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Launched 2005
1. WordPress Classic [retired]
2. Green Marinée [retired]
3. Kubrick
4. Ocadia [retired]
5. Connections [retired]
6. Almost Spring [retired]
7. Pool [retired]
8. Blix [retired]
9. Fauna [retired]
10. Regulus [retired]
Launched 2006
11. Benevolence [retired]
12. Hemingway [retired]
13. Banana Smoothie [retired]
14. Contempt [retired]
15. Sapphire [retired]
16. Silver is the New Black [retired]
17. Fresh Bananas [retired]
18. Rubric [retired]
19. Shocking Blue Green [retired]
20. White as Milk [retired]
21. Andreas 09 [retired]
22. Fleur de Lys
23. Sweet Blossoms [retired]
24. Girl in Green
25. Quentin [retired]
26. Dusk [retired]
27. Simpla
28. Jentri
29. Treba
30. Andreas 04 [retired]
31. Thirteen
32. Ambiru
33. Emire
34. Flower Power [retired]
35. Supposedly Clean
36. Solipsus [retired]
37. Light
38. Neat
39. Toni
40. Sandbox 0.6.1 [retired]
41. Pressrow [see note 3]
42. Day Dream
43. Rounded
44. Cutline [see note 3]
45. Unsleepable
46. K2-lite
47. Tarski
48. Chaotic Soul
49. Fadtastic
50. Twenty-eight Thirteen
51. Garland
52. Greenery
53. Iceburgg
54. Vermilion Christmas
Launched 2007
55. Sunburn [retired]
56. Freshy
57. Fjords 04
58. Misty Look [retired]
59. Neo-Sapien
60. Ocean Mist
61. Redoable Lite
62. Digg 3 Column
63. Sandbox 1.1 [retired]
64. Black-Letterhead
65. Chaos Theory
66. The Journalist v1.3 [retired]
Launched 2008
67. Prologue [retired]
68. Monotone [retired]
69. Albeo
70. The Journalist v1.9
71. DePo Masthead
Launched 2009
72. Grid Focus
73. Vigilance [retired]
74. Spring Loaded
75. iNove [retired]
76. Sandbox 1.6.1 [retired]
77. DePo Square
78. P2
79. Duotone
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Launched 2010
80. Monochrome
81. Steira
82. Motion
83. Titan
84. Dark Wood
85. Neutra
86. NotesIL
87. Inuit Types
88. Under the Influence
89. Twenty Ten
90. Structure
91. Vostok
92. Bueno
93. Enterprise
94. Notepad
95. Paperpunch
96. Greyzed
97. Andrea
98. Wu Wei
99. Koi
100. Modularity Lite
101. Coraline
102. Oulipo
103. Fusion
104. Spectrum
105. Elegant Grunge
106. zBench
107. Pilcrow
108. Sandbox 1.6.2
109. Toolbox
Launched 2011
110. Clean Home
111. Beach
112. Headlines [premium]
113. Shelf [premium]
114. Duster [retired]
115. Choco
116. Crisp [premium]
117. Pretty Young Thing [premium]
118. Traction [premium]
119. Liquorice
120. Rusty Grunge
121. Basic Maths [premium]
122. The Morning After
123. Tapestry [premium]
124. Mystique
125. Fresh News [premium]
126. Linen [premium]
127. Vertigo
128-130. MLB Fan, MLB Modern, MLB Retro
131. Twenty Eleven
132. Delicious Magazine [premium]
133. Fruit Shake
134. Chateau
135. Matala
136. Lifestyle [premium]
137. Manifest
138. Piano Black
139. React [premium]
140. Blogum
141. Esquire
142. Next Saturday
143. Chapters [premium]
144. Pink Touch 2
145. Quintus
146. Skeptical
147. Chunk
148. Minimum [premium]
149. Selecta
150. Comet
151. Nishita
152. Magazine [premium]
153. Parament
154. Elemin [premium]
155. Eight [premium]
156. Bold Life
157. Funki [premium]
158. Retro MacOS
159. Modern News [premium]
160. Dusk to Dawn
161. iTheme2
162. Bold News [premium]
163. Strange Little Town
164. Bouquet
165. Photography [premium]
166. Brand New Day
167. Luscious [premium]
168. Anthem [premium]
169. Annotum Base [see note 4]
170. Annotum Sans [see note 4]
