Companies With the Best and Worst Reputations in 2026

Some brands spend a decade earning public trust and lose it in a single news cycle. Others turn years of complaints into a genuine comeback. The 2026 corporate reputation rankings show both stories playing out in real time.

This year’s data comes from two of the most respected sources in the industry: the Axios Harris Poll 100 and the Global RepTrak 100. Together, they surveyed tens of thousands of Americans about which brands they trust and which ones they don’t.

Below, we break down what actually builds or breaks a corporate reputation in 2026, plus five companies getting it right and five still digging out of a hole.

Want help managing your brand’s online image? Call (844) 458-6735 to speak with a reputation specialist, or keep reading to see how the biggest names in business are handling their reputations this year.

How These Rankings Actually Work

It’s worth understanding the methodology before trusting the results.

The Axios Harris Poll 100 starts each year by surveying thousands of Americans from a nationally representative online sample, asking which two companies have the best reputation and which two have the worst. That first round determines the 100 “most visible companies,” the brands most on Americans’ minds, for better or worse.

From there, a second, larger group, drawn from its own nationally representative sample, rates those 100 visible companies to calculate each one’s Reputational Quotient, or RQ score. That second survey typically runs from February into March. The 2026 edition surveyed 18,523 respondents between February 13 and March 3.

What Goes Into Corporate Reputation in 2026

Reputation research firms track dozens of data points, but they tend to sort into a handful of core categories.

The Model Just Changed

For years, the Harris Poll rated companies across nine dimensions: trust, character, culture, ethics, citizenship, vision, growth, trajectory, and products and services. Apple’s 2023 scorecard is a good example. It ranked #2 in trajectory, #4 in vision, and #3 in products and services, numbers strong enough to help it crack the top ten that year.

In 2026, Harris Poll refined that model. Trust, character, and business trajectory remain the foundational cornerstones, and a brand new factor called relevance was added to capture how present a company feels in everyday life. Growth, vision, and a few other legacy dimensions were folded out. On average, scores shifted by only 0.1 points under the new model, so the ranking itself remained stable even as the framework evolved.

Corporate Culture

How a company treats its employees shapes how the public sees it. Glassdoor reviews, layoffs, and workplace lawsuits all factor into outside perception, whether a company wants them to or not.

Leadership

A single public statement, apology, or scandal involving a visible CEO can move a reputation score more than years of marketing ever could. Executive communication is now a full-time risk to reputation.

Financial Stability

Money problems are hard to hide. Layoffs, bankruptcy filings, and missed earnings targets show up in public sentiment fast, especially once the news breaks on social media. Investors watch these signals closely too, since a sinking reputation score is often an early warning sign of deeper financial trouble.

Customer Sentiment

Online reviews, social mentions, and AI-generated summaries about a brand all shape how people feel about it before they ever make a purchase.

Products and Services

At the end of the day, reputation still comes back to whether the product works and whether the company stands behind it when it doesn’t.

Firms like NetReputation, ReputationSciences’ parent company, track these factors across search results, reviews, and social platforms so brands can catch small problems before they turn into five-alarm reputation fires.

Which Companies Cut Across Party Lines in 2026?

One of the more interesting findings in this year’s Axios Harris Poll is how many companies are managing to stay out of the political crossfire.

The average polarization score (the gap between how Republicans and Democrats rate a brand) dropped to 2.3 points among the ten highest-rated companies this year, down from 2.55 the year before. IBM, Reddit, and Apple were among the most politically neutral brands in the entire study.

Chewy and Samsung both landed in the top ten for Democrats and Republicans alike this year. Last year, only Arizona Beverage Co. managed that. Patagonia, Trader Joe’s, Samsung, and Nike kept their repeat appearances on the Democratic top ten, while SpaceX, Nvidia, Amazon, and Lowe’s did the same on the Republican side.

Some brands are more consistently polarizing than others. The Trump Organization has topped the list as the single most politically divisive company in the survey for several years running, while Chick-fil-A and John Deere have been fixtures among Republicans’ most trusted brands over that same stretch. USAA, the financial services company built around military families, has quietly been a repeat top-ten finisher in past years’ polls, a reminder that member-first service tends to earn support across the aisle.

Companies With Good Reputations in 2026

Based on the 2026 Axios Harris Poll 100 and Global RepTrak 100, here are five companies standing out this year.

1. The LEGO Group

LEGO holds the number one spot on the Global RepTrak 100 again this year, a title it has now defended for consecutive years. The company scores well across all seven of RepTrak’s reputation drivers, including product quality, workplace culture, and corporate conduct.

LEGO’s leadership has credited the ranking to consistency rather than reinvention. The brand keeps making the same promise (creative, screen-free play) and keeps delivering on it, year after year.

