Joshua McCartney

Josh McCartney has built a distinctive series around secret and forbidden sites in the Sahara, producing videos with titles like "This Site in the Sahara Was Never Meant to Be Found" and "They Tried Hiding Deep in the Sahara." His approach blends physical adventure travel with documentary-style mystery, presenting these locations as places deliberately concealed or forgotten by history. The Sahara content has become one of his most recognizable content pillars across Instagram and YouTube.

Yes — Josh McCartney sells his own travel guide, which he links directly from his Instagram bio. The guide is aimed at adventurers who want to find lesser-known, off-the-beaten-path destinations rather than typical tourist spots. It aligns closely with his overall content mission of sharing hidden gems that most travelers never discover.

Josh has produced content exploring ancient and largely unknown civilizations, framing discoveries with titles like "This Forgotten Civilization Could Break History" and "Humans Can't Survive Here — So Who Built This?" His videos sit at the intersection of adventure travel and archaeological mystery, giving his channel a documentary edge that sets him apart from mainstream travel creators. This angle appears consistently across both his Instagram Reels and his longer YouTube videos.

Wild camping and wild swimming are explicitly part of Josh McCartney's adventure travel identity, alongside hiking and exploring hidden locations. He describes all three activities in his YouTube channel description as central to his off-the-beaten-path approach. These activities feed directly into the remote and rugged tone of his content, whether he's in Europe, Asia, or North Africa.

Abandoned and forgotten locations are a recurring theme in Josh's content, closely tied to his interest in mystery and hidden history. He regularly uses #abandonedplaces in his posts and frames these visits around a question — who built this, why was it hidden, what happened here. This storytelling approach turns ruins and derelict sites into narrative-driven videos rather than simple location showcases.

China appears as one of Josh McCartney's recurring travel destinations, with #china among his most-used hashtags. His content there follows his signature style of seeking out locations that are lesser-known or difficult to access, rather than covering major tourist landmarks. This fits his broader mission of going "off the beaten path" in destinations most Western travel creators overlook.

Insta360 and Hover Air are both official sponsored partners of Josh McCartney on YouTube. Insta360 produces action cameras built for rugged, immersive shooting — ideal for hiking and wild swimming — while Hover Air makes compact autonomous drones suited for solo adventurers filming in remote terrain. The fact that both brands have partnered with him suggests his kit choices are closely aligned with what he actually uses in the field.

Josh McCartney secured sponsorships from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and ASUS on YouTube in 2026, which may seem unexpected for an adventure travel creator. Tech brands frequently partner with high-production creators in the adventure and cinematic space because editing drone footage, 360-degree video, and long-form documentary content demands serious computing power. His growing YouTube audience in the 18–34 age bracket is also a strong demographic fit for gaming and productivity hardware brands.

Josh McCartney is based in France, though his content takes him across the globe — from the Sahara Desert to Southeast Asia and East Asia. His audience is primarily drawn from the United Kingdom and the United States, and his talent agency, Gray Talent, is UK-based. This international setup is typical for adventure creators whose content geography is essentially borderless.

Instagram is currently Josh McCartney's largest platform, where he has built an audience well into the seven-figure range. His YouTube channel has surpassed 850,000 subscribers and is growing at a noticeably faster monthly rate than Instagram, suggesting his longer-form documentary-style adventure content is gaining strong momentum there. He has been largely inactive on TikTok, making Instagram and YouTube his two primary platforms.