171. Adventure Journal
172. Shaan
173. Reddle
174. Imbalance 2
175. Autofocus
176. Nuntius
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Launched 2012
177. ThemeMin [premium]
178. Duet [premium]
179. Fresh & Clean
180. Forever
181. Newsy [premium]
182. Currents [premium]
183. Debut [premium]
184. Suburbia
185. Splendio
186. Retro-fitted
187. Sundance
188. Triton Lite
189. Sunspot
190. Ari
191. San Kloud
192. Chalk [premium]
193. Standard [premium]
194. On Demand [premium]
195. Blaskan
196. Mimbo Pro [premium]
197. Vintage Kitchen [premium]
198. Everyday [premium]
199. Origin
200. Oxygen
201. Just Desserts [premium]
202. A Simpler Time [premium]
203. Ideation & Indent
204. Grisaille
205. Portfolio [premium]
206. Blog Simple [premium]
207. Skylark
208. Mixfolio
209. Yoko
210. Petite Melodies [premium]
211. Soundcheck [premium]
212. The Great Adventure [premium]
213. The Columnist
214. Vintage Camera
215. Balloons
216. Lovebirds
217. Ever After
218. Avid [premium]
219. Twenty Twelve
220. Sight
221. Able
222. Gridspace [premium]
223. Ascetica
224. Gigawatt [premium]
225. Pinboard [premium]
226. Hum
227. Timepiece
228. Monster
229. Delicacy
230. Babylog
231. Runo Lite
232. Blissful Blog
233. Something Fishy
234. Hatch
235. Opti [premium]
236. Academica
237. Confit
238. Watson [premium]
239. Sinfo [premium]
240. Publish
241. Cheer
242. Hero
243. Widely
244. Book Lite
245. Misty Lake
Launched 2013
Visit the Theme Showcase site,
click “Newest”.
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Notes
1. Premium = themes you pay for.
2. Retired = semi-withdrawn themes (hidden from the dashboards of blogs created after this change, still available in the dashboards of blogs created before the change).
3. Cutline and Pressrow have been removed – see here why: Mullenweg-Pearson dispute.
4. Annotum = platfrom for Google Knol users – see announcement.
5. When I originally created the post (December 2010), I was based on info from the WordPress.com Theme Showcase site (introduced near that time) as well as the official WordPress.com Weblog. From then on, I kept updating the post each time a new theme was added or a theme became retired. For 2005 and 2006 there are discrepancies between the Showcase site and the Weblog; in those cases I gave preference to the original announcements in the Weblog, as a more reliable source (for example, Contempt is described as “a more professional version of Kubrick” although according to the Showcase site Kubrick was launched eight months after Contempt).
6. January 2013: I have stopped testing themes and updating related posts since March 2012, but for the sake of completeness I continued updating this post to include all the themes that were added in 2012 as well as mark themes that became retired in the meantime.
https://wpbtips.wordpress.com/
wordpress tips 
In case you hadn’t noticed, in the revised version of the Showcase, Kubrick has been banished from the list of popular themes. Last week it was *the* most popular theme on WordPress.com with over 4 million users.
Posted by Jennifer | December 23, 2010, 20:44No I hadn’t noticed, thanks! What the f* are they doing?
(Unfortunately for them, I copied the stats the day they mailed me about Showcase, because I’ll do another post like this one, listing all themes from most popular to least popular.)
