In the new year, Bilibili released the list of the top 100 UP owners, 73 of whom won the award for more than once.
On January 18th, Bilibili (hereinafter referred to as "Bilibili") released the list of the new batch of top 100 UP owners. Compared with previous years, this year's list has the following obvious characteristics:
- This is the year with the fewest winners for the first time, with only 27 people. That is to say, out of a hundred, 73 UP owners are not winning the award for the first time;
- Over 60% of the winners have been creating continuously for more than 5 years. Among them, 18 UP owners have been creating for more than 10 years, and the two UP owners with the longest creation time have reached 15 years;
- There are only 12 winners whose creation duration is less than 3 years. Among them, 2 have only been UP owners for 1 year, and they are from the game and knowledge sections respectively;
- Four super - top UP owners have continuously made it onto the list for exactly 8 years since its inception. They are: Fanshi, Laofanqie, Xiaoyao Sanren, and Muyu Shuixin;
- Zero UP owners with less than one million followers won the award, while there were 4 last year.
The winners of the "Best Newcomer of the Year Award" are two people who seem "not very Bilibili - like" - Yu Qian and Luo Yonghao. The content they created belongs to the emerging content category of Bilibili in 2025, "video podcasts". In the same week when the list was released, Bilibili announced that the number of video podcast users had exceeded 65 million. In addition to the "traditional" UP owners, most of the creators in this section are celebrities, media people, and opinion leaders.
The "Best Work of the Year Award" was given to the UP owner "Teacher, Hello, My Name Is He Tongxue", who caused public controversy in 2025. His winning work is a video about making a one - handed keyboard for people with disabilities.
As in previous years, this year's selection criteria are also three dimensions: "professionalism, influence, and innovation". In the 8th year of the release of the top 100 list, an obvious trend is emerging, that is, the super - top circle of the platform is becoming more and more stable. In 2022, as many as 60 UP owners were selected for the list for the first time, but since then, this figure has been decreasing year by year.
Image source: Duan Xiaocao
More Diligent, More Professional, and More Costly
Data released by Bilibili shows that one of the most prominent features of this batch of top 100 UP owners is "diligence".
This batch of top 100 UP owners created more than 49,000 videos in total, and the cumulative duration of the works exceeded 990,000 minutes. Among them, "Yushuo Sports - Xu Jingyu" ranked first in the number of updates with a total of 6,334 videos, while "Yishu" ranked first in the annual update duration with 18,000 minutes (about 300 hours) of video updates in 2025.
Duan Xiaocao (@Duan Xiaocao), an excellent answerer on Zhihu's large - model and Python topics, who can be found here, analyzed this year's list. The results show that the average number of annual submissions of the top 100 UP owners is 69, and the median is 51. Among the 100 people, only 2 UP owners failed to update monthly (< 12 videos), and most people could update monthly, weekly, or even twice a week.
In terms of the average duration of the submissions, the average value of the average annual submission duration of the top 100 UP owners is 28 minutes, and the median is 18 minutes. This is significantly longer than last year (the average was 18 minutes, and the median was 13 minutes).
Divided according to the criteria of < 3 minutes (short videos), 3 - 10 minutes (medium - length videos), 10 - 30 minutes (mid - long videos), and > 30 minutes (long videos), the top 100 UP owners indeed reflect the obvious characteristics of Bilibili as a "mid - long video platform".
Image source: Duan Xiaocao
For the business community, the "Top 100" award, which has no prize money but only honor, with relatively abstract selection criteria and difficult - to - quantify numerical values, is more like a "wind vane" to show "who are the most recognized creators by the platform at present" and "who are the creators that the platform most hopes to show to advertisers".
Becoming a diligent mid - long video creator is much more difficult than becoming a diligent short - video creator. The increase in difficulty is not only reflected in the duration but also in the design of topics and the competition for users' limited attention.
The "China Internet Audio - Visual Development Research Report (2025)" shows that the average daily usage time of short - video app users has reached an astonishing 156 minutes (about 2.6 hours), ranking first among all Internet applications. Calculated at an average of 15 seconds per short video, users may swipe through more than 600 short videos unconsciously in a day.
In 2025, the average daily usage time of Bilibili users was 112 minutes. Calculated at a relatively conservative 5 minutes per video, users can watch 23 videos a day. Calculated according to the standard of 10 - 30 minutes per video shown by the main force of the top 100 UP owners, users can watch even fewer videos.
How can a mid - long video creator compete for users' attention with other creators of the same type on the platform? Judging from the current performance of the top 100 UP owners, many people have chosen the path of "more professional + more costly".
UP owner @Jieke Xiaotu is one of the 27 new winners this year. The words "burning funds" often float across the bullet - screen area of his videos. This UP owner randomly takes viewers on a tour of the life and customs of a certain place on Earth. He has traveled on the Orient Express, which represents the highest price ceiling, and also visited slums and top - class manors in the UK, presenting a real social picture of economic disparity.
Backstage at the awards ceremony, @Jieke Xiaotu was interviewed by several media outlets, including 36Kr.
