List of most luminous stars

This list of most luminous stars is of Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud objects. A few stars in other local group galaxies can be seen in enough detail to work out their the luminosities. The list is more or less complete for stars down to 2,000,000 times the luminosity of the Sun.
Despite their extreme luminosity, many of these stars are too distant to be observed with the naked eye. Stars that are at least sometimes visible to the unaided eye have their apparent magnitude (6.5 or brighter) highlighted in blue.