We study characteristic classes on hyperkähler manifolds with a view towards the Verbitsky component. The case of the second Chern class leads to a conditional upper bound on the second Betti number in terms of the Riemann-Roch polynomial, which is also valid for singular examples. We discuss the general structure of characteristic classes and the Riemann-Roch polynomial on hyperkähler manifolds using among other things Rozansky-Witten theory.