Short dramas during the Spring Festival: Fighting in public, having fun in private

During the 2025 Spring Festival, the short drama market is unprecedentedly lively, but compared with the frequent hits in 2024, this year seems to lack phenomenal works. This article will deeply analyze the characteristics and trends of the 2025 Spring Festival short dramas and explore why this year's short dramas failed to reproduce the glory of last year. From platform competition to content innovation, from user needs to market strategies, this article will reveal the performance of short dramas during the 2025 Spring Festival and the reasons behind it.

Just as short video, long video and even e-commerce food delivery giants are gearing up to compete in the Spring Festival short drama season, with nearly 2,000 new dramas announced and dozens of new dramas released across the entire network every day, short dramas did not become a phenomenal hit during the 2025 Spring Festival.

This is somewhat disappointing.

After all, during the 2024 Spring Festival, top-selling hits such as "Wushuang" and "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" made short dramas completely popular, opening up the road for short dramas to become a new content upstart, as well as the road to mainstream standardization.

In November 2024, the "White Paper on the Development of Micro-Short Drama Industry" released by the China Internet Audiovisual Association showed that the market size of short dramas this year is expected to exceed 50 billion, exceeding the annual movie box office. For a time, people were lamenting the rise of short dramas and the decline of long dramas and feature films.

However, in the 2025 Spring Festival, when long dramas lay flat and abandoned, movies were conservative and kept their quality, and short dramas were advancing triumphantly, movies were proud, long dramas disappeared, and short dramas once again entered a relatively silent state of taking what they needed. Short dramas are still satisfying people's most straightforward desires and the most secret pleasures in different categories, but it is difficult to find popular hits and topic effects.

Under the multiple effects of free model + decentralized distribution + loss of bonus of new things, short dramas have matured and quieted down, and have returned to our beds for us to watch secretly and enjoy.

1. Wherever there is depression, there are skits

Without Jia Ling's Spring Festival schedule, the number of male-dominated films has once again become the original sin of the film industry. However, the short dramas are dispersed by virtue of their large number, so that men, women, young and old can all have a bite.

As the saying goes, the more repressed, the more exciting. The edge is also a productivity, and this is not limited to the track, or even the crowd. Since mid-January, both the male and female sides have produced a borderline hit as a precursor to the Spring Festival.

On the male side, the suspenseful short drama "Snake Garden" has captured the essence of early domestic horror films. The fantastic beginning is matched with the "Science Approaches"-style ending, and it "cheated" nearly 30 million recharges in the end.

In the female frequency, the short drama "Falling into the Spring Night" about rebirth and revenge focuses on real couples who are not afraid of in-play contact and off-play business. Two days after its launch, the total number of online readings exceeded 100 million.

The male channel has learned to be roundabout and obscure, while the female channel has increased supply and upgraded content in various senses. This is basically a summary of the situation of short dramas in the past year. Therefore, when we expand the scope of observation to the entire Spring Festival period, the marginal part is only a small part after all, and the female channel and the male channel present two different diversified results.

The diversity of female-oriented dramas lies in the growth of each of the sub-genres. There are excellent works available for modern idol dramas, ancient idol dramas, period idol dramas, time travel, revenge dramas, and dual male protagonists.

The diversification of male channels depends on who can play the safe card in more new ways.

For example, Hongguo's "Sword of the Walker 24" introduces martial arts themes into short dramas. "The Swindler", which performs well in both paid and free versions, is a gambling film in the name of anti-gambling. In addition, there are some sadistic dramas that seem to be a fusion of the male-oriented son-in-law and the female-oriented "fetal literature", which are very cool and safe.

In addition to the usual eating, drinking, sex and marriage, the Spring Festival is a festival that emphasizes family reunion, and it is also an opportunity for many families to have multiple generations living together once a year. The themes of family affection and family ethics that the elders love become extremely relevant at this time, and therefore occupy a lot of resources and rankings in the short drama Spring Festival period.

Some of these family skits are based on the sadistic model that is already familiar to the skit industry, reminding young people to be grateful to their parents and care for the elderly. There are not only modern versions that combine social news, but also ancient versions with a strong opera flavor.

There are also some that have taken advantage of the trend of short dramas, but the feeling of short dramas is not that strong, such as "Couple's Spring Festival" produced by Douyin and supervised by Ni Hongjie. It tells the story of a middle-aged housewife who begins to rethink her marriage and family relationship in her busy daily life. The copy of the first episode is "I have been married for ten years but have not obtained a marriage certificate. Today I decided to divorce", which can be said to be accurate in positioning and directly hit the pain points.

In addition to the core emotional needs of love and family, Hard Candy has also analyzed before that short dramas have low costs, flexible cycles, and strong timeliness, so an abstract hot spot approach has emerged - providing fun for people who like fun, isn't that also an emotional value? Of course, this type of short drama is indispensable during the Spring Festival.

Some of these hot short plays are based on Spring Festival elements such as the Spring Festival travel rush, going home, New Year's Eve dinner, and setting off firecrackers. For example, the top-ranked "The Chef's New Year's Eve Dinner" is based on the New Year custom of eating New Year's Eve dinner outside, and tells the story of the face-slapping counterattack of the expelled restaurant heir. "No Burning", which ranks first on Pinduoduo, tells the story of a naughty kid who sets off firecrackers illegally and gets his comeuppance. There is also "Spring Festival Traffic Jam, I Fly Home Directly" which is just a title and opening.

Some of them have used the zodiac snake element. "Snake XXX of XXXX" has become a popular format for drama titles, and Shu Chang's short drama debut "Snake Year Great Fortune: Xiaoqing Crossing the Tribulation" is no exception. This drama also obviously uses the folk legend of the green snake and the white snake, telling the story of Xiaoqing, who failed to ascend to heaven, turning into an urban mature woman and marrying a Buddhist disciple in the Beijing circle who is suspected to be the reincarnation of Fahai.

2. From content war to platform war

Short dramas are developing rapidly, and the short dramas in 2025 are very different from those in the previous year. The most obvious difference is the increase in scale. Another example is the emergence of camps.

Last year, everyone studied what was investment flow and how many points there were, but this year everyone is studying the list of films on each platform. This shows that the core of this short drama Spring Festival period is not a battle of length or type, but an upgraded battle of platforms.

First of all, more and more platforms are coming into play, and some platforms have even waited until this moment to debut.

Douyin and Kuaishou in the short video industry and Mango TV and Tencent Video in the long video industry are veteran players in short dramas. Kuaishou, which was the first to schedule short dramas, is one of the few platforms that did not issue a list of films, and only focused on scheduling. The other three are all on the offensive. For example, Tencent Video took advantage of the Spring Festival to announce its vertical screen ambitions to the world, and also launched typical goose-style operation activities such as ranking.

The free platform Hongguo short dramas have become famous since the second half of 2024, and the long video platform iQiyi has also officially joined the short drama battlefield since the second half of 2024. Both of them have grand short dramas during the Spring Festival. Hongguo has prepared 100 new dramas for exclusive premiere, and iQiyi's new and old micro dramas have also put together an extremely long list, which is very impressive.

Both the media platform The Paper and the social platform Xiaohongshu suddenly announced the launch of short drama channels after January 20. The former is a themed exhibition and is not to be feared, but Xiaohongshu is more serious. In addition to launching a large number of completed short dramas during the Spring Festival, it also introduced 10 new dramas from famous brands and with high attention, such as the aforementioned "Falling into Spring Night". It is said that the platform's short drama payment link is already being established.

In addition, Taobao, Meituan, Pinduoduo and other companies that entered the short drama market in the first half of last year also made their own moves during the Spring Festival. Meituan launched a number of self-made brand short dramas starring "Xiren" (broadcast on Douyin, free to watch). Pinduoduo updated its old support plan and issued a Spring Festival-limited incentive policy, showing a preference for new and popular short dramas and first-run exclusives.

It is worth pondering that Pinduoduo’s short drama interface is quite complete. It is the only e-commerce platform that has set up an on-site hot list, and the data of short dramas on the list is also quite impressive.

In general, based on different resource advantages, user portraits or platform demands, everyone has shown some differences in content strategies during this Spring Festival:

Kuaishou has few new releases, and two of them are AIGC short dramas produced by its own Keling. Mango TV, on the other hand, has developed a short drama with two male protagonists, The Scholar and the Civet Cat, based on the popular variety show Escape Room, attracting variety show viewers with the name of "superb after-sales service".

While continuing its celebrity strategy, Douyin also demonstrates its characteristics as an important platform for the promotion of film and television dramas, and has launched many derivative dramas of film and television IPs, such as the derivative drama "In the Name of Family" "In the Name of Love" (starring Xiu Ren Xu Mengjie and Deng Chaoyuan), the derivative drama "The Rising Sun" (centered around the adult Zhu Chaoyang) of "The Bad Kids", the anti-fraud short drama "Disguised Game" derived from "All or Nothing", and the "Nine-Layer Purple" extra story "Zhao Shi Lu", etc.

