The Top 2000 is an annual Dutch marathon radio programme that plays the 2,000 most popular songs listeners have deemed the best of all time.

[2][3] A significant part of the Netherlands' population listens to the broadcast each year;[4][5] during the 2023 edition, it had a national radio market share of 41.1 percent.

The show is hosted in a temporary studio called the Top 2000 Café at the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision in Hilversum.

[9] In the summer of 1998, Radio 2 station manager Kees Toering wanted to commemorate the new millennium by presenting a listener-compiled list of the 2000 best songs of the 20th century, aired between Christmas and New Year's Day.

[10] However, many of his colleagues were skeptical because the station did not broadcast at night, it seemed unlikely that listeners would tune in during the late hours, and because Sky Radio dominated the market share during Christmas time because of their own special programming.

In 2007, there were similar campaigns, one by the regional newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden to push Groningen singer Ede Staal to number one with "'t Het nog nooit zo donker west" and another by Christians on the social media platform Hyves to push Hillsong United's "Tell the World".

Votes for both were rejected because they received little, if any, attention in the previous years, and Toering said "The Top 2000 is not a plaything of any interest group whatsoever.

[13] That year, the Eindhovens Dagblad published an investigation alleging that dozens of songs in had incorrect placements or inaccurately did not make the Top 2000.

[16] Radio 2 said that a record number of 11.2 million people, or 78% of the Dutch population aged 10 and older, listened to the Top 2000 that year.

[22][23] Beginning in 2020, the broadcast began earlier than ever, starting at midnight on Christmas, to allow for the playing of more longer album versions in place of their shortened radio edits.

[25] In honor of the list's 25th anniversary in 2023, the songs which ranked 2,001 to 2,500 were also published as De Extra 500 and broadcast on NPO Radio 2 from 11 to 15 December.

These include covers, live performances or full versions whose running time exceed mainstream radio standards.

Beginning in 2010, the Top 2000 Café is built annually in November and early December at the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision in Hilversum.

In the first year, the museum already broke its daily visitor record when over 2,500 people attended on the Thursday of the broadcast, which was more than the 2007 opening of the audiovisual archive.

The song with the highest position in its debut year in the list (from 2000 onwards) is "Roller Coaster", by Dutch country singer Vera, which entered in fourth place.

[45] In all editions until 2019, The Beatles consistently occupied the most spots in the list, but that year, Queen took over the role as the Top 2000's main supplier with 37 songs.

[48] In 2015, John Lennon's "Imagine" was voted number one for the first time, in association with the piano act of Davide Martello after the November 2015 Paris attacks.

This was seen as a show of support during the farmers' protests that started because of parliament's proposal to halve the country's livestock for the reduction of agricultural pollution in the Netherlands.

[50] In 2021, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum jumped up 150 spots to number three after the murder of crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, who listed the song as his favourite and had it played at his funeral.

[51] That year, Golden Earring's "Radar Love" also entered the top ten for the first time in honor of George Kooymans, who was diagnosed with ALS, prompting his retirement and the band's breakup.

[52] In 2024, "Better Days" by Dermot Kennedy debuted at number six because it was a meaningful song to Eva Hermans-Kroot, a Dutch blogger who died of lung cancer during the voting week.

[63] Beginning in 2012, an alternative version of the Top 2000, the "Snob 2000", was created by writers of the Dutch music blog Ondergewaardeerde Liedjes (English: "Often Overlooked Songs").

These previous winners include: Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland" (2012), Queens of the Stone Age's "No One Knows" (2013), Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)" (2014–15), Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)" (2016–18), Porcupine Tree's "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here" (2019) and "Anesthetize" (2022), The War on Drugs' "An Ocean in Between the Waves" (2020), dEUS' "Instant Street" (2021), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Jubilee Street" (2023)[64] and The Sound's "Winning" (2024).