On New Year's Eve, the China Central Radio and Television Station's 2026 Spring Festival Gala (hereinafter referred to as the "Spring Festival Gala") will arrive as scheduled. According to incomplete statistics from reporters from the China Federation of Finance and Economics, as of now, there are more than 20 officially announced partners for this Spring Festival Gala. In terms of categories, Internet companies, artificial intelligence robots, smart travel and other technology track companies have become the absolute protagonists.
Specifically, Volcano Engine is the "exclusive AI cloud partner" of the Spring Festival Gala, Yushu Technology is the "robot partner", Douyin has won the exclusive cooperation with "Watching the Spring Festival Gala in Vertical Screen", Xiaohongshu has cooperated as a real-life note-taking interactive community, Bilibili (09626.HK) has become the exclusive barrage video platform, and Kuaishou (01024.HK) has taken over various content forms such as live broadcast, on-demand and short videos...
Source of data: WeChat official account of the General Manager’s Office of China Central Radio and Television Station, Spring Festival Gala Weibo (compiled by reporters from the Financial Associated Press) Note: The time is as of 12:30 on February 16, 2026
As the most discussed and topical program of the year, the Spring Festival Gala is not only a cultural symbol, but also a prism that reflects the development of China's industrial economy over the past 40 years. From the early days of liquor and home appliances to the current wave of the Internet and artificial intelligence, the changes in the list of Spring Festival Gala cooperative brands have become a "barometer" for the development of various industries, clearly outlining the profound transformation of China's consumer market and industrial structure.
The top arena for traditional consumer brands
The commercialization process of the Spring Festival Gala entered a fast lane after CCTV launched its first formal advertising tender in 1994, and in the following two decades it became the core arena for brand marketing in China's traditional consumer goods industry. During this period, leading companies represented by liquor, home appliances, food and beverages staged business legends one after another by competing for the golden advertising resources of the Spring Festival Gala.
In 1994, CCTV launched the "prime time advertising bidding" for the first time, giving birth to the concept of "Biard King" with the characteristics of the times. Kongfu Banquet won the first bid with a price of 30.79 million yuan. Subsequently, from 1995 to 1996, the little-known Shandong Qinchi Winery won the championship consecutively with high prices of 66.66 million yuan and 320 million yuan. It instantly became the focus of national attention from a regional brand and pushed the "brand king" effect to its peak. Since then, the competition for the Spring Festival Gala among liquor companies has been particularly fierce. Sichuan liquor representatives such as Wuliangye (000858.SZ), Jiannanchun, and Luzhou Laojiao (000568.SZ) have long occupied the background boards and oral broadcast resources of the Spring Festival Gala. After Yanghe Blue Classic made its debut on the Spring Festival Gala stage in 2008, it quickly opened up the national market through the Spring Festival Gala platform.
From the late 1990s to the early 2010s, as refrigerators, color TVs, washing machines and other home appliances entered households, home appliance brands frequently appeared in the Spring Festival Gala. Among them, Midea Group (000333.SZ) has sponsored the Spring Festival Gala midnight time for many consecutive years since 2003. At the same time, during the "high-definition" TV upgrading wave that emerged in the mid-to-late 2000s, leading domestic color TV companies such as TCL, Skyworth, and Konka also actively became partners of the Spring Festival Gala, launching marketing concepts such as "Watching the Spring Festival Gala in High Definition."
Pharmaceutical and health care, food and beverage companies are an indispensable main force in the commercial cooperation of CCTV Spring Festival Gala. From 2000 to 2002, the Spring Festival Gala zero o'clock time advertisement was won by Harbin Pharmaceutical Factory No. 6 Zhonggai, Taiji Group (600129.SH) Qumei and Harbin Pharmaceutical Factory No. 6 Hutong children's cold medicine respectively. Many food and beverage giants such as Wahaha, Huiyuan Juice, Nongfu Spring, Mengniu (02319.HK), and Yili (600887.SH) are also regular guests of the Spring Festival Gala. They continue to shape their brand image and reach hundreds of millions of families through this top national stage.
From competition for Internet users to AI army
2015 is an important watershed for Spring Festival Gala marketing. Tencent (00700.HK) WeChat and CCTV Spring Festival Gala launched the "Shake and Grab Red Envelopes" event, distributing cash and brand red envelopes worth a total of 500 million yuan. On New Year's Eve, the total number of red envelopes sent and received on WeChat reached 1.01 billion, 200 times that of 2014. With the traffic bonus of the Spring Festival Gala, WeChat Pay quickly narrowed the gap with Alipay. This marketing campaign, dubbed the "Pearl Harbor Attack" by the industry, not only reshaped the competitive landscape of mobile payments, but also made Internet companies realize the huge value of the Spring Festival Gala as a national-level traffic portal, officially opening a new era for Internet companies to enter the Spring Festival Gala marketing.
In the following years, major Internet companies started competing for cooperation in the Spring Festival Gala. Alibaba (09988.HK) entered the game with Alipay and Taobao and distributed over 2 billion yuan in red envelopes; short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin successively won exclusive interactive rights and completed the rapid expansion of user scale with the help of the Spring Festival Gala. At that time, the core of the Spring Festival Gala cooperation was the "battle for new entrants" among Internet companies. It seemed that whoever got the exclusive rights would be able to take advantage of the traffic bonus period.
2022 has become another dividing point. Although JD.com (09618.HK) is the "exclusive interactive partner", viewers can watch the Spring Festival Gala live broadcast on Douyin and Kuaishou at the same time, marking the Spring Festival Gala's super IP traffic from a single platform to multi-platform distribution. Since then, the "exclusive" titles have begun to differentiate and become vertical. For example, in 2025, Xiaohongshu will position itself as an "exclusive note-sharing platform" and Station B will focus on an "exclusive barrage video platform", etc. This means that the platform no longer seeks to cater to all users, but rather accurately serves specific circles and content consumption habits.
Today, artificial intelligence and robotics are on the rise. In the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, the lineup of related companies has rapidly expanded: Volcano Engine has become the exclusive AI cloud partner, Yushu Technology, Galaxy General, Magic Atomic, etc. are participating in robot-related cooperation, and Doubao has also appeared in the Spring Festival Gala as an AI application. Behind this is the "singularity" of the industry's influx of hot money and surge in shipments in China's AI and robotics industry since 2025.