VLC media player surpasses 7 billion downloads

The open-source media player VLC has surpassed 7 billion downloads across all platforms. This milestone follows a rapid growth period, having reached 6 billion downloads in January 2025.

Maintained by the French organization VideoLAN, the software remains popular due to its free, ad-free nature and its ability to support a wide variety of audio and video formats. Recent developments include bringing the player to Amazon’s Vega OS for Fire TV devices.

VideoLAN is currently working on VLC 4.0, a major update intended to modernize the player's architecture and interface, though no specific release date has been set. Additionally, the organization has explored artificial intelligence integration, such as a system for local, offline AI-powered subtitling and translation presented at CES 2025.

Originally started as a student project at École Centrale Paris in 1996, VLC is currently led by president and principal developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf.