During the 2025 National Day holiday period, which coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival, the 8-day extended holiday witnessed surges across drama series, film, and live performance markets. In the drama series sector, television broadcasts maintained their stronghold in family viewership, while streaming platforms leveraged compelling storylines and youth-oriented content to capture traffic peaks, with both channels forming the core vehicles for holiday content consumption. The film market concluded the National Day period with total box office receipts of 1.835 billion yuan, with this year's performance driven by multiple films with solid reputations rather than a single breakout hit. In the live performance sector, from classic adaptations to cross-genre innovations, from theater halls to outdoor plazas, diverse performance activities not only satisfied citizens' cultural needs but also became an important engine driving urban consumption.

**Drama Series Market: "Content Innovation" Becomes the Key to Breaking Through**

According to the viewing report for the 40th week of 2025 from Cool Cloud Entertainment Data and the National Day drama series monitoring report from Yunhe Data, the average viewership rating for drama series on national satellite TV channels during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday increased by 6.3% compared to the same period in 2024. Streaming platforms achieved 16.82 billion effective plays, with television and online platforms jointly constituting the core vehicles for holiday content consumption.

The television broadcast market, dominated by CCTV and provincial satellite channels, presented a landscape of "mainstream themes leading, realistic subjects breaking through," with CCTV platforms securing viewership championships through premium productions. The period drama "Blazing Youth" continued its popular momentum from its September debut, topping Cool Cloud's 40th week viewership rankings with an average rating of 3.12% during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. The spy drama "Silent Glory," which premiered on September 30, delivered impressive performance, landing second place on Cool Cloud's real-time viewership rankings on its debut day, with an average holiday rating of 2.23%.

Major video platforms including Tencent, Youku, and iQiyi attracted younger audiences through diverse themes. Yunhe Data showed that online drama series averaged 210 million daily active users during National Day, with strong narratives and IP adaptations becoming core traffic drivers, particularly with top-tier series monopolizing traffic peaks.

The market performance across different channels reflects distinct audience differences and creative logic: television dramas primarily target audiences over 40, preferring realistic themes such as period and family dramas, with viewership stability relying on narrative depth and actors' national recognition. Series like "Blazing Youth" and "Happy Parents Group 2" both rooted themselves in family scenarios with "down-to-earth" storylines. Online platform dramas focus on the 18-29 age group as their core, showing higher acceptance for suspense and costume dramas with strong plots, with popularity highly dependent on short video topic propagation. "Sleepless Day's" "time loop famous scenes" and "Grant Me Glory's" "fake couple bickering segments" both achieved breakthrough success through secondary editing.

Behind the data, "content innovation" has become the common breakthrough code for both television and online drama series. The phenomenon of "Grant Me Glory" experiencing "polarized reviews but explosive traffic" confirms holiday audiences' demand for "strong emotional value" - even with plot flaws, its precise targeting of topics like "marriage counterattack" and "female growth," combined with secondary propagation on short video platforms, successfully captured fragmented viewing traffic during the "long holiday."

Another highly discussed series is "Silent Glory," which breaks from the "spy drama = suspense + action" genre formula, bringing heroic spirits out of history books. Its market performance triggering historical discussion fever proves that the core appeal of spy dramas has never been flashy plot reversals, but rather the power generated by the collision of humanity and faith in real history, also validating diverse creative paths for mainstream themes.

Additionally, "Sleepless Day's" time loop concept and "Deadly Judge's" Hong Kong-style genre innovation validate the market potential of the suspense category. Whether for television or online dramas, only by precisely matching channel audience demands and deeply cultivating content innovation can productions maintain their footing in holiday traffic competition.

**Film Market: Diverse Genres Meet Audience Viewing Demands**

This year's National Day box office competition presented a diverse landscape, with multiple films supporting the overall market through clear positioning and sustained word-of-mouth development. "The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death," as the series finale, achieved 450 million yuan in box office revenue, demonstrating the powerful market cohesion and solid audience base of mature IP.

"731's" 345 million yuan box office "runner-up miracle" represents an excellent interpretation of the film market's long-tail effect and holiday viewing demand. Its ability to achieve box office growth during the holiday period indicates high alignment between the film's content characteristics and specific audience viewing needs.

As the first domestic film focusing on the deaf community's anti-fraud theme, "Deafening" combines emotional depth with social significance, also serving as an exemplary case of "precise decision-making" and "word-of-mouth patience."