Posted by Panos | December 23, 2010, 21:59Spoken with passion:
Marketing? I asked once, some while ago about which themes were most popular/used. And got an answer. Now they are featuring it?
Sorry, husband just got back. Post more later…
Posted by Tess | December 24, 2010, 03:18Marketing my ass! One day they publish stats, next day they tamper with them because the picture isn’t the one they’d prefer… These people are unbelievable.
Here’s the reply to that question of yours:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/what-are-the-most-popular-themes-on-wpcom?replies=11#post-320841
No Kubrick there either!
Posted by Panos | December 24, 2010, 06:14Maybe they decided to change the definition of “popular”? ;-)
Kubrick being the default theme for so many years, it could be that just a *few* of those 4 million blogs were/are stillborn signups and abandoned blogs. To me Twenty Ten is the most popular at the moment for the same reason (even though there is much to love about it).
Posted by Jennifer | December 24, 2010, 14:46Yes of course, that’s the reason behind Kubrick’s “popularity”. But they could add a note re this instead of hiding the stats just for this theme. What they did is called falsifying, isn’t it?
Posted by Panos | December 24, 2010, 19:05Ah, we’re back to marketing, I see.
Posted by Jennifer | December 27, 2010, 11:53I suppose I have a much more negative view of marketing—lots of adverts and company-written documentation is ‘self-promotional’ at best, and often, at the very least, deceptive.
Hooray! I just because I got a coupon in my traditional mailbox saying I can get high speed internet service from AT&T for as low as $14.95 per month. Don’t believe it. While it might be true technically because from their point of view the offer is available.
But, one can only take advantage of the offer as part of a bundle of other services we don’t need… That is marketing.
Posted by Tess | December 27, 2010, 20:04Hello there. Ahhh yeas, I recall the old days when few themes were available; only 1 forum existed; there was no support documentation and only one thread for FAQs existed.
I received a 5 second survey on my Dashboard on the same day the new Themes Showcases was announced. The survey is assessing interest in purchasing a theme for your WordPress.com blog, what features you would want to pay for, and what style of theme you would be interested in paying for. I believe there were only 4 or 5 questions.
I didn’t glean what “purchasing a theme for your WordPress.com blog” would amount to from the survey question. If all themes on this wpMU multiuser blogging platform are, in essence, using the same underlying templates then how would that work?
We already have a CSS upgrade that’s not supported by Staff and 2 Volunteers are creating CSS free of charge for those who post to the forum so this is puzzling. Are WordPress.com Staff actually going to custom design themes for those who pay and provide full support for them? I haven’t a clue but don’t be surprised when the next WordPress.com “products” are made available for purchase that theme purchase may be included.
Yes, as soon as I have time – I’m blogging it.
Posted by timethief | December 27, 2010, 22:44@J &T: But lying is very bad marketing; well, at least for those of us who can tell the lie…
@TT: Hmmm, interesting. Matt has stated that the upgrades are how WP makes money; he’s seen that lots of users ask for other themes, so the next logical thought is that some of those users would be willing to pay for that. So I think you’re right, probably a new upgrade. But I don’t think they’re going to do any custom designing; my guess is they’ll simply adapt some attractive themes from http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ like they normally do, but reserve them for paying wp.com users. If we’re right, then I guess the next version of Themes in our dashboard will be like the Typekit font collections: the reserved themes will be there, to whet people’s appetites, accompanied by a nice “Upgrade only” tab.
Posted by Panos | December 28, 2010, 16:21And sure enough, first two “premium” themes launched February 3 (2011).
Posted by Panos | February 4, 2011, 22:21And…Kubrick is back in the Theme Showcase!
Posted by Jennifer | February 14, 2011, 00:34Oh? Thanks! Seems someone talked some sense to someone…
[ Update: see staff replies here:
https://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/wordpress-com-themes-most-to-least-popular-july-2011/#comment-20568 ]
Posted by Panos | February 14, 2011, 02:12