Best-selling charity single in the UK (duo/group)

The original version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (1984), written and produced by Bob Geldof (Ireland) and James “Midge” Ure (UK) and performed by the all-star collective Band Aid, has sold 3.8 million copies in the UK. The profits of sale (reportedly £8 million in the first year) went to Ethiopian famine relief, under the auspices of the Band Aid Trust.

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is the single that just keeps on giving: the original, which spent five weeks at No.1 from 15 December 1984, peaked at No.3 the following Christmas and has returned to the UK Official Singles Chart every year since 2008 on the strength of digital downloads and, more recently, streaming. It climbed as high as No.6 on 3 January 2019. By 2 January 2025, it had amassed a total of 111 weeks on the UK chart across 22 separate runs.

Re-recorded versions of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, again featuring star-studded line-ups of contemporary and veteran musicians, revisited No.1 in the UK in 1989 (Band Aid II), 2004 (Band Aid 20) and 2014 (Band Aid 30). Sales of these versions are excluded from the original’s sales of 3.8 million.

The UK’s (and the world’s) best-selling charity single is Elton John’s “Something About the Way You Look Tonight”/“Candle in the Wind 1997”, which sold 33 million copies in support of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.