"Bi Zhengming's Proof" stood as the period's new release reputation benchmark, using delicate and solid narrative and richly layered performances to create strong emotional resonance with audiences, successfully breaking initial gender barriers and continuously attracting male audiences. This represents both a victory for the film's content universality and reflects the market's consistent pursuit of quality content.

Additionally, "Life on the Waves" and "Assassin in Red 2" found their respective audience groups through "genre necessity" and "ultimate visual effects." "Life on the Waves," as the period's only comedy, used life-oriented humor and tears, along with the warmth of weathering storms together, fully proving comedy's value as market "hard currency." Its steady upward trend reflects audiences' continued demand for works that provide emotional value.

"Assassin in Red 2's" strong performance in premium format theaters highlights Chinese cinema industry's progress and appeal in high-tech format tracks, providing valuable insights for how visual effects blockbusters can build core competitiveness by enhancing unique cinema experiences.

While the 2025 National Day film lineup didn't produce a single dominant super hit, multiple films successfully reached their target audiences through differentiated positioning and quality content, achieving long-term box office development through positive word-of-mouth. As Maoyan Entertainment market analyst Lai Li noted, how to precisely grasp different audience segments' viewing preferences and ignite viewing enthusiasm through solid content and innovative marketing strategies is a challenge all industry practitioners must face together.

**Performance Market: Cross-Genre Integration Creates Performance + Consumption Ecosystem**

During this year's National Day holiday, multiple classic literary works were reinterpreted through modern artistic forms, becoming a major highlight of the holiday performance market. The original ethnic opera "Red Sorghum," which premiered at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, adapted from Mo Yan's novel "Red Sorghum Family" with Mo Yan personally rewriting the script and Guo Wenjing composing, retells the epic of Chinese people's resistance war through passionate operatic language, paying tribute to the indomitable national spirit.

Also premiering during National Day, the musical "Song of Youth" adapts Yang Mo's universally known classic literary work, allowing youthful ideals and era beliefs that have settled for eighty years to radiate new vitality on contemporary stages.

The dance drama "Eternal Yongle" takes the Yongle Palace relocation project of the 1950s as its main thread, developing narrative around four aesthetic dimensions of "ancient architecture, murals, glazed ceramics, and inheritance," transforming artifacts, crafts, and memories originally housed in museums and preserved in history into emotionally rich and story-driven dance language.

These modern translations of classic works maintain artistic quality while attracting younger audience groups, injecting sustained vitality into the performance market.

During the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, various cross-genre performances demonstrated deep integration of artistic forms. Tan Weiwei's "Sound Upon Sound - Wind Rising from Eight Directions Theater Concert" drew inspiration from ancient mythology, seamlessly switching between ethnic, rock, and pop vocal styles, and through the use of "eight materials" instruments, built bridges between traditional and modern music, further expanding the boundaries of performance art forms.

Xie Xin Dance Theatre presented their 10th anniversary special performances "In the Name of Satie: Spring's Movement" and "A Stroke and A Dash," using live performance and dance collaboration to release new vitality.

Deep cultural-tourism integration stood out prominently in this holiday's performance market. The 2025 Beijing Grand Canal Music Festival held at Beijing Sub-Center Green Heart Forest Park gathered 16 performing groups including Li Jian, Xu Wei, Da Zhangwei, Chen Chusheng, and Lao Lang, attracting nearly 70,000 music fans. The festival's supporting market featured nearly 50 vendors covering time-honored brands and specialty dining, new energy vehicles, quality home improvement, technology and digital products, forming a complete "performance + consumption" ecosystem.

Simultaneously, the "2025 International Audio-Visual Art Works Expo" was held at Beijing Arts Centre, gathering nearly 10,000 treasures from 64 global labels worldwide, combining rare vinyl records with cutting-edge technologies like MR/VR immersive experiences, further expanding the boundaries of performance art forms.

This expo also utilized the Cultural Granary Art Space, leveraging the natural oxygen bar of the city's green heart, organically connecting indoor and outdoor platforms and grasslands, adding outdoor leisure areas and art exhibition zones to create an integrated cultural service ecosystem.

Additionally, during National Day, rich and diverse artistic performances were staged at Beijing Arts Centre and Taihu Stage Design Art Centre. These included premium adaptations of world masterpieces such as the National Centre for the Performing Arts' original musical "War and Peace" and their production of the play "Pride and Prejudice," as well as multiple concerts by renowned orchestras including the "Glorious Era" Beijing Symphony Orchestra concert and the "Passionate Years" China Film Orchestra audiovisual symphony concert, promoting the diffusion of artistic resources to multiple urban areas and effectively driving the sub-center's night economy development.