"I think running a content account is like running a company. I'm willing to invest most of my profit from commercial orders into R & D and production," said Jieke Xiaotu. "So, high investment is actually an investment in myself. In the short term, you may not see an immediate economic return, but it will definitely contribute to the future commercial value of the IP. If I hadn't done this, you wouldn't be seeing me here."
Jieke Xiaotu's most satisfactory work in the past year is his most expensive video with the highest views and the highest rate of gaining new followers. In that video, he took the Orient Express, which costs 74,000 yuan per night, and experienced a journey from Paris to Venice. Jieke Xiaotu believes that the reason for the success of this video is that it is "rare, has an interesting shooting angle, and can satisfy the curiosity of the audience".
Among the top 100, the UP owner who received the most bullet - screens (2.37 million) and the most coin - tosses (9.05 million) in 2025 is also a well - known technology - section UP owner for his professional and costly content - @Yingshi Jufeng. Currently, the content production team of Yingshi Jufeng has expanded to more than a hundred people.
Even for content that does not involve the so - called "golden thresholds" such as technology and travel, there is a trend of becoming more professional and more costly. The lifestyle - section UP owner "Yuge Daochu Pao", who mainly produces humorous content, won the top 100 award again after 5 years, thanks to the co - created UP owner variety shows "Youth Travel Group" and "Who's Next".
"The cost of the variety show mainly includes venue rental, prop purchase, and the time cost of all UP owners. Last year, I spent about 2 million yuan," said Yuge. "There were no advertisements in the first few episodes of the variety show. Only the latest episode got a commercial order. Before, it was a big loss, and now it's a small loss. But overall, it's still a loss."
Bilibili Has Its Own Particularities
Where does the revenue come from after high investment?
Bilibili's financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2025, the average income of UP owners increased by 22% year - on - year. Nearly 2.5 million UP owners earned income on Bilibili through advertising, live - streaming, charging, courses, and small shops.
This year, Bilibili scheduled the AD TALK Marketing Partner Conference for advertisers and the Top 100 UP Owners Awards Ceremony in the same week. Considering the trend of high - investment creation, the correlation between good content and good commercial orders seems to be stronger than in previous years.
The revenue level of mid - long video platforms in the advertising business has always been suppressed by short - video platforms. This seems to be an era - long dilemma. A few years ago, Bilibili also vigorously promoted Story - Mode vertical videos, but facts have proved that its differentiated advantage still lies in its "core business" of mid - long videos - especially some video types that are "only suitable for display on Bilibili", such as long - form content in the technology and knowledge categories.
Last year, technology - related content was also one of the best - performing content in terms of advertising revenue on Bilibili. In Q3 of 2025, the advertising revenue brought to Bilibili by the AI industry increased by nearly 90%, and the advertising growth rate in fields such as digital home appliances and home improvement exceeded 60%, indicating advertisers' preference for technology - related content on Bilibili. In that quarter, Bilibili's advertising revenue increased by 23% year - on - year, reaching 2.57 billion yuan.
The technology - section UP owner @Jikewan, who was selected as one of the top 100 UP owners again this year, said in an interview with 36Kr that they believe the biggest change in Bilibili in the past year is that "commercialization has improved". "I think this is a very important driving force for UP owners to continue. Everyone wants to create good content, but good content needs real - world support," said Jikewan.
Jikewan's submitted content mainly focuses on evaluating the performance data of global digital products. The two UP owners often disassemble motherboards, grind chips, and explore the battery life limit, with a hardcore technology - style. Although this kind of content seems close to commercialization, there is also a contradiction between "balancing commercial value" and "maintaining data credibility".
The two UP owners of Jikewan said that they are very cautious when facing commercial orders. "We will only cooperate when we confirm that the product is very good." They will distinguish between commercial cooperation content and horizontal evaluation content to ensure the objectivity of daily content.
When asked if "Bilibili is currently the most suitable platform on the Chinese - speaking Internet to display your type of videos", Jikewan said, "Yes. Because the users of Bilibili have a relatively higher level of cognition. They won't blindly follow the creators but will interact with us and form a rational discussion. Especially for creators like us who produce relatively in - depth content, such a community is very necessary."
Facing the same question, the knowledge - section UP owner @Lugedunum's Augustine gave a more straightforward answer - he believes that Bilibili is the "only" suitable platform for him.
Lugedunum's Augustine specializes in medieval history. Most of the videos he updates on Bilibili are about 20 minutes long, with content topics ranging from the complicated history of church schisms to the work experience and marriage concepts of medieval people. The content also belongs to the category of hardcore knowledge.
"Considering my current video topics and duration, Bilibili is the only suitable place for me," said Lugedunum's Augustine. "Although Bilibili doesn't have the largest number of users, I always think that Bilibili is a platform of the highest quality and the most suitable for high - quality content. This is its irreplaceability."
However, compared with technology - related content that is also "inseparable from Bilibili", knowledge - section content, especially historical knowledge content, has relatively less advantage in commercialization. "When I was chatting with others backstage at the top 100 awards ceremony, I found that my income is indeed relatively low. But at this stage, it's enough for me to live a happy life, and I'm already satisfied," said Lugedunum's Augustine.