As a professional short drama platform, Hongguo Short Drama not only launched hundreds of new dramas, but also launched a team-building variety show for short drama celebrities, "Let's Go Short Drama!" In addition, the Spring Festival schedule also reflects Hongguo's active willingness to become a high-quality and mainstream platform, such as bringing in childhood goddess Shu Chang, and jointly launching the revolutionary short drama "Peach Blossoms Outside the Wall, Blood Inside the Wall" with the China Television Drama Production Center.

As a long video giant, iQiyi also made a big move with an impressive lineup both on and off the stage. The 28 new dramas it promoted include top short dramas and familiar faces in long dramas, and its partners include well-known labels such as Tinghuadao and Yuanshang Muguang, and it won 4 new dramas from the former in one fell swoop.

Xiaohongshu entered the market the latest, introducing only 10 new dramas. But it wins because it has the right users, and it chooses high-quality content that is female-oriented and most likely to be broadcast effectively. Considering the influx of overseas users not long ago, they even provide bilingual subtitles.

3. Everyone is trying to collect firewood, but why are you silent?

So the question is, all major platforms have worked very hard on this short drama during the Spring Festival, so why is there less and less movement as time goes by?

First of all, in order to attract the maximum number of audiences and to follow the new trend of last year, free short dramas have become the mainstream of this Spring Festival. The reason why short dramas became popular during the 2024 Spring Festival is largely due to the shocking recharge amounts under the paid model. Free short dramas focus on long-term profit sharing, so it is difficult to prove their popularity immediately, and they lack intuitive topic stimulation.

At the same time, although more platforms have entered the market, each APP is like an isolated island, with different user groups who have different content tastes and consumption habits, making it difficult to form a clustering effect.

This year, the short dramas during the Spring Festival are scattered across more than five platforms, and the styles of the hot lists on the sites vary greatly. For example, long video users are still used to horizontal screen short dramas, while Pinduoduo users prefer family dramas. The same drama will also have different effects when broadcast on different platforms and modes.

All these mean that going viral has become a luxury during the Spring Festival. First, as the share of paid short dramas has shrunk and more and more platforms have been opening them, previous short drama lists have become rather one-sided. Some only count vertical screen short dramas, and some only count traditional video platforms. For a while, the only thing we can count on is Quark Hot Search.

Of course, going viral can also be done from the bottom up, which is the most reasonable way. But this Spring Festival, the red-black battle of movies has attracted too much attention, and almost no one cares about the TV series.

Moreover, not every type of short drama has the conditions and desire to go viral. Female dramas, which are closest to traditional drama users, have the most discussions on the Internet and are the most able to cross platforms and attract traffic through actors and CPs. As you can imagine, short dramas for parents and elders do not have these, nor do they need them.

But the above are all objective reasons we find for short dramas. In the final analysis, the lack of freshness and ineffective innovation are the crux that short dramas themselves must overcome. After the baptism of 2024, the public has understood and disenchanted short dramas, and the curiosity and freshness of a year ago has passed.

As for the deep users of short dramas, on the one hand, tightened regulation may lead to the disappearance of many old selling points, and some users will be lost. On the other hand, some users watch short dramas to the extent of appreciating N versions of a story, accelerating the process of long drama viewers for several years and directly entering the stage of aesthetic fatigue.

Although in response to the trend of high-quality production, various platforms have made great efforts to diversify the genres - Hongguo's new dramas during the Spring Festival cover 12 major themes, including ancient costume martial arts, fantasy fairy tales, urban romance, patriotic spy wars, and youth growth, and iQiyi's 28 main short dramas cover 8 major genres, including urban, martial arts, romance, and ancient costumes. However, judging from the actual broadcast situation, this may not be what short drama users want, and the old selling points are still the ones that can be broadcasted.

However, compared to the wild and intoxicating 2024, the relative calm of short dramas during this Spring Festival period has given us an opportunity to reversely interpret the situation. What role do users, platforms, and officials need short dramas to play?

First, it fills the gap in long dramas. The earthy and overbearing dramas with low value, the family ethics dramas for the middle-aged and elderly, and the male-oriented dramas that provide emotional value for men of all ages are all relatively marginalized contents in long dramas, and short dramas play a good role in filling the gaps.

The second is to bring out its functionality. For example, lowering the threshold for online literature conversion and TV series and TV series to publish extra episodes, and advertising in a more vivid and interesting way. This Spring Festival, there are quite a few brand-customized short plays, cultural tourism short plays, and public welfare short plays.

The third is high-quality short videos. On e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, short dramas play a role in user retention. With coherent and exciting plots, they attract users to invest more time and attention, and increase the chances of users seeing the product-selling videos and making purchases.

Looking at it positively, after such a Spring Festival period, I believe that the entertainment industry will be able to usher in a more rational 2025. Those who were praised or criticized will regroup and start again.

Author: Gu Han Editor: Li Chunhui