation. It passed $20 million that December and has since raised more than $24 million.
Team Seas followed on October 29, 2021. It aimed to pull 30 million pounds of trash from waterways and oceans, working with Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup. It has raised more than $30 million.
Beast Philanthropy came in 2020 as a channel and nonprofit. The group says its food pantry in eastern North Carolina hands out more than 100,000 meals a month. Fans call him a modern-day Robin Hood.
Critics see something else. They say charity gets gamified when suffering only draws attention if it earns clicks. Both views rest on the same videos.
Business: Feastables, Lunchly, Beast Games and Beast Industries
MrBeast Burger came first, as a virtual restaurant in 2020. It later landed in a legal fight with Virtual Dining Concepts over food quality. He sued in 2023, and the company countersued for $100 million.
After that, he leaned harder on physical products. Feastables, his chocolate brand, was announced in January 2022. Our net worth guide cites reports of more than $500 million in sales.
Lunchly, a lunch-kit brand built with Logan Paul and KSI, was announced in September 2024. Viewstats, his analytics tool, now serves other creators. Together, these brands moved him from platform participant to platform competitor.
Then came Beast Games. On March 18, 2024, he announced a $100 million deal with Amazon MGM Studios. The show debuted on Prime Video on December 19, 2024, with a $5 million prize.
It drew 50 million viewers in 25 days, making it Prime Video’s most-watched unscripted series. Season 2 premiered on January 7, 2026, with a “Strong vs Smart” format and a Survivor crossover. It ended on February 25.
Next came fintech. On February 9, 2026, Beast Industries bought Step, a money app for teens and young adults with more than 7 million users. The company didn’t disclose the price.
Money matters here too. Beast Industries raised $200 million from Bitmine in January 2026 at a $5 billion valuation. Some outlets cite $5.2 billion from a September 2025 round led by Alpha Wave Global.
Either way, Donaldson owns a little over half, and that stake anchors the $2.6 billion estimate. He crossed the billionaire line on paper in June 2024, at age 26.
What MrBeast Has Said About Work, Money and His Health
His fullest on-record account came on The Diary of a CEO, released February 20, 2025. Asked about his earliest years, he called himself stubborn. “I just never give up,” he told Bartlett, per the transcript.
The cost of that stubbornness comes up often. He told Fortune that “the average person does not want to live the life I live.” On the Colin and Samir Show, he went further: “I’m miserable a lot of times.”
Yet he frames it as a choice. He’s said this is the price of wanting to change the world. He’s also said his personal bank balance is often near zero, because he reinvests nearly everything.
What This Means to Them, In Their Own Words
Read together, those lines follow one pattern. He talks about what he lacked, what illness took and what work costs. Rarely does Mrbeast age come up at all.
Money runs through it, too. In his Step announcement on February 9, 2026, he wrote that “Nobody taught me about investing, building credit, or managing money” while growing up. Then he tied the deal to helping young people avoid that gap.
The wedding post sounded different. He captioned the photos “I found MrsBeast.” Nashaniva reported he called it the best day of his life.
What Reporters Found That Wasn’t in the Interview
Not every headline has been friendly. On September 16, 2024, five unnamed contestants filed a proposed class action in Los Angeles. It named Donaldson, his production company and Amazon.
The filing alleges unpaid wages, unsafe conditions and a culture of sexism during the summer 2024 shoot in Las Vegas. These are allegations, and no claims of guilt are made or implied. The defendants dispute them, and a July 2026 case summary says no class has been certified and no court has ruled.
Donaldson didn’t respond to BBC and CNN requests for comment, and Amazon declined to comment. The Associated Press later obtained an internal memo in which he ordered a review of company culture. On the Bartlett podcast, he said he has no regrets about the show.
He’s also pushed back on reporting. In a March 1 post on X, he said a news site wrongly credited him with a line about life being easier when you’re broke. He said millions believed it.
One more gap sits between words and numbers. He says his cash is low, while reporters put his net worth near $2.6 billion. Both can be true, because that figure rests on a private company’s valuation rather than a bank balance.
Marriage and Personal Life: Thea Booysen
Donaldson’s wife is Thea Booysen, a South African author and creator. She runs the YouTube channel TheaBeasty and streams on Twitch. According to People, they met in 2022 during his trip to South Africa.
He proposed on Christmas Day 2024, with both families present. Reports say he hid the ring inside a larger gift. They shared the news soon after.
They married in July 2026 on Necker Island, Richard Branson’s private island in the British Virgin Islands. About 70 guests joined a week-long celebration that ran July 14 to 21. A family friend and ordained minister officiated, and Marcy Blum planned the event.
The first dance was “Die With a Smile.” There was no livestream, which stands out for a man who films everything. Reports differ on the exact ceremony day, and the couple posted on July 21.
Booysen has said they plan to hold a week-long island celebration every year
mrbeast age 28: Life and Money Today
At 28, Donaldson remains rooted in Greenville. Our net worth guide reports he spent roughly $10 million on a neighborhood of houses for family and staff. His main home is a $5 million estate, and his production campus covers 100,000 square feet.
Social Life Magazine reported in 2026 that his hard assets likely stay under $30 million. He prefers to keep money in the business. That’s why his stake in Beast Industries makes up most of his $2.6 billion estimate.
Analysts still flag key-man risk. If he stops filming, the company’s value could drop fast. IPO talk remains only a rumor, and our [INTERNAL LINK: MrBeast height → height guide] covers another question fans keep asking.
Conclusion: mrbeast age and the Story So Far
MrBeast age is 28 as of October 31, 2026. He was born May 7, 1998, in Wichita, raised in Greenville, and posting online by 13. He fought Crohn’s from 15, left college within weeks, and still built a company valued near $5 billion.
He’s also married now, and he’s still the first creator to pass 500 million subscribers. The facts change fast, so we’ll update this page as his story moves.
More on This Topic: How Tall Is MrBeast? The Height Debate and the Life Behind It
FAQ
What is mrbeast age in 2026?
He’s 28. He was born May 7, 1998, and turned 28 in May 2026. He turns 29 on May 7, 2027.
When is MrBeast’s birthday, and where was he born?
His birthday is May 7. He was born in Wichita, Kansas, and raised mostly in Greenville, North Carolina.
How old was MrBeast when he started YouTube?
He was 13. He began posting in early 2012 under the name MrBeast6000.
How old was mrbeast age when he became a billionaire?
He was 26. Reports place the milestone in June 2024, based on the value of his stake in Beast Industries.
Is MrBeast married, and how old is his wife?
Yes. He married Thea Booysen in July 2026 on Necker Island. Reports put both of them at 28.
What is MrBeast’s net worth?
Estimates sit near $2.6 billion. They rest on his majority stake in Beast Industries, valued near $5 billion. He’s said his cash is low, so most of it is paper wealth.
Disclaimer: Every detail in this guide reflects what public journalism and official records show at the time of writing. None of it has been verified or confirmed directly by MrBeast or his representatives, and figures such as net worth and valuations remain third-party estimates.
Sources: Biography.com · Fortune · Business Today. Also referenced in the text: Wikipedia, Sportskeeda, Rolling Stone, UNILAD, Decrypt, GMA Network, Nashaniva, People, Forbes, Social Life Magazine.
