Chinese box office surpasses 29 billion yuan, beating the record set for the whole of 2025
Nine films have already surpassed one billion yuan in earnings in 2026, more than the entire previous year: a sign that Chinese audiences have returned to cinemas after the National Day holiday.
The Chinese film box office for 2026 has surpassed 29 billion yuan, with 737 million admissions and 106 million screenings, according to data updated as of September 15 reported by Sugarpulp, which cites the China Film Administration and industry data platforms as its source. The exact figure, 29.007 billion yuan, is also confirmed by the Italian edition of China Radio International (Chinese state news agency), which draws on the same data released by the China Media Group.
The figure should be read in comparison with the previous year: nine films have already surpassed the threshold of one billion yuan in earnings since the start of 2026, a number higher than the whole of 2025, according to both sources. Among the titles that have driven this result are ‘Welcome to Dragon Restaurant’, the story of a Chinese chef in the Middle East, along with ‘Flying Life 3’ and ‘The Eight Immortals’.
A significant contribution to this annual trend came from China’s National Day holiday week, which from October 1 to 7, 2026, recorded earnings of 1.165 billion yuan, according to data reported by China Radio International. This is one of the most profitable release windows of the year for the Chinese film industry, tied to the national holiday calendar.
The main limitation of these figures, stated by the source itself, concerns their provisional nature: the data is updated as of September 15 and therefore does not represent the final tally for the year, which may still change in the last weeks of 2026. It should also be considered that the figure on the nine billion-yuan films is a cumulative count from the start of the year, not an average or a projection of the final result.
The comparison between 2026 and the whole of 2025, although referring to two periods of different length — an almost complete year versus a full year — remains the only point of comparison available in the sources consulted, and it is on this basis that the Chinese film market, with three months still to be accounted for, has already recorded a result higher than that of the entire previous year.
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