Megachurch Resurgence 2026: How Big-Attendance Churches Rebounded After the Pandemic

America’s megachurches have not just recovered from the pandemic — they’ve come back stronger, according to a new report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

“Megachurch Resurgence: How Big-Attendance Churches Rebounded After the Pandemic,” authored by Warren Bird and Scott Thumma, draws on a late-2025 survey of 589 U.S. Protestant churches with in-person attendance of 900 or higher. The findings paint a picture of institutions that, five years after COVID-19 forced 88% of megachurches to stop meeting in person, are now reporting record levels of self-assessed vitality, financial health and optimism.

The numbers back up that confidence. Sixty-seven percent of megachurches have grown in attendance since before the pandemic, and 45% have grown by 25% or more. That stands in sharp contrast to congregations of all sizes, which the report says saw a 0% rebound rate overall. Financially, megachurches reported a median income of $7.4 million in 2025, up from $5.3 million in 2019, and 86% rated their financial health as good or excellent. Ninety-seven percent said their church is “spiritually vital and alive,” the highest mark in the survey’s 25-year history.

The report also challenges some common assumptions about megachurches. Rather than being politically fractious institutions, most leaders said their congregations avoid discussing politics when they gather, and 80% disagreed that clergy should endorse political candidates. Racial diversity continues to climb, too — 66% of megachurches now qualify as multiracial, up from just 21% in 2000. And these churches aren’t retreating behind their walls: 88% report active community service involvement, and 59% said outside organizations use their facilities for everything from nonprofits to daycares to government functions like voting.

Leadership dynamics get notable attention as well. The typical megachurch senior pastor is 53 years old and has served 15 years, mirroring 2020 figures, and the report finds little evidence of a post-pandemic exodus from ministry. Succession planning, however, has improved only modestly. The data also undercuts the idea that megachurches are a fading Baby Boomer phenomenon — Gen X and Millennial pastors together now outnumber Boomer pastors, and nearly one in five megachurches was founded after 2000.

One of the more curious findings involves denominational identity: the share of megachurches describing themselves as “independent or non-denominational” jumped to 69% in 2025, a sharp rise the authors say they can’t fully explain. Meanwhile, small groups continue to deepen as a strategy — 94% of megachurches now call them central to spiritual formation — even as the frequency of typical worship attendance keeps declining, with attenders now averaging closer to once a month.

Taken together, the authors frame megachurches as “laboratories of innovation,” arguing their growth isn’t simply a function of size but of a shared cluster of traits: clear mission, willingness to change, strong discipleship structures and an enduring invitational culture. The report notes, though, that very large churches (900–1,999 in attendance) rebounded somewhat more slowly than their bigger counterparts, suggesting scale itself may have played some role in the pace of recovery even if it isn’t the whole story.