Whindersson Nunes

Bom Jesus, a deleted channel, and ten million subscribers

Whindersson Nunes Batista was born on 5 January 1995 in Palmeira do Piauí and grew up in Bom Jesus, in the same state. He began making videos at fifteen. The one that moved him out of the hobbyist tier was a 2012 parody called "Alô vó, tô reprovado", which took about five million views in a week. The account carrying it did not survive: his original channel was hacked and deleted on 20 January 2013, and the channel he still uses was registered later that year, from scratch.

He moved to Teresina and lived with the family of another YouTuber, Bob Nunes. The output settled into a recognisable shape early — musical parodies, vlogs, film reviews, songwriting, shot with almost no editing in whatever room he happened to be in, opened every time with the same greeting to the people watching. The most-watched single video on the channel remains a parody of Adele's "Hello" built around a household argument about the wifi password, past 69 million views.

The scale arrived quickly. He passed ten million subscribers on 14 July 2016, which made him the second-most subscribed channel in Brazil, and overtook Porta dos Fundos for first place before the end of that year. The channel now carries 44.7 million subscribers and around 4.71 billion total views, placing him fourth in Brazil.

Specials, records and a professional boxing record of 0–2

Screen work followed the channel. He played Ray Van in Os Parças (2017), its sequel in 2019 and a further instalment in 2024, took the lead in Z4 (2018), and starred as Roniclayson in the sitcom Os Roni across 2019 to 2021. Netflix has released three stand-up specials: Adulto in 2019, É de Mim Mesmo in 2022 and Isso Não é Um Culto, which arrived on 19 February 2023 and had been recorded at the Coliseu do Porto in Portugal the previous year, working through social media and religion.

Under the name Lil Whind he has released music that is not comedy at all. The debut album Piauí came in 2020, drawing on regional material and personal storytelling, and the EP Vivência followed through BMG on 19 August 2022. The collaborations travelled further than the albums: "Girassol" with Priscilla Alcantara in 2019, "Coisa Linda" with Ivete Sangalo in 2020, "Baião" with Alok in 2021 and "Morena" with João Gomes in 2022.

The boxing was not a bit. He made an amateur debut on 28 September 2019 in São Paulo, beating Mario Silva on a unanimous decision, then fought the former WBO super featherweight champion Acelino Freitas to a unanimous draw over eight rounds on 30 January 2022, carrying a bad cut. He stopped Filipek in the second round at Wembley Arena on 22 April 2023, lost to King Kenny at Dublin's 3Arena that July, and turned professional on 14 October 2023 with a decision loss to My Mate Nate in Manchester. His most recent bout was 15 November 2024 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, a unanimous-decision loss to Neeraj Goyat on the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson undercard, leaving him 0–2 as a professional. He has also said boxing helped him manage his symptoms.

He was married to the singer Luísa Sonza from 2018 to 2020, and won the International category at the Streamy Awards in 2020.

February 2025

In May 2024 he said publicly that depression had, for the first time, made him feel unwell holding a microphone. On 20 February 2025 his management confirmed he had admitted himself to a psychiatric clinic in the interior of São Paulo for treatment for depression. The decision was his own, taken with medical supervision; the statement said he was well, pleased with his progress, and would return to the stage.

He has since described the point at which he sought help as the moment he began confusing what was real and what was not, and has talked openly about the drug use that preceded it. He has also said there is a Whindersson before the treatment and a Whindersson after it, and that the reason he keeps returning to his own life on stage is that it is where the material is.

The show came out of the ward itself. He told Terra in July 2025 that while he was still in treatment he was already building the act in his head, thinking that this was going to make a show.

Isso Definitivamente Não é um Culto

The touring show is titled Isso Definitivamente Não é um Culto — a sequel in name to the 2023 Netflix special, built from new material. It runs through mental health, behaviour, social media, religion and spirituality, and uses the hospital admission, the addiction and the fame directly as comic material rather than as a framing device.

By his own count it is the seventh show he has built across his career, each aimed at a different audience than the last, moving from adolescent material towards something more adult and more critical.

The scale of it is unusual for stand-up. Before the 2026 leg the production had played 65 cities across 23 Brazilian states and six countries, including European dates, to more than 230,000 people: 94 main sessions, 63 of them sold out, with a further 47 extra sessions added on demand.

The outlier date was 13 July 2025, when he took the show to the Manaus sambódromo in front of roughly 15,000 people — by his account the first stand-up show staged in a sambódromo in Brazil. Local comedians Roger Siqueira and William de Oliveira opened, with an appearance from his friend Robson de Souza. He handled the February admission lightly through most of the set, then near the end picked up a guitar and performed a song he had written during treatment, dedicating it to people going through the same thing.

Where he is now

The Brazilian leg continued through 2026 across São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Goiás, Ceará, Pará, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rondônia, Acre, Espírito Santo, the Federal District and Rio Grande do Sul. Demand is still forcing extra sessions: Barueri on 10 September 2026 went on sale with performances at 6.30pm and 10pm at the Praça das Artes, tickets from R$75 to R$200, after a third slot was added on the strength of early sales. Porto Alegre's Auditório Araújo Vianna takes the show on 22 November 2026, doors at 6.30pm for an 8pm start, R$120 to R$260 before concessions. Both dates carry a 16 certificate, and both offer reduced-price tickets in exchange for a kilo of food donated.

The United States dates are his first there in four years — Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Newark and Boston, performed in Portuguese. The Fort Lauderdale show moved: originally set for 2 August 2026, it now runs on 13 December 2026 at 7pm at the Lillian S. Wells Hall at The Parker, with existing tickets valid for the new date and a refund deadline that passed on 27 August 2026.

What the reviews find in it

Writing for Portal Leo Dias after the 11 May 2026 performance at the Centro de Convenções de Ilhéus, Guilherme Silva described a set that looks chaotic for its first stretch and then reveals its construction, pulling scattered stories about characters, memories, addiction, hospitalisation, fame and relationships into a single line. The verdict was admiring and uneasy in equal measure: technically accomplished, unusually intimate, and closer to a public session of self-confrontation than to a conventional stand-up hour.

The sharpest line in that review is the one that flags the cost of the method — that some of the jokes read less like pain overcome than like pain someone has learned to live with by making it socially funny. The crowd laughs constantly, but the reviewer also registered a silent discomfort in the passages that go furthest in.