OpenAI's Sora used to be the name everyone quoted when AI video came up. Not any more. On LMArena's text-to-video leaderboard, published 9 November 2026, the top three spots all belong to Google — and Sora 2 Pro sits down in 13th place. If you are choosing an AI video generator today, this is the ranking that matters, because it is voted by real users, not published by a vendor.
How the ranking works
LMArena shows users two anonymous videos made from the same prompt and asks which is better. Thousands of those blind votes are fitted into a Bradley–Terry model to produce a score — so no brand name, no marketing, just what people actually preferred. The text-to-video board published 9 November 2026 is based on that voting, and the top 20 has not changed since 6 November. A second ranking, the Artificial Analysis Video Arena, uses different voters and prompts, so its numbers are not directly comparable — but the order on LMArena is what this post follows.
The top 10 right now
| # | Model | Maker | LMArena score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash | 1540 | |
| 2 | Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash | 1513 | |
| 3 | Gemini Omni Flash | 1509 | |
| 4 | FLUX 3 Video | Black Forest Labs | 1491 |
| 5 | Grok Imagine Video 1.5 | xAI | 1488 |
| 6 | Dreamina Seedance 2.0 (720p) | ByteDance | 1483 |
| 7 | Dreamina Seedance 2.5 (720p) | ByteDance | 1479 |
| 8 | Wan 3.0 | Alibaba | 1476 |
| 9 | SkyReels V4 | Skyreel | 1459 |
| 10 | Muse Video | Meta | 1457 |
Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash also leads the image-to-video board at 1503. The gap at the top is real: at 1540, it sits 173 points clear of Sora 2 Pro in 13th place (1367, from 55,965 votes) and 198 points clear of Sora 2 itself in 19th (1342). Google's own Veo 3.1 with audio lands 14th (1363), Runway Gen-4.5 is 29th (1223) and Kling 2.6 Pro is 31st (1216).
What the ranking really tells you
- Google owns video right now. Three Gemini Omni variants sweep the top three, and Veo 3.1 still holds the mid-table. No other vendor has two models in the top 10.
- Sora's crown is gone on quality votes. Sora 2 Pro and Sora 2 sit 13th and 19th — respected, but no longer the models users pick first in blind tests.
- China is close behind. ByteDance's Seedance and Alibaba's Wan 3.0 both sit in the top 8, and the highest open-weight model on the board is MiniMax H3 at 11th (1456) — though its community licence may restrict commercial use, so check the licence text before using it for client work.
- Scores are relative, not absolute. A 1540 does not mean "perfect video" — it means users preferred it most often in head-to-head votes. Treat the order as a shortlist, not a verdict.
How to try the winner for free
Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash is the model inside Google Vids: as we covered in our earlier guide, Google Vids gives you 3 free AI videos every month with this model. That is the cheapest way to test the leaderboard leader yourself — make the same prompt in Vids and in one other tool on the list, and judge with your own eyes. If you want to vote on the ranking itself, head to LMArena's video arena, where your blind votes feed the next update.
Bottom line
The AI video race has a new leader, and it is not the name from the headlines of last year. Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash tops both LMArena video boards, Google sweeps the top three, and Sora now trails by nearly 200 points. Rankings move — this board is synced daily — but right now, if you only test one AI video generator, test the one at the top. The free route through Google Vids means that test costs you nothing.
Source: LMArena video leaderboard, via 17NAS (text-to-video board published 9 November 2026; scores from the lmarena-ai dataset on Hugging Face, CC-BY-4.0). Hero photo: cinematographer James Wong Howe on the set of The Molly Maguires, 1969 — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
