Netflix says it’s putting an end to its semiannual data releases that detail views and total time spent on thousands of series and movies on the platform. Instead, the company will move to annual releases starting early next year.
But the second half of this year will probably feature a small uptick in viewing time — because that’s how it’s been for just about every six months since Netflix began offering its big data releases.
For the first half of 2026, Netflix users worldwide spent about 97.7 billion hours watching series and films on the platform. That’s a 2 percent increase from the first half of last year (95.2 billion) and a small uptick from the second half of 2025 (97.1 billion hours). Since a 4 percent downturn in the second half of 2023, the pattern of small but steady viewing time growth has held for each six-month data release.
As for the decision to switch to annual data drops, Netflix said in its quarterly earnings letter that “engagement is not just the quantity of view hours, but also refers to the quality and variety of our offering. To make this clearer, we’re making a change to our view hours disclosure. After today’s What We Watched report, which covers the first half of 2026, we will shift to publishing this report annually in the first quarter, beginning in 2027. The goal of separating the publication of the report from our earnings results is to keep the focus on our primary financial metrics — revenue and operating profit.”
Netflix will continue releasing its weekly lists of the top shows and movies.
As for the first half of this year, His & Hers led the series chart with 104 million views (calculated as total viewing hours divided by run time) from January to June. Season four of Bridgerton had 100.2 million views to finish second, and the period drama led in hours viewed with 889.8 million (its run time was twice as long as that for His & Hers). Despite premiering less than two weeks before the end of June, I Will Find You had the third most views (63.9 million), ahead of the final season of Stranger Things (55.6 million).
The streamer’s two biggest movies for the first half of the year, in both views and total watch time, were War Machine (146.9 million views, 266.8 million hours) and The Rip (136.1 million viewers, 256.4 million hours).
As usual, viewing was top-heavy. The top 200 shows — just more than 2 percent of the almost 8,200 titles listed — accounted for about 36 percent of all views among series. Sorted by hours watched, the top 200 had 34 percent of all viewing time. The story was similar among movies: The top 200 (of almost 9,200 films) had 34 percent of both views and total watch time.