2. Chewy

Chewy claimed the number one overall spot on the 2026 Axios Harris Poll 100, unseating brands that had dominated the list for years. The online pet retailer built its reputation on genuine emotional connection and customer support, with gestures like handwritten sympathy notes and flower deliveries after a pet’s death, plus a return policy that rarely asks questions.

It’s a reminder that reputation isn’t only built by billion-dollar brand campaigns. Sometimes it’s built one thoughtful customer interaction at a time.

3. Patagonia

Patagonia topped the Axios Harris Poll 100 overall ranking back in 2023, with an RQ score of 83.5, and it’s still holding a top-ten spot in 2026. The outdoor retailer’s lifetime repair and replacement guarantee, paired with its long-running environmental commitments, continues to set it apart from nearly every other apparel company.

Few brands manage to make sustainability feel like part of the product itself rather than a marketing add-on. Patagonia is still one of them.

4. Nvidia

Nvidia cracked the top five of the 2026 Axios Harris Poll 100, a notable jump for a company that spent most of its history known mainly to electronics and computing enthusiasts. Fortune’s separate World’s Most Admired Companies study, which rates companies on nine attributes including financial soundness and innovation, has also ranked Nvidia the top semiconductor company for nine of the past ten years.

The contrast with other AI companies is worth noting. Nvidia’s reputation climbed on the back of its role powering the AI boom, while OpenAI’s ranking dropped 13 spots this year despite explosive growth in brand value. Building the tools behind AI seems to earn more public trust right now than building the AI products themselves.

5. This Year’s Biggest Gainers

Three companies posted the biggest reputation gains of 2026: UnitedHealth Group, Tesla, and Southwest. All three had spent recent years working through very public backlash, which makes their comeback worth watching.

It echoes a pattern from a few years back. In 2023, the biggest gainers included Uber, Nike, Costco, American Express, and Chick-fil-A, proof that a bad year doesn’t have to be permanent if a company puts in the work to rebuild trust.

Companies With Bad Reputations in 2026

Here are five companies still working to climb out of “very poor” reputation territory in 2026, according to the Axios Harris Poll 100.

1. Meta (Facebook)

Facebook, now operating under Meta, remains stuck in the bottom five of the reputation rankings. Years of controversy over data privacy, content moderation, and the platform’s effects on younger users have left an enduring mark, even as the company has poured billions into its AI and metaverse ambitions.

2. X

X continues to score among the lowest-rated companies in the country, a position it has held since it was still called Twitter back in 2023. Ongoing concerns about content moderation, advertiser exits, and the platform’s association with its owner’s public controversies have kept its reputation score near the bottom of the list for several years running.

3. Spirit Airlines

Spirit Airlines ranked as the worst-performing company in the 2026 Axios Harris Poll, just before it ceased operations entirely on May 2, 2026. After two bankruptcy filings in under two years and a failed bid for a federal bailout, the budget carrier shut down for good, losing its market share overnight and leaving thousands of employees out of work.

Spirit’s collapse is a stark example of what happens when financial instability and reputation decline feed each other. By the time a brand’s reputation score bottoms out, it’s often too late to fix the underlying business problems that caused it.

4. Temu

Temu continues to rank among the least trusted companies in America. Ongoing concerns about counterfeit products, whether customer data is kept safe, and aggressive marketing tactics have kept the ultra-low-cost retailer near the bottom of the list despite its massive user base.

5. TikTok

TikTok remains in “very poor” reputation territory heading into 2026. Lingering questions about data security, ownership, and the platform’s effect on teen mental health continue to outweigh its enormous popularity in the eyes of the public.

What Fortune’s Most Admired Companies List Adds to the Picture

The Axios Harris Poll isn’t the only major study worth checking. Fortune and Korn Ferry’s World’s Most Admired Companies list takes a different approach, surveying executives, directors, and industry analysts instead of everyday consumers, and scoring companies across nine reputation dimensions.

Apple has led that list for 19 consecutive years, with Amazon holding the third spot for a tenth straight year. The rankings also highlight strengths across specific industries: Toyota and Honda continue to represent the automotive sector well, Samsung anchors electronics, and Nvidia’s run at the top of semiconductors shows how one sector can define a company’s overall reputation.

Even brands outside the fast food and retail world, like Taco Bell in quick-service dining, show up in industry-specific reputation studies each year, a sign that no sector is too small to be on the public’s mind.

Want to Build a Better Reputation in 2026?

The gap between the best and worst reputations in America keeps widening. Brands that focus on transparency, consistent leadership, and genuine customer care are pulling ahead. Brands that ignore these fundamentals are running out of runway, sometimes literally.

Reputation researchers sometimes call this a company’s social license to operate: the ongoing, unwritten permission the public gives a brand to continue doing business as it does. Lose that, and no amount of advertising buys it back quickly.

If your brand’s online reputation needs work, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Call (844) 458-6735 to schedule a free consultation, or check out how ReputationSciences can help create a strategy built around where your brand stands today.