China Media Group (CMG) held a grand gala evening on Monday night to mark the Chinese New Year - Spring Festival 2026. The program lit up TV screens not only across China but also abroad. For more than forty years, this gala has been a symbolic and cultural event that has been one of the most important traditions of the Lunar New Year's Eve and inseparably accompanies family gatherings.
This year, CMG, through its multilingual platforms broadcasting in 85 languages, worked with more than 3,500 media outlets in over 200 countries and regions to provide live coverage and news coverage of the event.
According to preliminary statistics, a total of 677 million viewers across all media platforms watched the Spring Festival 2026 gala by midnight on 16 February. On new media platforms, the programme recorded 13.5 billion live and return views. The mobile app reached 578 million views, up 53.39 million on the previous year.
Interest in topics related to new forms of productivity has also increased significantly. These accounted for 23.78 % of all mentions of the gala, an almost ninefold increase year-on-year. The growing popularity is also confirmed by the involvement of young viewers, who accounted for 43.7 % of all live viewers, 10 % more than last year.
The gala also saw a significant expansion of its international reach. The programme was broadcast through nearly 4,000 international media outlets, representing a year-on-year increase of 37.95 %. The social media platform CCTV.com recorded 87.29 million views of the live stream, approximately one-fifth more than last year.